Calling CQ for Wyoming, Europe Answers: N1BRL and the Road to 80-Meter WAS
Bart, N1BRL, has Worked All States on seven bands. Eighty meters is the one standing between him and the 5-Band WAS award, and an eighth band of WAS. He already holds DXCC on seven bands, 40 through 10 meters, with 235 entities confirmed and a DXCC Challenge count of 1,176.
“Size matters,” he wrote us, “or if you can’t hear them, you can’t work them.”
So he ran an experiment, and he kept score on a map.
Three antennas, one map
Blue: a 40-meter OCF dipole at 27 feet. Twenty-two states, near half of the country: New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Carolinas, the Ohio Valley, the Great Lakes.
Red: his 24-foot Greyline DX Flagpole. Thirteen more, states the dipole never worked: Montana and the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas, Iowa and Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona.
Green: the same flagpole with a whip on top. Twelve more, including the entire West Coast, Washington to California, and the Mountain West from Idaho to New Mexico.
Forty-seven states. Three to go: Wyoming, Hawaii and Alaska.
More antenna, more signal: Bart’s 80-meter log, in the order he worked them.
The part nobody expects
“While calling CQ WY or HI or AK,” Bart wrote, “I frequently get several calls from Europe instead of the three needed states.”
That is a vertical doing what verticals do best. It puts its signal out at the low angles that cross an ocean. Bart is chasing states and working DX by accident.
The tilt made the experiment possible
The 24’ DX Flagpole with the whip extended, flag up: about 41 feet. Photo: Bart, N1BRL.
Down, whip in, back up. Two minutes, one person, no ladder. Video: Bart, N1BRL.
Bart has owned his 24-footer since the spring of 2024. He had long wondered how to make it taller, but taking a flagpole down to work on it took extra hands. Then he added the Tilt-Up Base.
“Thanks to the Greyline Tilt Up base I can now experiment with my flagpole and see what works,” he wrote. “It literally takes me two minutes to tilt over the flagpole and extend or retract the whip as needed. Start to finish and back on the air.”
His whip is a telescoping one he had bought years ago for portable operating and never used, adapted to the top of the pole. Retracted, it adds about two and a half feet. Extended, the antenna stands almost 41 feet tall. He tilts the pole down and retracts it every morning, because the days are windier, and extends it again at night. For a permanent installation, his own recommendation is the 9’ DX Whip.
The Teaching: Why Height Pays on 80 Meters
On 80 meters, a 24-foot pole is a small slice of the wavelength. The useful part of the feedpoint resistance, the radiation resistance, rises with the square of the antenna’s electrical length. Take it from 24 feet to about 41 and you have roughly 1.7 times the height, which works out to about three times the radiation resistance. With the same losses in the ground and hardware, a much bigger share of the transmitter’s power leaves as signal.
And the 24-footer on its own did real work: thirteen states on 80 that the dipole never reached. Every Greyline works every band, 160 through 6. Taller is a step you can take later, on the same pole.
What Is WAS?
Worked All States is the ARRL award for confirmed contacts with all fifty U.S. states. It is one of the most popular awards in amateur radio, a goal for new operators and old hands alike, with endorsements for single bands, modes, and the 5-Band WAS (80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 meters) that Bart is chasing. Many confirmations today come through Logbook of The World. The ARRL explains the rules and how to apply on its WAS page: arrl.org/was.
One caution
A whip on top of a flagpole puts leverage at the very place a pole feels the wind most. Retract it when the weather turns; that is the habit to build. On any Greyline: flag down, whip in, and walk it down on the Tilt-Up Base for a big storm.
Three to go, then 160
Wyoming, Hawaii and Alaska. Hawaii and Alaska come through on the long, dark path around sunrise; Wyoming is an easy night hop on 80, with very few stations on the band. After that, Bart says, he moves on to 160 meters, testing which extended length works best on each band. “So much fun to be had yet.” When number fifty is in the log, we’ll print the map again.
Bart’s station: 24’ DX Flagpole · Tilt-Up Base · his own telescoping whip (for a permanent install, he recommends the 9’ DX Whip)
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73,
Jon KL2A
