Customer Spotlight · KA4AHU

The full legal limit, a stealth flagpole, and a neighbor who loves “our flag.”

Tim, KA4AHU, runs the full legal limit into a 24’ DX Flagpole at the back of his lake house — and worked DXCC on FT8 inside a few months. A kilowatt and a half, a flag flying over glassy water, and neighbors who never guessed it is an antenna.

A deliberate choice: the back yard, facing the water

Most flagpoles go out front. Tim put his at the rear of the house, facing the lake: “I believe more people can enjoy the sight of a flag flying from the lake we live on versus the few that would be able to see it from the front yard.” A neighborly instinct — and, as it happens, a clear shot at the water and the sky beyond it.

Then he went to work. In a few months on the Greyline: fifty-two new countries confirmed mixed-mode, bringing him to 202 on submission; one hundred thirty-three countries confirmed on FT8; WAS on FT8; and three bands toward 5-Band WAS. “I just worked JT1CO, Mongolia, yesterday on 15 meters,” he added.

Running the legal limit into a stealth flagpole

Here is the part that surprises people: Tim runs the full legal limit — a kilowatt and a half — into an antenna his neighbors think is decor. “The antenna tunes readily for 10 through 40 meters. I opted to use a manual tuner in the shack so that I could run the full legal limit, which the antenna handles with ease.” He started with a Dentron MT-2000A, then moved to a Heathkit SA-2040 — preferring the roller inductor to a tapped coil — and found very good matches on 10 through 80.

There is a real trade buried in his tuning choice, worth saying plainly. Tune at the base and the feedline runs at low SWR up to the radiator, holding feedline loss down on the high bands. Tune in the shack and the line runs at whatever match the antenna presents — simpler at high power, but you watch line loss, especially up high. Tim made the high-power-friendly call and accepted the trade. The 80 and 160 challenge he describes is the honest signature of a short radiator on the low bands — physics, not marketing. For the why behind feedline loss and matching, the people who wrote it down clearly are Tom Rauch, W8JI, and the late L. B. Cebik, W4RNL, whose antenna writings remain a standing classroom.

For the curious

If FT8 is how you, like Tim, are filling the log, the operators comparing notes on weak-signal work and the low-band openings live on the reflectors. The TopBand list is the home for the 80 and 160 conversation Tim is still chasing: lists.contesting.com/_topband/ →