Shack 2.0 Phase II: Dreaming of Towers
Back in 2016, my wife and I were becoming more serious contesters. We had a station on the air, but wanted to become more competitive. I also wanted to improve my DXing. I had earned DXCC using our 5 band Hustler trapped vertical, but desired more entities. Reading a lot of others it seemed the biggest bang for your buck always tends to be antennas. We already owned a K3S so there was also not much more to improve on that. While benchmarking, I realized we would need a tower and a directional antenna.Thus, the summer of the tower was born! Examining what to buy and what to do took a lot of time. I asked questions and opinions from Mad River Radio Club members to understand their experiences. I read the ARRL Antenna Book and the Antenna Towers for the Radio Amateur book. The list of variables was bewildering. Like a normal engineer, I found I needed to use a process to help me decide what I wanted. Initially, I started with some goals. Improve DXing contest scores Increase my co...