Is our 80/160m HEDZ suitable to work Americans at 160m?

Last weekend was the yearly ARRL 160m contest. Adrian PA0RDA and I were still a bit in doubt about our HEDZ antenna for 80 and 160m: is it suitable to work American and Canadian stations at 160m? So far we never heard any station from that area on that band, so Adrian decided to bring his Drake TR-7 for the weekend and try to work these countries during the 160m contest, probably the best opportunity for this test.

It took quite some patience, since the TR-7 was not really good in handling all the strong signals from nearby stations, Europe is really loud on this antenna. But eventually Adrian worked two stations: VY2ZM and N2KW. These are “big guns” (e.g. VY2ZM uses 6 phased verticals!), so its merely thanks to their setup and skills, but the contact was successfull.

Back to the original question: is the HEDZ suitable for US-EU contacts? The answer is “NO”. However, for Europe and surrounding countries the antenna works very nice.

Although Adrian was able to work just 2 stations, he still submitted his log to the contest manager, so he’ll be listed in the single-operator low-power class. Claimed score: 4 points… 😉