Re : 10m arrl contest

Hi all, I have now (sunday 3rd december)set my station up for the ARRL contestest next weekend, my cushcraft R7000 and 3 ele monobander at my portable QTH. I spent all morning fighting with my R7 trying to get it on its pole (in windy wx).Finaly i got it on the pump up mast, guided it to the fence, i then ran the coax to my portable shack and pluged it into my rig. I turned my rig on to make sure everything was ok. The SWR was 1.1 on ten meters, this was perfect,so far everything had been going fine so i decided to push my luck and pump my mast up to 30 ft. As i pumped it very slowly i noticed the wind was getting strong, and having a R7 at 30ft in windy wx with no guide ropes on was not a good idea. Finaly i managed to fasten the beast down, i then went back up to the shack to check it was working fine, it was but all the signals were weaker, i can not understand why, can any one explain this to me? So i have fastened it up at arround 10ft, running 100w into the R7 it caused no tvi to local residents(phew). Next was to try it on air, the first station i worked was a local european and a got a solid 59+30db report which i was chuffed about, so i put a cq out and got another european station with a 59+25db report, i was now well chuffed. Next i needed to see what reports i could get from stations outside of europe. I called cq dx one and got(believe it or not, because i still dont)a VK6OE station i was nearly on the floor in shock and i received a 53 report, this to me has sure showed to me that the verticle R7 works. All there is to do now is put my 3 ele beam up, i hope to do this latter on this week well before the contest so i can try it out on air, 73's Paul (G3PJV/P)

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