Short top loaded vertical dipole, the DX king
A few nights ago about 2.00 AM AST, 06.00 UTC, I passed through my radio operating room and could not resist the temptation to turn on the TS-940SAT and tune across the 80-meter DX window. There was a solitary G station calling CQ DX for North America. He was just on S-9 and I figured that he was either not beaming to the Caribbean, or he was not one of the big power stations like Alpha Mike Norway. Most G stations seem to run 4-square or some sort of vertical beam antenna, and would usually push my S-meter well into the red. Since no one on this side of the ocean responded to the G station's repeated calls I decided to give him a short call. All of a sudden the frequency went crazy with signals and I could not hear the G station come back. A few minutes later there were 14 calls in the logbook including some Italian stations, G stations, 9A3 and 9A4, with most them trying to break off my meter. I pulled the plug on the mini-pileup and went to bed to dream about how I could work 80