I received an email from Scott KN3A concerning his experimenting with the Speaker Wire antenna that I previously posted about. I’m going to let Scott blog this in his own words copied from his email…
Last week Marshall Harrison (W4MKH) gave me an idea based on his recent article in his W4MKH-QRP blog, and that is to do a QRP activation using speaker wire 28.5 feet long connected to a BNC binding post coax splitter adapter. One end went nearly vertical into the air with my 24 ft. crappie pole, and the other side ran along on the ground. I had done this a couple of years ago but had not done it recently, and not on my Xiegu X6100.
I really didn’t have a lot of time to do a Parks On The Air activation, but I worked 16 QSO’s in about 40 minutes on 20, 30 and 40 meters with QRP power. This antenna configuration had surprising results.
12 of the 16 QSO’s I sent a 559, I sent one 579 and one 599, and two I gave 229. What was surprising to me was, if they were giving me honest signal reports, I was heard better than I was hearing them. 6 of the QSO’s gave me a better signal report than I gave them. I got four 599, 1 579 and 11 559.
I’m hoping I can get out and try this again and see if I have similar results with this antenna configuration.
Thanks again Marshall for your report. I did not take any pictures from my activation, and these were all CW QSO’s.
73 Scott
KN3A
The antenna image in this post are mine as Scott didn’t provide any images of his antenna.
W4MKH 
Good to see someone giving honest sig reports.
For last few days have been playing with my IC705 from home, will be doing a park event this weekend for our Florida QSO Party. I do find most CW ops give reasonable sig reports except the POTA stations, almost always a 599, I think they have setup in a CW memory.
But with me running QRP I often work stations running 500-1000 W and they are 589, some 599 and and they give me a 569+/- with my 10W. Makes me feel good, hi.
73, ron, n9ee/r
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Thanks Ron. I don’t think SSB reports are as accurate. But RST is not needed for a POTA log and I think a lot of operators use the contester’s approach where everyone is 59.
I took a look at your QRZ page. That is a nice shack you have there. Next time I am in the Tampa area I will give you a shout on the repeater.
73
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Marshall,
Seems about all POTA stations is a RST, on CW that is. So many just give the RST and nothing else. I would like to at least know what state they are in, would prefer this over a sig report. I always give RST and my state.
But I am more into longer QSOs, the typical RST, name QTH then rig and wx and now most follow with age and how long been a Ham. So many are old like me, hi.
Yes I have too many radios. Enjoy using the QRP rigs more than the bigger stuff. And park events gets me out of the house.
73, ron, n9ee
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I understand. I have a IC-7300 and an FT-891 sitting in the shack. The Xiegu X6100 gets most of my time these days. I’ve been around ham radio since the mid ’70s but didn’t get licensed until 2006.
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