NVIS from a Canyon! with WA2PUX

Transmitting from the bottom of a canyon is not the best option in most situations, so for emergency radio HOW would we do it? 🤔
Our solution was to use a 40m NVIS antenna, and it worked exactly as advertized!
For our ARES exercisecwe wanted to transmitt a message from the the bottom of White Water Canyon (Iowa) to a similar NVIS station setup at Mudlake, Iowa. Reports at 10am were generally 5x6-7, quite acceptable!
We tested CW too (Morse Code) and were not dissatisfied, as expected, except that my skills at decoding are substantially underdeveloped 🤣🤠.

[@stevemcnaughton-kb3jc96]

Nice, NVIS needs to be added to everyone's bag of tricks. Could you give some details of the antenna and the distances you were able to use? Thanks and 73 KB3JC

[@kobblekraftka0kao29]

Right you are Steve! This antenna is so easy to setup and was very effective. This is a very simple antenna to build, i used a BNC splitter and two 14ga wires cut and tubed to 40m. I supsend the wires on fiberglass posts with clamp-on electric fence hangers. It all packs-up light and small. Our goal was to make local communications from less-than line of sight situations like valleys and canyons. It worked flawlessly for that. Easy contact to our second NVIS site, only 40mi away. Beyond that distance will obviously vary depending on conditions, but i did make contact with a fella in Ohio, 470+ miles away. Do you think it would be worth doing a short video showing the build?

[@stevemcnaughton-kb3jc96]

@@kobblekraftka0kao29 ok cool, yes I'd like to see the build. I want to do some experimenting with nvis here in PA, believe me, we have enough hills, valleys and hollows to go around! My club does some work in the Allegheny National forest for ATV runs and we use a not-so-local vhf repeater. I'm trying to get them interested in HF nvis as an option. 73 KB3JC

[@kobblekraftka0kao29]

@@stevemcnaughton-kb3jc96 ok, next chance i get to setup ill record some details for you.