Intro and Low band DXing from restricted space

 Hello and welcome!

I am not very good at keeping and maintaining any regular site, but since I have been asked on multiple occasion"How you do it?" and since I have taken up the challenge to either prove or rule out of some serious low bands DXing can be done from small gardens or space restricted locations, I decided to start a small blog and to share some experiences, wins and for sure lots of losses and dead ends I have been hitting in last few years.

So, who am I?

My name is Jiri (Jerry for those finding it difficult to pronounce) and I am keen Ham Radio guy who enjoys operating on challenging low bands but mostly enjoys building various pieces of equipment, testing RX and TX antennas, experimenting with REMOTE work (Remote TRX...not remote websdr listening...that is different)...but mostly who really enjoyed fighting myself and searching for limits and just how far can you go from really small spaces.

I am mostly present on 80m band, mostly SSB and CW, with very very little digital, and if so , RTTY would be the one I like the most. I also often try 160m and or 40m, to cover the "Low Bands" and I do plan to look into 60m operating soon, since the RX system will work from 160m up to 20m without any mods needed.

We are in beginning of 2026, Solar cycle peaked its max (great to be on low bands hihi) and since last 2 years I have moved to my remote QTH along with my familly. 

My current set-up is as follows:

TRXs:

• Flex Radio 6300 (main RIG)
• Hermes Lite 2 and Home brew OpenHPSDR TRX ( 2 x LTC2208 / 16bit)
• ICOM 7300 / ICOM705 - spare remote rigs

Antennas TX:

• 80m - Two elements Vertial Phased Array (NW / SE + "Egg Omni")
• 160m - Marconi-T - short 14m tall radiator made of 600ohms ladder..with 2 x 30m Cap.Hat.
• 40m - 4SQ(now offline) or single 10m tall vertical sitting on near perfect GND screen
• 20m and up - I feed the Marconi using ladder line to become 2x30 Zepp @ 14m

Antennas / Eq.RX:

• 1200ft/330m Bi-Directional Beverage  300 / 120 deg (made from twisted pair)
• 2nd 1200ft/330m Bi-Dir BVG 300/120 to form staggered / end-fire array
• 2 x LZ1AQ with 2 x 2m dia Loops orthogonally, phased, 16m spacing
• 9 Circle (well, 5 Circle hi)...not the best performer, now even on par with phased verticals
• in Winter - various 190m long BVGs for N / S  and NE/SW
• NCC2 + Home brew Phasing box allowing me to phase TX + 2 RX ants. or 3 x RX Ant.

PAs:

• Tesla KVZ1  ( pair of 3-500z...boat anchor)
• R140 / LVS6 - re-purposed and moded. military PA.
• 1  x  GU78b and Three phase / 6 pulse rectified HV/EHT
• PA with 10 memories, can be tuned remotely
• Monoband HB PA - GU84b
• ZZ-2001 - Multiband GU84B PA (160m - 10m)
• R140/LVS6 - 2nd unit with GU

As my total space runs at 14m wide   x 45m long...  with house and schack, separating it to three areas, I am still trying to keep all my TX Antennas within, and apart from BVGs and in winter the 9 Circle, I started off by laying a galvanized steel mesh on ground under all of the garden and letting the grass grow through it. On top I put a lots of radials to the feed points as I knew I will be needing every tenth of a dB.. Trust me, it can be done, but you need extra care when planning, you will need a bit of ingenuity and do stuff like making all the TX antennas "float" or de-tune otherwise you wont hear a thing...  

I will be sharing from time to time how the systems performs, compare it with other systems I had in the past, or even compare it to some of the BIG GUNs here in Europe.