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The lesson again from the last six months before the CQ WW DX Contests is that if your antennas stayed the same and your radio shack didn't change, you might be slipping behind your competition.
A year ago, the K3LR Multi-Multi team won another US title in their category, finishing fourth in the world. As usual, that wasn't good enough for Tim Duffy K3LR.
"We added several receiving antennas for 160 meters this Summer," Duffy told radio-sport.net. "We also upgraded the elements that we use in our 160 meter 4 square receiving array."
The other end of the HF spectrum also got some attention.
"On 10 meters we installed a new 60 foot boom 9 element Yagi at 200 feet in place of the M2 7 ele that we had up in previous years," said Duffy.
"On 40 meters we changed out all the elements on the full size four element OWA stack. The antennas have been in place for almost 20 years and we improved several of the mechanical areas for enhanced reliability."
You can see some of that work on the right.
Down at W3LPL, there were lots of little things according to team leader Frank Donovan.
"One reason that there are only a few very large multi-multi stations is that the maintenance and repair burden can be overwhelming. Fortunately I have no major maintenance projects this year, but I do have an unusually large number of small problems to correct," said Donovan.
"I've made only one improvement to the antennas this year, I installed a Stackmatch on my 3-stack of 48 foot boom 20 meter Yagis on a 200 foot tower," he added.
Chasing both LPL and LR again this year will be Team NQ4I, where the last few months were filled with antenna projects, as Rick Daugherty tries to "level the playing field" with the other US Multi-Multis.
"On 75 meters, this is the biggest improvement yet...we went from a 3 element vertical array to a 6 element vertical array," said Daugherty NQ4I. "It's a classic 3 by 3 array and gives us NE and SW with 8.9 db of gain."
"The next great improvement was changing the run antennas on 20m from 5/5 stack to an 8/5/5 stack...it required extensive modeling to correct the stack for dis-similar antennas," he added.
You can see the photo of the 20 meter yagi on the right. "It has an 86 foot boom and is installed at the 175 foot level of the tower."
"My goals remain unchanged," admitted Daugherty. "I am very anxious to break into the top three tier."
Trying to reach the "next" level as well is the group behind CU2A in the Azores. Toni Linden OH2UA, Martti Laine OH2BH and others have moved the site to a bluff on the ocean.
"The new site is located quite near by the old CU2A (CU2CE) site, but on a place that's 100 meters (~300ft) up from sea level," said Linden OH2UA.
"We have a clear shot and nothing but ocean from ~230 degrees to ~120 degrees."
Before there was one tower with wires for 80 and 160. Now there are beams for everything but 160 on three different towers. Two are fixed at 80 feet, with the rotating tower topping out at 120 feet.
"On fixed towers we have two stacked 10 element tribanders (with 3 active element on 20 and 15 and 4 on 10) both for EU and NA. Also in EU tower we have fixed 2el 40m yagi to beaming to EU," said Linden.
"On the rotatable tower we have 2el yagis for 80m and 40m one 10el tribander. Towers are located so that side of each tower is pointing to each other in order to get maximal isolation in SO2R usage."
