See if you can spot the problem with the following

[W3WN]

I get excellent results 160-10m with a lightbulb for an antenna. However I have yet to make a contact with the bulb.

I knew I should have read this thread three months ago...

Way, way, way back when I was in school and one of the ops at K3CR for the WPA section traffic nets... one night, Walt N3WS checked into the WPAPTN net with an extremely weak signal. Usually he was booming in (6:15 PM EST on 75 meters), since he was only about 2 miles from the club shack. We could hear him, but the NCS that night couldn't. So I called him on the 2 meter repeater to see if he was having a problem.

He was.

He'd tuned up the radio and forgotten to take it off the dummy load before checking into the net.

And the dummy load he was using that night, or so he said? A 100 W light bulb.