As you may or may not be aware my workshop is located in the countryside a bit away from my home so luckily I have managed to put the odd antenna up and have a play from time to time during breaks and lunchtime, the workshop shack consists of a little IC-7000 which is a fabulous little radio with great TX audio, especially paired with a very cheap Neewer NW700 Studio microphone, anyway over the last couple of years Ive played with various antennas at the workshop, my 6 element 50MHz Op-Des was up all summer but now weve come to the end of the Es season Ive taken it down, I renovated an old Cushcraft R5 Vertical which has been up for the last few weeks, I have had various other antennas up over the past couple of years which are probably on other blog entries.
Anyway recently I put up a Comet H422 Rotary dipole for a disabled friend of mine, he had a Proantenna Dual Beam Pro up before which I took down, it was looking very sorry for itself, very green and grimey, my mate said that I could just take it away and see if it was any use to me, forward a couple of weeks to this week, I fished the antenna out of my workshop, cleaned it thoroughly (Brillo pads work wonderfully), replaced the bent and wonky capacity ends and replaced with new stainless steel nuts and bolts.
I put the Dual-beam Pro up yesterday, not really expecting much, its advertised as a non resonant rotary dipole with capacity hat ends, in the centre is some sort of ferrite core balun, its well made to be fair, the antenna requires an ATU, I put it up and connected everything up not really expecting much, my little LDG AT-7000 auto tuner seemed to cope with it on all bands, I wasnt blown away initially but decided to have a tune around and its only fair to say that it suprised me, first contacts where into Khazakstan on 17m, then Thailand, Kenya, Azerbaijan, Cyprus to name but a few so all in all it seems to work.