A82X Liberia

Been trying to get the odd ATNO in the log recently but conditions have been pretty dire, just having a multiband vertical is not ideal either but it is what it is, whilst at the workshop today I put together a bit more of the Jaybeam TB3 that I am refurbishing and that I used recently as a rotary dipole, this time I used one half of the boom and put it up as a 2 element tribander just really for a laugh, unfortunatley I couldnt put it up on the 20ft scaffold pole as I did with the rotary dipole as it was just too heavy to lift on my own and bungee to a fence pole so up it went on a whopping 7ft pole, I fully expected it at that height not to work well if at all and mostly to be a cloud warmer.

So off I trott on my lunch hour tuning around the bands and saw a few spots for A82X so thought I would hand turn the beam towards them and see how it went, ive struggled to hear them on the vertical at anything other than ESP level so was pleasently surprised to hear them at a decent signal strength on my 2 element 7 foot high cloud warmer, anyway half an hour later and I had 3 contacts in the log, 20m SSB, 15m CW and 15m SSB, happy days.

A little snippet of them on 15m today, I also heard them on 10m for about 5 minutes very weakly but no QSO resulted, the picture on the post is the monster yagi 🙂

As you will already know by previous posts, I dont have a big station, either at home or at my workshop, during work breaks im slowly renovating a 30 year old Jaybeam TB3 3 Element Tribander, its cleaning up remarkably well and internally the traps look brand new even after all this time, I wont ever be able to erect it a s a 3 element but im going to try and put it up as a 2 Element tibander on an 8ft boom, I may or may not get away with it at home, yesterday I put up the driven element of the TB3 on a temp scaffold pole at about 20ft, just using it as a rotary dipole, just reallly to have a play and see how it performed versus the R7000 vertical I use at the workshop, literally about 5 minutes after I put it up I saw a spot for Brad VK2BY on the cluster and tuned to his frequency not really expecting to hear much if anything, much to my surprise Brad was 58/59 signal even without any preamps on the HF radio turned on, I rarely use the preamp in any radio below 15m

Brad finished with the current qso he was having and I threw my call in, he came back asking for the G0 and back I went, it took a couple of times as others were calling over me but Brad persisted and we enjoyed a few overs, surprisingly I was given a 55/56 report, to say that made my day was an understatement, all on 100w and a rotary dipole at 20ft, after being licensed over 30 years I still get a buzz when I manage a long distance DX QSO, love this Amateur Radio lark 🙂