So have been thinking lately about antennas and deciding what to do at home and at the workshop, I finished building my 3 element LFA which I actually started building about 3 years ago and never got round to finishing, Initially I thought I would put it up at the workshop and maybe put my 2 element Innovantennas Moxon up at home but I decided to go the other way round, the Cushcraft MA5B will be coming down in the next week or so to be replaced by the 3 element 10m LFA, I realise its a monobander but the plan is to build either a rotary dipole for some of the other bands or build a Cobweb for 10 thru. 20 which will include the WARC bands the plan is at home also to put up a G7FEK nested Marconi which will give me access to the lower bands down to 80m which I currently dont have.
I bought some 450 Ohm ladder line a few weeks ago and have built the nested Marconi antenna but havnt had the chance to put it up yet, that left me with the rotary dipole at the workshop for 10/15/20m, its worked well for me but I feel now that the sunspot cycle is finally starting to show some improvement that im missing out on some of the openings on 10m, to that end I took down the rotary dipole and replaced it with the 2 element 10m Moxon, at a whopping 17ft above ground level (I kid you not) the bottom line is though its working well, a few minutes after i put it up and with not even really turning the antenna in any particular direction I switched on the radio to hear FY5KE Cqing from French Guiana with an excellent signal peaking at 599 when I eventually tweaked the beam heading directlly onto him, the following day I also heard a couple of VKs albeit weakly but at least I heard them and also a couple of North American stns, this bodes well for the coming weeks I hope.
The downside again from the workshop is ive lost the other bands but I do have a small Cushcraft R5 Vertical which I may strap to the fence so I can at least use the higher HF bands including the WARC bands down as far as 20m, we shall see
Anyway a couple of youtube videos for your viewing pleasure of how the Moxon is working at a pretty low height, the feature picture is of the Moxon in all its glory.