Category: Antennas

Well its been a while, had some family issues which have kept me away from radio and the blog, I recently purchased a 2nd hand Cushcraft MA5B due to having a very small suburban plot in the city 25ft x 40ft, so full size HF yagis are out of the question, the rotary dipole I have on the tower at the moment works after a fashion but I really wanted something with a bit more directivity and also something that would cover 12/17m, so MA5B it is, I have no idea how it will perform, Ive only put it together this morning on a small pole in the garden and will hopefully get the setup finished and it mounted on the tower over the weekend, hopefully in time for the VP8PJ South Orkney DXpedition which are currently setting up as I write this and likely to be QRV either tomorrow or Sunday 23rd, watch this space.

Its not a pretty thing by any stretch of the imagination, im guessing even though its supposed to be a mini beam, it still looks bloody big on the ground, my neighbours are going to have kittens.

Been getting worried this one would escape me as an ATNO but they were super strong today on 20m, still took me an hour to work them but managed it in the end, no amps here only 100w out of the radio, I am slowly refurbishing an old Jaybeam TB3 as ive mentioned on a previous post, I put it up as a 2 element just to have a play as I still have a fair bit of work to do, but on a 10ft pole lashed to a fence VK9CZ was a cracking signal, admittedly this was in my workshop which is in the countryside so very low noise level and few neighbours so fairly clear take off for such a low height, anyway for your viewing pleasure, as far as im aware they are there for a few more days so im hoping to bag them on CW which is my preferred mode. 

Strange one, ive seriously downsized the shack, I am selling or have sold most of my equipment and have only been left with the IC-7300 and a borrowed IC-7000 (Thanks to Tony G4LDL) I hope to  purchase the IC-7000 as I intend to use it on a little DXpedition which was due to to take place a few weeks ago but due to the Thomas cook collapse and me losing my flights Ive had to put on hold, why am I selling the rest of my equipment I hear you ask, or maybe you dont really care. a mate has just purchased a TS-990 and an Acom 2000 Amplifier, he has decided to sell his IC-7700 which I have drooled over for more than a few years, so thats the reason, the only downside is its the older first gen IC-7700 so fingers crossed I wont have any PA issues but its just such a bloody lovely radio on receive and a joy to operate I simply want it.

So thats it im flogging everything I can get my hands on so I can buy the Icom IC-7700 watch this space.

I have assembled the IC-7000 along with the matching LDG AT-7000 ATU, a Winkeyer USB, Palm Mini Paddle Key, Nevada PSW-30 PSU, Hopefully a Hexbeam Lite and a 5 element 6m Op-Des, Spiderbeam 12m Pole and a doublet antenna, and the only thing I have left to purchase is some Coax, which will probably be Messi and Paoloni Ultralfex 7,  all are aready and prepped for my trip to ZC4, its just a matter of actually sorting the dates, will be borrowing my daughters laptop and running N1MM+ for logging/Rig Control and CW Keying via the Winkeyer USB. 

So where to start, ive spent a bit of time trying to sort out a small tower in my back garden, finally managed to get the holes drilled I needed to, and despite a few setbacks its finally up, still needs a bit of work but its up, decided to put the driven element from my TB3 3 Element Tribander up simply as a rotary dipole, initially the thinking behind this was its wasnt too big and too much of an eyesore then if all went well it would morph into a 2 element tribander in a month or so, well that was the plan anyway.

Just to add to the story, my Cushcraft R7000 vertical has been up in my garden for 18 months now and ive had zero issues with neighbours or interference, so less than a week after putting the rotary dipole up, admitedly its a little bit above the roofline of the house and visible from in front of the house, anyway my phone rings and its my housing association saying they have had a complaint about my aerials and that im causing interefence to someones TV, Phone and Broadband, utter shite really and i told the guy as much, basically it boils down to someone doesnt like the look of my antennas and has complained and using a ridiculous excuse that im causing interference. 

So where does that leave me, it leaves me with having to have  my local housing association coming for a visit this thursday to inspect my antennas, what will happen, I have no bloody idea, it maybe the end for my plans and I may have to resort to wire antennas, I just dont bloody know, am i pissed off, damn right I am. 

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 🙂

When I was planning my 6m antenna for my home QTH i originally planned on building and installing a lightweight 6 Element Op-Des antenna, after partially building it, it became pretty obvious it was a little too large for my very small city location and equally small garden, eventually I decided on the smaller 5 Element Op-Des which has been working very well over the last couple of weeks it has been up, this morning whilst doing some work at my workshop I decided to finish building the 6 Element Op-Des as it seemed silly leaving it half built, luckily my workshop is located at a friends property in the country which is very rural and as he is also a Ham putting antennas up for testing isnt really an issue.

I decided as I said to finish the 6 El, I finished it early afternoon, the antenna is very lightweight as the boom is only 1in square aluminium and the elements are through the boom, I put it on a temporary pole at about 8ft off the ground and bungeed it to a fence, it was a very heath robinson affair but I just wanted to get it up to test it out, I then realised I had left my antenna analyser at home so I just connected up some cheapy crap  RG8X coax and plugged it in to my old IC-706 which I am using in my workshop, amazingly the first signal I heard was NP2J calling CQ from the US Virgin Islands, the strange thing is that I had worked him the day before from my own house for an ATNO, Dan was CQing and was in for over an hour,  so im very happy with the 6 El at such a low height as well, now to try and find somewhere to mount it properly, the workshop is only a 10 minute drive from my house so I often will have a listen about here during breaks from work.

Finally up and running on 6m for the pretty much non existent Sporadic E season, have a homebrew 5 Element Op-Des up on a temp mast at 15ft(ish) its working well and managed to bag TR8CA during the first few days of it being up but so far the E’s season has been terrible, little or nothing for the last week or so, just the odd quick E’s opening into Southern Europe, heard NP2 from the US Virgin Islands a couple of evenings ago, very weakly but never managed the QSO, all in all its looking like this being the absolute trough of the sunspot cycle will also result in a poor summer for sporadic E. 

Im hoping to move the antenna to back of the house in the next week or two, there is a set of T&K brackets that were left on the house from the previous occupier so why not put them to good use, just need to purchase a scaffold pole and that should mean I can get the 6m beam up to about 30/35ft. 

It might look like in the pics previous of my Moxon that I have loads of space, dont be fooled, i do my antenna work at my workshop which is located in the middle of nowhere, my garden as can be seen in earlier posts is very small, about 35ft x 25ft, (I must measure it one day) so during a bit of spare time this week I decided to make a start on building a Cobweb, ive found numerous sites and and sources of information but decided to take my info from the late G3TXQs website, so its early days but ive made a start, what you see is the early stages, ive orderd some 2mm PVC coated wire which should be here next week sometime to build the elements but im happy, its coming together quite nicely.