Adventures in Audio

Whilst I haven't been able to operate HF from home for the last few weeks I have been considering some small improvements I could make to the station. My Yaesu Ft1000MP which I have owned from new is capable of producing excellent transmit audio. I had always felt though that I hadn't really taken advantage of this.,
I was recently inspired by watching an episode of Ham Nation (well worth a look if you don't already know about it) a U.S based internet videocast full of amateur radio features and hosted by Bob Heil. In episode 36 there is a feature on improving audio.
Anyway I now have a "studio" type microphone hooked into a small mixer

Initial tests running the rig into a dummy load and monitoring on my R5000 receiver seem quite positive with punchy audio which is adjustable using the 3 band EQ on the mixer. The Microphone by the way is a fairly cheap "pro sound" unit obtained from Maplins.

Hopefully I can soon get this set up "on air" and get some audio reports.

No Shed, No antenna!

When I first moved to to this QTH I surveyed the garden looking for a suitable place to anchor the far end of my HF wire antenna.
At the end of my garden was this monstrosity

It was ugly, it leaked, the door didnt close properly and the window was missing! However it was a convenient place to bolt a pole to so that it could hold one end of my doublet antenna.

But it had to go and it now looks like this

So for now I have no HF antenna. I now need to to set up a pole and pulley system so that I can erect my new wire antenna. I have bought a commercial antenna called the Western HF10. There is a review of it on G0KYA's blog here. This antenna should just about fit in a straight line down my garden.
In addition I still have to put up my 10-15-20 hygain vertical. Sadly the poor weather and the amount of other household work I have been doing has got in the way!