10 Metres

Working at home today and taking a quick tea break I flicked the rig onto 10 metres. One or two stations around and I managed a quick QSO with HB3YGG, Victor. My only HF transmit antenna at the moment is the full size G5RV.
 I would like to try a 10 metre vertical from this QTH as I found the Antron 99 which I used from my previous QTH to work very well on 10 and 12 metres. I have a Hygain AV12 vertical lying in the shed which covers 10-15-20 maybe I should get that up?

It's Been a long time but.............

I am still active. The blog has been neglected, I kept meaning to update it but have only just found the time. I moved QTH at the end of January this year and have been busy with lots of things. Once I had unpacked at the new place I wanted to set up a basic station.Initially I set up an HF station with my Icom 7000 and a very temporary half sized G5RV inverted V held up by a fibreglass pole at about 6 metres high.

 7 months later, you guessed it, the "temporary" antenna is still there! It has however been joined by my 6/2/70cms vertical (which needs to go a little higher)

 and two antennas for SWL, my trusty Wellbrook loop



and a "Boni Whip" active antenna




Here it is in place, well for the moment at least. If all is well with it I will be getting some self amalgamating tape on those connectors. The Boni Whip is an adaptation of the mini-whip designed by PA0RDT. I bought this antenna a couple of years ago but with the awful noise problems I had at my old QTH never bothered to put it up. I thought I would try it here. The whip on the antenna is tiny, maybe around 7cms but initial results seem encouraging, it is particularly good on the lower bands. There is some debate  on line as to whether the antenna should be grounded or not. I found mine to be much quieter noise wise after I did this.



And here it is on top of its mast.

Vertical!

The pole at the end of my garden has just up until now been supporting one end of my HF doublet, and more recently had the Wellbrook receive loop on top of it. The Wellbrook loop doesn't need much height in reality. At my previous QTH it was mounted  less than three metres from the ground and worked well especially on the lower bands. It didn't seem to work much better in its new home at around 7 metres up on the pole.
So I have had a change around. I dropped the pole down on the weekend. I will find a new home for the Wellbrook, in the meantime I have put a vertical antenna on the pole. What antenna? An Antron 99. Yes its a CB antenna but at the radio rally I attended the other week I picked up "Practical Wireless's" book "Even more out of thin air". This book mentions the fact that the Antron is usable on 18,21 and 24 Mhz as well as we would expect 28mhz. I decided to purchase one and give it a try, being of glassfibre construction it is lightweight and hopefully will not put too much strain on my unguyed pole!

The antenna is 5.6 metres long, has no radials  and comes pre tuned to the lower end of 27Mhz. Since at the very least I wanted to use the antenna on 10 metres I adjusted the "tuning rings" at the base of the antenna, hoping to raise the operating frequency a little. This was still when the antenna was on the ground so the adjustment was guesswork!

As it turned out I guessed fairly well. Once up in the  air the antenna covered 28 to 29.6 Mhz with an acceptable SWR reading. Digging out the CB rig I have in the shack the SWR on 27 mhz was still within acceptable limits (below 1.5:1) so this is a pretty wideband antenna.
The surprising thing is the Antron covered 24, and 18 mhz without an ATU.

The Western HF-10 wire  doublet I use gives me pretty good results but I never really heard much on 24Mhz (12metres) with it. The vertical seems more lively on this band as well as 21 Mhz. In fact I worked LU8EEM on my first call with it.

My very quick evaluation of the antenna so far is as follows:

28Mhz- works well but as far as signals heard to date goes is about equal to the HF wire, sometimes slightly down.

24Mhz- Much more lively than wire- signals generally two three or more s points better.

21Mhz- Generally again signals several S points greater than the wire.

18Mhz- Two or three S points weaker than signals on the wire.

14Mhz- Antenna tunmes using internal ATU but pretty deaf on this band.

It will be interesting to compare this antenna with the Hygain AV12 Vertical when I get that erected. However the AV12 covers only 20,15 and 10.

Here it is up in the air, the visual impact is pretty low I think and I haven't had any adverse comments from my (very tolerant) neighbours.

Ready to Go

Ok, It does't look much but today I made up a doublet for the HF bands. 40 metre top section, 10 metres of 300ohm feeder and a 4:1 Balun.
Its going to be fun fitting this into the garden, in fact half of it will be in the field behind the house. In any case I am hopping it will be a little better than the shortened dipole is on 80 metres and will hopefully work a bit better on the other bands.
I haven't put it up yet,thats a job for another day.

New Microphone

I noticed this base microphone on Ebay about a week ago, its a Yaesu MD-11ABJ. After doing a little bit of research (thanks Google!) I found that it had the same pin outs as my Yaesu FT857. As the price was very reasonable I thought I would give it a try. Its a fairly odd looking piece of kit, I think it was aimed at the PMR market, but it works well enough and I am told the audio from it is quite good. Since I mainly use the FT857 on 2 metres FM at the moment I don't know if the mic would be suitable for SSB work. One odd thing about this Microphone-if you look at the picture there is a "PTT "button, a "Lock" button and a "Monitor" button.
We all know what the PTT does, but if you push the monitor button the rig powers down and  switches off. The "Lock" button is not to lock the PTT it is to lock the "monitor" button down, as if you do not keep the "monitor" down the rig will not stay on. Not a problem of course-but I wonder what the purpose of this was?

My new inverted V dipole seems to work well enough. On 80 metres I have worked several G on SSB with good reports  and into Germany on 80metre PSK with 25 watts. If anything the dipole seems better than my old inverted L, particularly for inter UK on 80. On 40 metres I have heard VK and a couple of stations in the USA it seems quite lively and the background noise is noticeably lower than the end fed inverted L. I still need to get the match on 80 metres sorted out and one leg of the dipole needs to be brought  higher and into the clear.

Dipole

Since I had a days leave from work and the weather was good today I set about making up a 40/80metre shortened dipole using two EL40-XC coils that are intended to allow a half size G5RV to tune on 80 metres.

First impressions are that the antenna works well on 40 metres, maybe not so good on 80 but time will tell, I haven't really had a chance to fully test it. It still needs some work I think and I want to re-position it slightly to get it a little higher. Overall it seems quieter than the end fed inverted L and still tunes from 80-10 metres using the internal ATUs of both my FT1000MP and TS450s