Antennas Up!

Posted by on April 24, 2011 No comments

Well, it took me bloomin long enough, but I finally have some antennas up at the new house.. Yes, it took me three months to settle in enough to get antennas up,, so bite me :-p

We’ll see how the TEV-1 goes here.. I only ever had luck with it mounted on the roof of the shed at the old place, otherwise it seems like a pretty useless hunk of aluminium? Thinking I might ebay it off, and put the money towards an antenna analyser and a Buddipole… (That way I can take them with us when we go on holidays too.. nothing like sitting in the car with the toughbook, working portable 🙂 )

Having a MUCH less private yard, and not being best friends with the one neighbour who can see into our yard (bloody everyone can see into the yard here!), I wanted to stick to the letter of our lease and council regs etc.. – aka ‘no permanent structures’.. *grin* So I’m utilising the back of the princess’s cubby 🙂 I mean I built the thing to withstand a hurricane, and it weighs in around 500KG, so a 3m mast hanging off the back isn’t even going to make it flex in the wind :-p

Turned out pretty well I think:
11777117791178311781

And it’s gone!

Posted by on December 14, 2010 No comments

D’oh!

Was just having a fairly decent chat with VK4ALO (fantastic reception!), and up came the noise! currently sitting here listening to the noise sweep up and down the band.. sigh!

Though proved that the vertical was my problem! Interestingly, Paul (VK4ALO) is using a squid pole – so says something for our area, since I tried my squid pole with a wire cut for 40m, and didn’t get any better performance than the TEV-1 (though MUCH better SWR!)..

Wow, 11pm, might be time to head in and get some sleep 🙂

–edit– Ahh, noise dissappeared, and was able to finish my QSO with Paul!

Was a good night!

Woohoo, a contact

Posted by on December 14, 2010 No comments

WOW!

Just WOW!

Turned on the 897 tonight, and WOW, 8 simultaneous stations on 7.03515!! That’s just incredible – says a LOT about just how insanely bad the TEV-1 was on 40m! AND I managed a contact! Well, kind of.. – I couldn’t get a lot of what JA2GSD said, but he was hearing me, and I was hearing him 🙂
VK2TDG VK2TDG de JA2GSD JA2GSD

GA ur RSQ 599 599

eiame : Kiichi Ki chi ichi

QTH ShizuoØa Shizuopa

Loc :PM94dv [348.4° 7,704.0km] PM94dv

BTU VK2TDG de JA2GSD KN

.g. VK2TDG VK2TDpée JA2GSD J
2GSD

NtQ 599 599

Ntme : Kiichi Kiichi Kiii

QT= whi, e eka Shizuoka

Loc :PM94dv PM94dv

BTU VK2TDG JA2GSD KN

Yep, not a very good decode.. but he could hear me! That’s the first time EVER I’ve been heard – not bad for the first minute of firing up on the dipole.. Well, not really a dipole when you look at it – even using the MD gal pipe, both end pipes have a decent bow in them – and the dipole centre is a good 2 metres below where it *should* be.. so I guess it’s an inverted inverted-V? does that make it a V? lol!

Close, but not quite

Posted by on December 14, 2010 No comments

Well the 40m dipole (top dipole only, haven’t done the rest) is up! Although it is 1:1 swr on 6.625MHz, not 7.10MHz as calculated..

Thankfully I left a fair bit of overlap (3%, 30ish cm) incase I needed to lengthen it.. with 35cm per side (70cm total) added to the length, it is now 1:1 at 6.480MHz. Ahh of course, it needs to be shorter! Now, 35cm lengthening (per side) made it 0.145MHz lower. I want it 0.475MHz higher than the starting point.. which would make it 3.28*35cm which I want to shorten each end by? That is 1.14 metres per end?!?! That seems a little short?! And MMANA-GAL says it should be horrid! But we’ll give it a try 😉

Ok, it gets down 1.05:1 at 7.290MHz.. Hrrrm! Let’s add 40cm to the length and see if we can get it closer to 7.1 😉

Ok! measured it to 75cm longer than original (so 10.91m per side), and it’s now 1:1 at 7.05MHz. Woo!

Seems to work quite nicely on 15m as well.. we’ll see how we go on PSK31 on 40m and 15m tonight 🙂

The first test ;)

Posted by on December 12, 2010 No comments

First test is to simply build a 40m dipole. Aka, ensure that the centre is built correctly..

Dipole center+Balun is completed, and ready to go:
117601176511770