I'll spare the details of the actual horticulture, but we finished building a raised bed today and stained it and the existing deck. I installed a Met post at the back of the deck, which will be buried by the top soil I am bringing on site in the next couple of weeks. This has about 1m of wooden 6x6 inch fence post above ground which is supporting about 6m of aluminum pole. This will be the vertical section of the new inverted-L.

I had one more Met post lying around from the build and this has also been sunk in place next to the shed. It can hold both a trellis and my sectional mast for a VHF beam. I will draw a plan on the garden and post it over the next few days.

I also sorted out my pile of VHF yagis (plenty of work to do there!) and regsieterd the Clifton ARS for both NFD (cw) and VHF FD.

My recent poor performance in the HF contests has got me thinking about the HF antenna at home. I live in 1920's semi, converted into two flats. We have the upstairs and half of the garden which is 30ftx20ft. The current antenna is an inverted L, 20ft vertical, 35ft horizontal. Last weekend we built a deck in the garden and I buried 25m square of chicken much under it to act as a earth. I need to bring in some top soil as well before I lay a lawn so will probably put more chicken mesh under that too.

The apex of the house to the back of the garden is about 110 feet, so that is a bit short for an 80m dipole, but this month's antenna column in Radcom suggests that a 90ft doublet is 98% efficient on 80m. Good enough for me. But, does my chicken wire under the antenna make this NVIS? Not really what I want. On the other hand I just stick with my remote auto tuner  at the bottom of the garden along with the standard inverted-L (25ft Vertical 90ft top). I have no idea if the earth mat is that good though. How do I find out?

Either way  I need to get a halyard up to the chimney and I don't have a tall enough ladder. Any ideas how to do this without breaking the neighbors windows?

I participated in last night's RSGB Club championships SSB round. Unfortunately my antenna at home is rubbish on 80m, so I was always last in the queue of callers for each station. I gave up after 31Qs and  an hour.... A few points for the Hadley wood contest group I suppose!