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HF antenna

4/12/2010

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I have needed to get back on the HF bands for some time, but from my suburban location getting an effective antenna was always going to be a problem. This picture shows a sat view of the house with distances marked up.
Picture
There are several questions to answer – what is an effective antenna? Which bands? DX vs EU vs intra-G? The problem is that I want it all, who doesn’t, but can only really manage a single low profile (i.e. wire) solution.

I have a pole at the bottom of the garden that is about 7m tall and it seems that I have two general options. 1) is a monopole of sorts 2) is a doublet or multiband dipole. The monopole is an OK option as I have enough room to get in an inverted L that will be effective on 80m, but the downside is that I can only have radials in my own garden and not 360 degrees around the antenna base. The doublet dipole solution is also OK, but it will be quite low to the ground and I have the additional problem of routing potentially unsightly feeder to the radio position.

Whilst a 30m (100ft) span doublet fed with open wire really appeals, I have decided to try the inverted L with auto ATU approach as I have an extensive network of radials buried in the garden already. Based on work by the late W4RNL I chose a 95 foot version (although I do not have the same vertical component as LB’s model)   It only took me a few hours over the weekend to install and I am finally back on the HF bands. First QSO was YI9PSE in Iraq on 20m, so it does seem to work, even though I doubt it will ever be a killer antenna. It’s nice to be back.
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Radios for Remote control.

4/12/2010

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The RRC system has made radio available to me again and I am pretty happy with the performance. One problem remains – tuning is tough without a real tuning knob. I tried a griffin power mate, but to be honest it doesn’t feel the same. I am blessed with owning three fine radios - the FT-847 has proven to be a sterling performer over the 10 years that I have owned it and several sets of modifications have kept it up there as a decent shack in a box. The Ic-756Pro  shows the 847 up on HF and 6m and rocks in HF contests which the K2 combo is simply the best CW radio I have ever used. The tuning problem remains with all of these when using the RRC system. The RRC system supports remote heads for some radios, so perhaps I should be looking at those instead? The obvious option is an IC-706G2 which would provide all the bands, but it would do them all equally badly as it isn’t a great performer. The TS-2000 remote head is also possibility, by M0MCX says that it’s tuning interface is cumbersome and I can see why. That leaves the TS-480, the HF/6 performance is good but no VHF bands.  Perhaps I need to look at automating one with some of my existing tranverters?
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    A few notes on recent radio activity by Steve, M0BPQ.

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