We are entering the main sporadic E season and until yesterday I was not able to get on one of my favourite bands, 50MHz, as I didn’t have an antenna in the air. The dual band 6/4m yagi plans are still ongoing so I decided that a dipole stapled to the inside of the loft rafters as an inverted V would at least give me some presence on the band. 10 minutes with the soldering iron and I had a dipole ready to go, a further 5 minutes after that it was up and ready for tuning.
I was really surprised at the effect the rafters had on the dipole. My miniVNA made light work of tuning, which was a good job as my original dipole (standard length plus 6 inches to be safe) was resonant on 38MHz! A few snips and careful rearrangement of the legs next to the roof gives an SWR of 1.3:1 on 50.150MHz, so that will do me nicely. Tuning around the band last night gave me QSOs on cw with S53A and T77C. I also heard a few Italians on SSB, but have audio problems which stops me from transmitting at the moment.
I was really surprised at the effect the rafters had on the dipole. My miniVNA made light work of tuning, which was a good job as my original dipole (standard length plus 6 inches to be safe) was resonant on 38MHz! A few snips and careful rearrangement of the legs next to the roof gives an SWR of 1.3:1 on 50.150MHz, so that will do me nicely. Tuning around the band last night gave me QSOs on cw with S53A and T77C. I also heard a few Italians on SSB, but have audio problems which stops me from transmitting at the moment.
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