The guys from Wimo have been really quick on email and kindly sent out a new boom to fix my incorrectly packed antenna. This arrived at the Scout site on Saturday. The problem is that the box had a neat cut round the centre and the new boom is bent like a banana in two axes.

I hope the Wimo guys can claim for this from their courier as I need another one!

I took a closer look at the remaining parts to build the last yagi and found two potential problems. One is easy to solve – an element without a hole through it which I re-drilled in a flash. The second problem is not so good. The Driven Element has a tag on one side which I assume is used to align the elements and ensure they are all driven in phase. The problem I have is that I can’t align this DE with the other three in the stack without turning it round backwards! Three of the antennas have the DE tag on the left when the connector is facing forwards, whilst the final one has it on the right. Do Wimo produce the DEs in different orientations?   Or has the tag been placed on the wrong side? How do I find out? I can’t use an ohm meter on a folded dipole…. Answers on an email postcard, please

I have been buiding some wimo yagis to use for JOTA,but have hit some problems with one antenna. Here are the parts laid out for the two new yagis that I bought. All looks well!

But looking a bit more closely there is a problem with the boom sections. The top pair are OK, with the rear boom section at the very top of the picture and the front boom being the next one down. However the two sections supplied for the next antenna are identical. This photo was taken at the point where the DE attaches. Apologies for the quality of the photos!

So, have I been sent 2 x rear booms? I think not. If you compare the top boom section and the bottom two then holes do not line up. This is at the D1 hole. 

I could have flipped the booms through 90 degree and redrilled, but as the picture below shows, the boom sections supplied are too short.

So - I now have three antennas complete, and have written to wimo to solve the boom problem with the third. Let's hope the customer service is good...

Here's a shot of all the Clifton ARS antennas at dusk, showing the 9 element interlaced 50 and 70MHz yagi in the foreground, 144MHz 9element in the middle and 15 element for 432MHz on the cherry picker at the back.

The 144MHz operating tent and 9 element DK7ZB yagi at 10m AGL.

G3JKY and G4TJE in action on 50MHZ

432MHZ yagi on a cherry picker. That makes life a lot easier. Must get another one for future contests!

Last weekend was VHF Field day (FD) throughout most of Europe. As usual I was out with the Clifton ARS near Detling in Kent (JO01HH).  I provided two stations for the contest. The 50 and 70MHz station (restricted section) was based on my heavily modified FT-847 running 100W on 6m and about 70W on 4m to a dual band yagi at 10m AGL – this station was on the air as G3JKY/p.  I also provided a TS-2000, solid state amplifier and 9 element DK7ZB yagi for the 144MHz station which operated under the club call of G3GHN/p. The only technical disappointment was that the2m PA would only produce about 220W in the field where it does 325W at home – I put that down to long leads from the generator introducing voltage sag. Otherwise everything was assembled in about three hours and we were on the air no problem, which makes a change!

G0GTO and G3BSN provided a very smart cherry picker and a full station for 432MHz, that they ran as G4FAA/p.

I spent some time on 6 and 4m, and the conditions were fairly spotty with minor SpE openings on both days. We did better on 4m than in previous years, which means that 56 Qs was a reasonable return, but well down on the leaders who seemed to get much better Es than we did in the south east.

The 6m score was down on last year as there was less DX. We weren’t that far off the leaders on that band in Q total, so our position will depend on how well we did on Es compared to our rivals.

2m was a major disappointment. With only 130 QSOs this was a terrible return. Apart from being a little under powered for the open section the gear was fine and on my visits to the station I worked OZ and EA telling me that we didn’t have any electrical faults. I think the problem is rather that the operators on 2m are more DXers than contesters so they spent a lot of time tuning the band looking for people to work rather than calling CQ. I need to work on the 2m station for next year.

 In contrast, Terry and Phil did a great job on 70cm working the more stations on that band than the club has for several years. Having the full legal power helps, but calling CQ for long periods of time really helped boost the score, even though the band was flat. They only ran a short yagi, so with a better antenna they could have made many more mid range contacts.

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.

Last weekend I finally got to spend a little time on the air during the IARU Region 1 432 and up contest. It would be fair to say that conditions were terrible, and I only managed to work 21 stations over about 3 hours on 70cm - pretty poor indeed. That said, there was some (KST assisted) DX in there but the path was supported by the DX end who were running big stacks of yagis, like DR9A at 689Km and DJ6BS at 632Km.
  
It doesn’t look like there is any chance of winning anything, but here are the squares worked for the record.