Haven’t had a lot of time on the radio since the last post, I’ve been working in the garden in all the lovely sunny weather we’ve had recently. We had our club AGM for the Appledore and District Amateur Radio Club recently and I’m now on the committee. Last Friday I spent the morning at
Had a busy day today and worked: Sint Maarten (15m), Madagascar (10m), Taiwan (15m), Azerbaijan (15m), Asiatic Russia (15m, good audio report), Macedonia (12m), Afghanistan (12m) and Thailand (10m). Also joined a net with W4VKU and N1UK in North Carolina. They were running over 1k but gave me just as good report back. 5/9+ and said
Decided to design a QSL card with the Hexbeam on it. Going for the minimalist design at the moment, if I don’t have a change of mind I might get it printed up. In the meantime it’s now my eQSL card and my QRZ picture… Went to the Exeter Radio Rally yesterday which I enjoyed
A good opening into Africa this morning bagged me 5 new countries in the space of an hour, Senegal, Mauritius, The Gambia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland. All good reports on the Hexbeam, so feeling quite pleased. It certainly seems to perform. This afternoon I’ve been working the ARRL contest, trying to find new USA states. Not
Hexbeam is all connected and working wonderfully. This is not very scientific I know but it is a bit of fun. Here is the Hexbeam VS the full size G5RV on 14.243. The louder signal is from the Hexbeam (beamed at 100 degrees). Stateside on 15m had the same result. Hex_audio
Beautiful weather here today, and a free afternoon gave me the chance to get the Hexbeam up. Luckily there was enough room to assemble the beam near the mast. First job was to fit the fibreglass spreaders which I’d already assembled a while ago. Once that was done I attached the 1:1 balun, the guy lines from the
Today I ran the rotator and feeder cables back to the shack. Once I’d connected the rotator I thought it would be fun to fix a camera on top of the mast and raise it to its full height of 34 feet. Here’s the result! As you can see, I can get above most things
Due to a mix up with the courier they collected the 7.6 Adaptamast yesterday and delivered the 9.2 ground mount mast today at 11.30am. Unwrapped it and carried it around to the back of the house with the help of my brother. It’s a lot heavier than the 7.6 one! First thing was to check
At long last the ground socket is finally concreted in. What a relief! I was feeling a bit stressed as it’s not the sort of job that you want to go wrong, but in the end it was fine. First job of the day was to get the ground socket into position. I screwed two
Well things have changed since my last post. After all that effort I decided to go for the ground mounted mast instead, just for peace of mind really. Tennamast have been fantastic, they’ve gone out of their way to be accommodating and offered to exchange my 7.6m wall mounted mast for a 9.2m ground mounted
