Loop construction

Testing the wires by soldering them

I always wanted to make a short video from my efforts to build the 80m horizontal loop. But since it already takes hours to build the thing and till now it was always in a hurry that wasn't possible before. I had time enough last Saturday and could finally shoot some video. All this looks easy but the video was made in a 4 hour time span. I used this new antennawire for the first time and thanks to a colleague I had a spool to unwind it easily. Things went smooth and tuning went well. Rain was the only thing I would like to leave out of this project, but what can we do against nature! All connections were made waterproof by polymaxing it.

New word: Polymaxing

Then a final test on air. I did hear 9M6LS from West Malaysia on 20m but was unable to contact him. He was S5-6, same signal strength on the vertical. I then went down to 40m, still daylight. I noticed some difference between signal strength, overall about 3-6dB, sometimes more. On 80m I noticed some more difference, but not what I was used too. I tried PSK on 80m with 10W, things went difficult. JT9 went a lot better with a QSO to UA9CR, over 3000km and still using 10W. Report was -25dB on the edge! I think propagation was not so good because of a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) from the sun. (This was written last Sunday).