Saturday, October 13, 2018

Impatience

PB7Z Bernard told me so after I expressed my failed installation of the HF5B to him. He already has this antenna  for years in his tower which is the same one as I have. And he worked a impressive list of DXCC with the HF5B. He told me I'm too impatient and I told him I have limited time for my hobby. It took me a whole afternoon to install and tune the antenna and finally found it not working at all. I was really disappointed and asked Bernard if he could take the antenna to see if he could get it better. But in the end.....it was all my own fault.

So we are two days later. I was planning to do a quick swap. The HF5B out of the tower and my 10m HB9CV in there. But then I decided I should first check the cable to the tower. I got the coax cables from the shack to the tower. One is the LMR400 for VHF/UHF use. The other is the old H2007 which I used for the vertical before. I never checked the H2007 cable before and always thought I had connected it. So I plugged in a dummyload on the other side of the MT-isolator that is in the cabinet below the tower. And in the shack I did my analyser read out......no good SWR! What the....

I also had a extra piece of LMR400 to the garage in case I wanted to connect a third cable. That cable was connected to the MT-isolator when I installed all the coax cables. I always thought it was connected to the H2007 in the garage....so, I did check it out.....you see the result in the left picture. It wasn't connected to anything!

And the end of the H2007 cable was just behind the MT-isolator.....without
a connector soldered to it. See the picture on the right. This is really stupid! How could this be? How did I overlook this? Too impatient! I soldered a PL connector on the H2007 and checked the SWR in the shack. Now is was almost 1:1. Luckely I didn't remove the HF5B yet. So, I checked it again. And I found the SWR was reasonable below 1:2 on all 5 bands. Good enough to use the beam. Then I had some other things to do.

Well, the results late in the afternoon....I tried it with Bernard on 10m and it did well. I already tried it on 20m receive with almost equal results compared to the inverted-V only less noise. On 15m it did well, much better as my inverted-V. I discovered some propagation on 12m. And heard PY2UAF calling on SSB, a few calls and I was in his log. After that I tried 10m and 12m FT8. On 12m I did work 3B9FR from Rodriguez Isl.. So, despite the SWR is not as good as 1:1 the antenna is at least working. I can do with the antennatuner to get a good match for the radio.

Conclusion: The HF5B is a very sensitive antenna. Tuning can be a pain. In my case a SWR "dip" was hardly visible. But moving the dip was no problem. However to see what the real SWR is the antenna needs to be at height. And the most important thing of all, don't be too impatient!


11 comments:

pa0o said...

Oké Bas mooi dat het werkt. Ja meten is weten. Take nothing for granted
Bij de weg 10 en 12 zijn goed open naar SA en 12 zelfs naar W en dat al meer dan een week

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Jaap, zag je al een paar keer voorbijkomen op 10m. Condities zijn behoorlijk plaatselijk. Toen jij Argentinië werkte kon ik het station al niet meer ontvangen. 5 minuten ervoor was hij nog iets van -6dB. Op 12m zag ik ook van alles voorbij komen. Nu hopen dat het over een paar weken tijden de CQWW SSB ook goed is. 73, Bas

Hans said...

Hallo Bas,
Ach, dit soort fouten overkomt iedereen, mij ook en dat hoort nu eenmaal bij de hobby. Gewoon weer verder gaan. Het leven is een grote leerschool. Ik ben blij voor je dat het probleem is opgelost en hoop dat je veel plezier mag beleven met deze antenne. 73 Hans, PE1BVQ.

Photon said...

Glad you got it working, Bas! The QSOs speak for themselves. The not-connected coax is a very typical kind of thing one experiences when there are so many elements of a radio station to maintain - and so little time (and good weather!)

MØYKS Simon said...

Congratulations on a nice new antenna. I can't wait to hear you again and see the difference. I suspect you were about to complete the soldering and was distracted by a little helper h.i h.i best 73 have fun busting through with that beauty. De Simon M0YKS

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Bedankt Hans, ja fouten maakt iedereen. Alleen niet iedereen erkent ze....ik heb jammergenoeg nog geen tijd gehad om de antenne verder te testen. 73, Bas

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello John, too many things (cables) and so little time. I'm so impatient, I want to DX ;-). 73, Bas

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello Simon, the distraction is absolutely true. I had my antenne standing in the middle of the garden last week and of course there were other children to play after school. Asking about that thing in the garden....My daughter answers it is a butterfly antenna. Well, ok that's answer enough it seems :-). No interest at all....they want to play. 73, Bas

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hallo Bas, soms van die dingen... maar opgelost. Mooie antenne heb je daar. Daar kun je wel leuke DX mee werken. 73 Paul PAØK

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Paul, dat hoop ik. De antenne ziet er op het eerste gezicht interessant uit. Maar qua materialen is het niet zo een stevig ding. Ik ben bang dat het bij de eerste de beste windkracht 10+ al afgelopen is. Maar goed....we zien wel. Ben benieuwd of ik er inderdaad wat DX mee kan werken. Tot nu toe nog geen tijd gehad om het ding wat beter te testen. 73, Bas

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Sommige constructies zijn niet altijd stevig gemaakt voor ons kustbewoners. 73 Paul