Antenna changes

Below the tuner the counterpoise connection

Since I had to remove the christmas LED star from the tower I had the idea to do some changes. First one is the removal of the single radial that is attached to the autotuner. Not that it is not working but I wanted to know how things behave when I use the complete tower as counterpoise. You cannot simulate everything and it is a fun experiment.

From the tests I did I can confirm it is working like it did with the radial. I do hardly notice any difference except for a bit more noise may be. I hoped that it would perform better on low bands but so far I'm not shure there is any difference. Time will tell... The antenna tunes well on all bands and everything in between.









And I did something I didn't thought of recently. Triggered by the success DX contacts others had. I installed the VHF/UHF beam in the mast. Not that I expect to make contacts with it...however I might try in the FT8 activity contest on 2m. I actually didn't try it yet...I'm planning to use the FT-817 with 5W only. It might be not enough for DX. On the other hand, if ES and or tropo is strong, it will be enough for digimodes like FT8. Of course you'll read about my efforts in future posts.