Haven't got much time for the radio hobby at the moment. But today had a few hours planned to do some antenna work. I wanted to dismantle the vertical experiment to make place for something else I have in mind. Besides that I had to mount the 6m/4m duoband beam into the tower to get ready for the ES season.
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| Work in progress... |
I was curious how the 1:1 balun would look after a winter. The balun was mounted above the autotuner in the small white box.
I was surprised to see that inside it looked like new. Nothing wrong at all. So I can use it for another experimental project.
The autotuner needs a power supply of 12V which I provide with a PSU in the garage throught a thin twin wire up into the tower. It is connected with some "chocolate bloc" connectors. Although I made it watertight with vulcanizing tape it really is not corrosion resistant. It really is a miracle the autotuner still did work at all. Another one, just as corroded is in the coax connection box at the bottom of my tower. I really need to find something better to connect the tuner to 12V without having to worry about corrosion.
Next I collected the components for the 6m/4m duoband beam which are all in reasonable good shape. Assembling took me about 30 minutes. That was including polishing the alu rods as good as possible.
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| The result... |
4 comments:
Good morning Bas nice to see your post, very nice job on the 6m beam and yes once things are marked it makes a huge difference. Yes summer is fast approaching and before you know it I will be reading posts of your 6m contacts. I noticed in your pictures the leaves are on the trees! Very nice to see out this way we are just starting to see buds. The temps in the evenings can still get below 0C. So a bit longer out this way before leaves start to come out.
Have a great week,
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Hello Bas, the good thing about a vertical (in addition to a Yagi) is that you don't have to rotate your antenna as often. With only a Yagi, you'll wonder if someone is in some other direction...and the rotator will work much more often.
And the good thing about having a trampoline near your tower is that you can work on your antennas in 1-second increments!
73,
John
Hello Mike, I can imagine you are very inpatiently waiting for warmer weather and nature growing in your part of the world. Hope to report about my 6m efforts soon. Not to forget that I am also QRV on the 4m band. Besides that the 8m band seems to get populair these days, I'm thinking about a monitoring station for that band as well. 73, Bas
Hello John, tnx for your comment. You are right about the benefits of a vertical. To be honest I think every antenna is a compromise. I can reveal I will be experimenting with a almost omni directional horizontal antenna called a halo. The trampoline is very handy for antenna work, inspection is so easy that way. It doubles the fun as well ;-). 73, Bas
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