#6m #4m ES-season 2024 review

 What can I tell about this season. It started reasonable well. Then things happened, or did not happen. Only 4 new DXCC on 6m and 3 new ones on 4m this season is a lot worse compared to previous years. I also didn't spend a lot of time on the radio compared to previous years.

The season started on the 14th of May for me with a QSO to Chile on 6m. CE4WJK was worked in very strong propagation to South America. QSO confirmed on LoTW.

2 June: I worked Italy IZ0TTG on 4m as expected. Not shure if Italy had legal access to 4m at that time. I worked IZ0TTG on SSB. QSO confirmed on eQSL.

4 June: Montenegro 4O6AH worked on 4m. Haven't got the confirmation. According to QRZ.com this station only does paper QSL. 

Also on 4 June I made a QSO on 6m with Asiatic Russia RD9D. Legal or not? We might never know because who knows what is going on in Russia really? QSO is not confirmed (yet) could have been a pirate station as well...

6 June: Malawi 7Q6M worked on 6m. It was a difficult one and it might be pure luck. QSO confirmed on LoTW.

9 June: propagation went to the west. St. Vincent J88IH was worked on 6m. QSO confirmed on LoTW.

23 June: Ukraine UZ5DU worked on 4m, it is with these DXCC always the question if this is legal or not since, like Russia, who know what actually is going on? Also this QSO is not confirmed. Could be a pirate station as well...

So far this was the end of the ES season for me on 6m and 4m. Due to private circumstances I was not able to be on the radio monitoring much. So, there might be DX I missed. But what I heard from others is that propagation was very bad in the last 2 months. Something that has been occured before at the sunspot maximum. However, winter could have F2 surprises for us...

ZX-Yagi 5 element (ZX-5ITB)

  Years ago Ron Eberson had a small antenna manufacturing company ZX-yagi producing very good quality antennas. Especialy in the 11m community it was a well known brand. At least around the ninetees of last century. It appears the company is still there since WIMO Germany has the antennas still for sale. According to this website http://www.zx-yagi.com/. I wonder if Rob is still constructing them when one is ordered? 

Anyway, a well known 11m yagi was the ZX-5ITB, a kind of short 5 element  yagi. I found one on the internet for sale about 22 years ago.  At that time I had big plans for towers and big antennas. I could get it for a nice price and aquired the antenna which was way too big for my tower at that moment. The guy that sold it to me told me it was a 5ITB converted to 10m. Well, I never had this antenna into the tower, it was stored in my garage while other antennas got into the tower. I now thought it was finally time to see if the antenna was still complete and take a measure with an analyzer to see what part of the 10m band it was tuned for.

At first I found a construction manual for the 5ITB but unfortunately it was incomplete. I decided to just put everything together since everything was color coded and pre-drilled. It went well and SWR measurement followed.

These are quite old designs (ON4UN), very populair at the end of last century. Radials mounted directly not isolated from the boom and a large gamma-match which is essentially a large capacitor.

Looks like the antenna is indeed tuned for 10m, probabely the CW part. Not sure because this can shift when the antenne is high into a tower.

I now know everything is in working order. Had to store it in the garage again of course so had to dismantle everything. The antenna is for sale. Not shipping it. €150. If interested write me an e-mail. You can find the e-mail address via QRZ.com.

If anyone knows the correct measures for the ZX-5ITB ? Please let me know...