Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Radial Daze

Messed around with the radials today. I pulled them off the fence, and coiled them up to 25', and saw the VSWR curves improve. I kept doing it until I couldn't reach any higher to cut them, and they wound up being about 6'~7' long, hanging straight down from the ground connection (coax shield), and tie wrapped to the mast.

This might be "as good as it gets" with this antenna, in this installation. The BuddiStick still works better on 20 Meters, so I'm hoping the CommTek 20 Meter aluminum tubing vertical will be as good.


This isn't 100% usable with the FT-1000D, as the VSWR in the 75 Meter band (3.5~4.0MHz) is still outside of the range the radio.  

And I'm feeling somewhat better, but still sneezing with a very runny nose.....


8 comments:

  1. Hope the bug clears up soon DrJim . . .

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  2. So do I! Tonight through Thursday night are cold (low 30's) and we're expecting rain and snow. Had to cover up the wife's new flowers (again!) because she didn't listen to the locals, who NEVER plant anything until a week after Mother's Day!

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  3. It's getting there! Hope you get better soon too!

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    Replies
    1. It rained and snowed all day, so I just hung out in the basement finishing up some projects.

      This is the first cold I've had in years that's only in my head. Watery, runny eyes, and a nose that's dripping so bad I need a plumber!

      Delete
  4. Radials? I'm still driving on bias-ply...

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  5. That's really looking remarkably better, especially 80 and 40. It really looks like it's good everywhere except 30m - and I bet that would tune, too.

    It's late to mention this, but did you do the ribbon cable trick for counterpoises? It's not that it works better, just that the installation is neater.

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    Replies
    1. I've used ribbon cable before, both for 'tuned' counterpoises and multi-band 'fan' dipoles. Works great!

      For this one I was using the radials I had left over from when I tried the ground mounted 33' Shakespeare vertical.

      And they were waaay too long!

      All this will be moot as soon as I get the two new 4x4 posts in the ground, as I'll be using my SGC autocoupler, and that one does require long radials.

      Delete

Keep it civil, please....

Gloomy, Gritty, Grey Day

 At 1700 local it's as described in the headline; 30*F, 88% RH, completely overcast, snowing like crazy (small flakes, but lots of them)...