Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Antenna adventures...
I've known for a while that my operations had outgrown the G5RV Jr that was up about 25' in the oak tree.
If nothing else it was suboptimal on 40m and had no 80m capability at all.
The long term plan is to get a 80m inverted-v ladder line fed doublet up at the top of the oak tree (nominally 70'). Should play well on 80m and do OK on the other bands.
But... with the North American RTTY Sprint coming up I needed something better in a hurry. I ordered a TrueTalk WA2NAN G5RV from Kerry and it arrived in the nick of time.
Now a G5RV Jr is 52 feet long and about 17 feet high. A normal G5RV is 102' and 31' high.
My lot is only 70' x 100'. Some changes were clearly indicated.
I had hoped to take Friday afternoon off and get the antenna up. No such luck. So Saturday morning found me in the side yard looking up at the tree and muttering.
I'd found another limb... more or less in the clear... more or less 34' up... more or less in the center of my property's 100' side.
I just couldn't get a line over it with my typical waterbottle sling method to save my life. Forty feet is normally the limit. For some reason 30 plus a little feet wasn't doing the trick.
So plan B. The Easy Up slingshot and fishing reel doohickey. First shot, looked like it did the trick, but was too short. Second shot... line broke and lost the weight. Down to town for some more weights. No joy. Use nuts instead. No joy. Lots of broken line.
Finally Greg, N6CK had pity on me and we were able to get the line over in one shot with his fishing pole/slingshot arrangement.
We finally got the antenna more or less in place 27 minutes before the contest started. And Greg had a 25 minute drive back to his station.
What a GUY! (Note to self: Self, add an Elmer's section to your webpage.)
So... The new antenna seems to work much better on 40m and 80m bue also seems deaf on 20m. Perhaps because the main lobe is staring right into the 1800' ridge 300 yards to my east.
Oh well.
Contest results? Four hours and 80 contacts.
Band QSOs Pts Sec
3.5 25 25 0
7 38 38 7
14 17 17 6
Total 80 80 13
Score : 1,040
Enough for now.
I've known for a while that my operations had outgrown the G5RV Jr that was up about 25' in the oak tree.
If nothing else it was suboptimal on 40m and had no 80m capability at all.
The long term plan is to get a 80m inverted-v ladder line fed doublet up at the top of the oak tree (nominally 70'). Should play well on 80m and do OK on the other bands.
But... with the North American RTTY Sprint coming up I needed something better in a hurry. I ordered a TrueTalk WA2NAN G5RV from Kerry and it arrived in the nick of time.
Now a G5RV Jr is 52 feet long and about 17 feet high. A normal G5RV is 102' and 31' high.
My lot is only 70' x 100'. Some changes were clearly indicated.
I had hoped to take Friday afternoon off and get the antenna up. No such luck. So Saturday morning found me in the side yard looking up at the tree and muttering.
I'd found another limb... more or less in the clear... more or less 34' up... more or less in the center of my property's 100' side.
I just couldn't get a line over it with my typical waterbottle sling method to save my life. Forty feet is normally the limit. For some reason 30 plus a little feet wasn't doing the trick.
So plan B. The Easy Up slingshot and fishing reel doohickey. First shot, looked like it did the trick, but was too short. Second shot... line broke and lost the weight. Down to town for some more weights. No joy. Use nuts instead. No joy. Lots of broken line.
Finally Greg, N6CK had pity on me and we were able to get the line over in one shot with his fishing pole/slingshot arrangement.
We finally got the antenna more or less in place 27 minutes before the contest started. And Greg had a 25 minute drive back to his station.
What a GUY! (Note to self: Self, add an Elmer's section to your webpage.)
So... The new antenna seems to work much better on 40m and 80m bue also seems deaf on 20m. Perhaps because the main lobe is staring right into the 1800' ridge 300 yards to my east.
Oh well.
Contest results? Four hours and 80 contacts.
Band QSOs Pts Sec
3.5 25 25 0
7 38 38 7
14 17 17 6
Total 80 80 13
Score : 1,040
Enough for now.
Labels: g5rv
