I set about setting up my Buddipole in a 40M (7Mhz) configuration. For this i added 2 new extended whip arms to my collection of Buddipole parts. The majority of my Buddipole parts come from Radioworld, who I really dont mind promoting in my blog as they are very quick on delivery.

To start with I used the “Buddipole in the field’ setup recommendations, which helped get the physical setup. Of what to plug in where, as I’m still learning it really helps having a printed A4 page with the diagrams on, and I stuff that in my pocket or my external table as I work along.

It took me about 15~20 minutes to get the pole and the whips setup at ground level. The whips are really long at 9ft which is what you’ll need for 40M and they must be fully extended. Take your time pulling them out from the tips and firmly, but gently extending them.

Now I dont mind saying I have already lost two smaller (5ft) whips with messing up guying and the Buddipole nearly falling on me, so if you are reading this, please, please take your time with guying/rigging your buddipole up. Mine moves around my backgarden, so i dont have a static mount point, I could use Pythagorus equations to work out the technical lenght, but I find that rasing the antenna, checking the tensions and taking it back down and then up as required is the safest. When I’m indoors and it starts getting windy, i want to know that its not going to fall !

Anyhow after guying and getting to an ok height (above the roof line) I started on tuning the S.W.R. inital results were a little disappointing, as I expected some loss on rising, but it got a bit high. So I brought the dipole down again and spent more time on the coils.

Getting the coils setup was a real exercise in patience – having not done this for a specific frequency before, it took a few good attempts of going from left to right coil to get the nice curve I got below.

The S.W.R. on the lower frequencies is a bit high, but as I’m not going to be attempting morse (yet), thats not a concern to me.

I was quick to take some photos of the coils to log where I had put them, maybe next time i can get a better improvement, but this is where I had them this time.

I got in and even tho it was getting later and the sun going down had a great time tuning in and listening on 40m. It was very busy on the voice frequencys and finding a gap to transmit and knowing I was ‘spilling’ over to others was a bit nerve racking.

I did try putting a CQ out, but no response, but the SWR reading on the radio was very good, even tho i am only using 10W.

So next time I will show more about the CAT and digital interface I now have, but thats another post 🙂

All the best and 73’s from M7ALU