Having got some much needed help in the evening after work, my friend and I erected the 40ft mast. This went pretty well between the two of us, and resulted in a nice vertical mast.
As this was done after work on a Friday evening, we headed in for a lovely meal prepared by XYL Monica.
The next day the weather was unusually good and a day of productive antenna erection could commence ! Having guyed the mast the previous evening, my intention was to get the 80/40m dipole attached to the top with the feedline going up the mast. However, after several attempts I was getting this result.
The tilt base from Barenco really came into its own, doing this any other way would of been difficult, not to say incredibly frustrating boarding on insanity.
After several breaks to contemplate a solution I figured on using the hardware I had but changing the antenna. Thankfully I have a UK Antenna 80m end fed in storage, so I lowered the bent mast to a more sturdy but decent height and used another of the fibreglass poles I had. Feeding the end fed thru this I was able to get it a good height and not as intrusive as when i had two fibre glass poles going into the front garden. I ended up with a ‘sloping L’ configuration rotated 90 degrees from the feed point.
The above video makes this much clearer and you can see the height of the initial mast and fibreglass pole which support the 80m wire.
The SWR results across 80m are impressive and I attached to my IC-705 to test, the reception was fantastic.
The multi band was resonant on every frequency stated, so I will be really looking forward to trying this antenna out on a more frequent basis
40m gave impressive S.W.R. readings as well, I am only planning to use QRP levels, with the occasionally 50W from the TS620S. I am very excited to get this antenna into the Kenwood Ts690S as its a super-het receiver with many filters in it. Thats not to say the IC-7300 wont be the main transceiver any more, but will be fun to see the difference between the two.
Until next time.
73
Alan / 2E0FWE