With a busy work and study schedule as well as being slightly under the weather due to a rather nasty cold, which thankfully seems to be in remission, I’ve not had a whole lot of time for doing anything external to the shack.

In the shack I’ve been working on improving the antenna switching and coax routing. I’ve come up with this novel switching mechanism to go between the 6btv and UK Antenna 80M multiband end fed.

The IC7300 has a pretty decent internal ATU and the TS690 will be routed via the MFJ-993B intellituner. This will allow me to switch easily between antennas and see the difference in operation between them. I’ve not been able to resume my work on the 6BTV lately due to other commitments, but I am aiming to resume my work on increasing the performance of it. It will be good to do direct comparisons between the end-fed and 6btv on two very interesting radios (Superhet Vs SDR).

Operation on 80m has been fantastic lately. I do admit to enjoying listening to the QSOs on 80m as they tend to be very good length exchanges, sometimes comical, but mostly interesting and relevant to the hobby. With 80m being quite ‘local’ I can clearly hear both ends of the QSO across operators in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands and Germany (but my Dutch and German fails me in being able to listen for any more than 5 minutes !)

I will continue to tidy the shack and hoping to stay in good health for more external work over the weekend. I am looking forward to contrasting the 6btv with the Endfed.

Hope you are all keeping well – take care and stay safe !

Alan / 2E0FWE