Year: 2014

Experimenting with an end fed half wave

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I went down to the river Thames a couple of mile from home today for some portable operation and some experimenting with an end fed half wave antenna. I recently built a Parallel tuned coupler for feeding end fed half waves from 7-30MHz and this was tested on a few bands. I wanted to try 15m, but the band was full of contest stations due to the Scandinavian contest, so I cut a piece of wire for a 17m vertical. Below is some video took by Dave M0TAZ of me working Chris SM0OWX on 18MHz.

I have used the coupler on a few different bands now in various configurations with good results. I shall add a post with more results after some more tests and fine tuning soon. Here is a photo of the inside of the unit. 73 John.

I finally put up a dipole for 70MHz (4m)

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Anytone AT-588 on 70MHz

Anytone AT-588 on 70MHz

Today, I finally built a ½ λ dipole for 4m. I have previously been using a folded ½ λ dipole made out of 450Ω balanced feeder, suspended in the loft, which is not ideal. I still had the coax outside on the roof and the pole which were both used previously for my 2m/70cm co-linear, which has been relocated to the chimney, so once it was built, it was simple enough to put up. (more…)

Operating HF from Dungeness ☢

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I just got back from a couple of days on the South coast. I spent a day at Birling Gap and walked up the chalk cliffs at Beachy Head, then on Monday, I spent the afternoon at Dungeness. My plan was to do some photography during the day and some HF operating at night.

After a day of strolling around this strange landscape, I finally got round to setting up the HF station. I used an 85AH Leisure Battery, Yaesu FT-897D at 100W and the antenna was an inverted V for 80m up on a 9m fibreglass pole. I was facing a fantastic sunset (and the two nuclear power stations) as can be seen below.

Parked up at Dungeness for some HF operating whilst watching the sun go down.

Parked up at Dungeness for some HF operating whilst watching the sun go down.

I used a few different bands, 40m, 60m and 80m. Conditions on 60m and 80m were great for local contacts and I got good signal reports.  It was an interesting spot to operate from. (more…)