At the recent deceased estate sale of Graeme VK3NE's gear I purchased a 160m AM transmitter. Crystal locked to 1832kHz. Turns out it's a Drew Diamond VK3XU design from 2006. Rather nicely put together but missing the audio power modulation stages. Anyhow, step one is a suitable antenna.
There's a big dead tree near the shack so I put up an inverted L. Basically as much wire as I could find. Up the tree then horizontally over to another tree. Using a nano VNA to sweep SWR it was much too long and resonant below 1Mhz. After a series of cuts it looks really nice.
I hear a lot of noise on this antenna, S9. When I transmit I can hear myself on the Strathbogie SDR so I know it's getting out.
An audio amplifier is on the way so I'm looking forward to getting on the air. AM on 160m - what memories.
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