Sunday, October 12, 2008

Raised the 80m dipole a bit more

antenna.jpgStand by for a report of this all crashing down on the roof, but for now at least, I've managed to raise the centre of my 40/80m dipole another metre up over the roof of the (2 story) house.

I bolted a long pool scooping pole to the top of a metal pole bolted to the top of a netball hoop stand resting on a balcony on the second floor. (It's tied to a coach bolt at roof line too).

The aluminium is a bit flexible up the top and I think I'm going to need some guy wires to keep this standing in a high wind.

There's a lot of band noise on 80m tonight but I listened in to the VK2WI broadcast this evening and was amazed at the signal strength peak being reported on the IC-718 dial (see below).

In the call-back I received a good report and comment that the antenna "is working", which is good to know.

smeter.jpg


Hmm peaking at 60dB over S9... seems a bit generous that's the sort of thing you get with a local signal generator.

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