g7kse.co.uk

Over the last week or so I have been away in Scotland, a nice retreat from the Football (which I have no interest in). I took with me the VX-3 that I got from the RSGB that I use very occasionally.

Apart from me using it just to listen in to local traffic whilst away from home I have rarely managed to use it in anger.

So first up is a new antenna, the short antenna that comes with the handheld is the usual small and ‘not that great’. Add this to the QTH being in the lee of a pretty big hill means that I’ll have to walk up to the top of the headland to get a signal out.

Which antenna? answers on a postcard……

I’d like to use it when I’m out and about up Dent and Lowther forest on my mountain bike so I’ll have to think of a suitable way of carrying the thing and sorting out headphones / mic so that its not stuck in my back pack and hard to reach.

I’d like to make an apology.

During this weekends contest, whilst on 20m my 3 year old daughter grabbed the mic and copied what I’d been doing. Only she didn’t quit use the right etiquette.

‘Hello this is 01 Abigail’ she said
’01 Abigail Hill’

A unique cq call and fortune that I manged to grab the mic quickly. Still here’s hoping that there’s a radio ham in there.

During this weekends World Wide CW contest weekend where you’d be forgiven in thinking that there has been a change to the band plan I decided to finish up tuning the vertical antenna that I installed a few weeks ago so I could operate from the portions of the bands that I prefer are at the lowest SWR and hence I have the best opportunity it getting some good DX contacts over the winter.

I’d preassembled the antenna with the recommended spacings between the various traps but had discovered that the SWR varied wildly across the bands and even with a tuner (And yes I do agree with the sentiment that a tuner only hides bad set ups, but in some cases it is essential) the SWR was hard to get down to acceptable levels. On checking the spacings last night I discovered that they had almost all reduced significantly so detuning the antenna.

??Why?

Over the past few weeks we’ve had some strong winds and this may have contributed but I’m not entirely convinced yet.

Solution

Re-tighten the bolts and check again in a few weeks. Perhaps some kind of nylon spacer needs to be made up rather than relying on friction if this is going to be a problem. Hacksaw anyone!

Apart from this issue I have been very pleased with the retuned SWR, very low across all the bands and it just goes to show that quality breeds quality.

After a long protacted house move that ended up with us staying with my parents for 3 months whilst the house was dried, replastered and repainted etc after the leaking boiler. the inevitable summer break and countless other odd jobs that were important i am begining to set up the station.

job 1- run the cables outside – check!

job 2 – tidy up te cabling mess outside – check!

job 3 – put in mounting post for vertical antenna – check!

job 4 – move the post to where the mrs is happier but signals will be worse off – check!

job 5 – put 6m antenna in loft – check!

job 6 – dig in radials – to do

job 7 – install vertical – not done

job 8 – build up pc – not a chance

etc etc