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Monday 2 May 2016

2-meter dipole revisited

Yesterday I dug out my homebrew dipole for 2-meters, and the dipole centre I bought from the Blackpool Rally and reassembled the dipole onto it, this was then hung up but the SWR was reading high, between 2 and 3 on the meter with the radio (the Leixen VV-898) at 10 watts, not good, moving it seems to have brought the SWR back down to the 1.7 it was at, still not brilliant but at least it's below dangerous levels for now, I suspect it's being affected by objects indoors and is best placed outdoors however the centre is not waterproofed and I have no means to hang it outdoors yet, my plan is to waterproof the centre with self amalgamating tape (another yet used Blackpool purchase) and put it onto my fibreglass mast and see what it can really do, the mast won't be extended to full-height as it is in need of TLC but it still has sufficient height to get out, this will give me a much more reliable SWR reading.

For the fibreglass mast to work as intended it needs to be fitted into a base, a parasol base from a DIY store should suffice here, I do need to make sure this tuning is done before I tape up the centre in case I need to do any more work so a dry day for the first run, if we even have a summer this year, would be good, and I could potentially put a Slim Jim on here later and save the dipole for other work, I could also put a lightweight Yagi on here, as I still wish to operate CB (my Grant II is in the shack for this very reason) I can put my T2LT on here, assuming it still works which it should do, on 2-meters I should be able to get out much further on the dipole so more simplex calls should be possible, I have no antenna for 10 meters despite having the rig for the job which may be the next antenna I work on, and with the mast on a parasol base it makes it temporary therefore should get around planning permissions, so let's see what I can get away with antenna wise.

73 de M6RSQ

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