The mast arrived today around midday, almost with the delivery driver leaving thinking I was not in not having waited long enough for me to answer the door and thus me not getting the mast.
First impressions were that it was a good quality product and I expect it to perform well, the bottom of the mast however keeps coming off and thus risking me losing the mast sections, this can simply be glued back on with a bit of superglue.
I took a drive up to one of my usual local radio testing points later on in the day, about 3pm, got the mast up, and into my drive on mast stand and fastened to the driver's door of the car with the radio on the bonnet rather than a fence post as at this location there weren't any readily available.
The band was open but as I caught it starting to close, I managed to catch a station in the south of France on UK40 channel 40 but could not work him, though he was operating at 15 watts and also I was getting more local transmissions on top of him, I heard a station to the north of me as well on the same frequency but quieter than the French station, by the time I tried again the band had closed so it was at this point, as I had other things to do, I decided to pack up.
SWR as reported by the Grant II (I forgot my good HF SWR meter) was spot on, though a test on a proper SWR meter is always a good idea (I am not a fan of built-in SWR meters) and will take place on the day of the celebrations next week.
Overall I am pleased, the antenna is working and is bringing in stations, and tunes and transmits just fine.
73 de 26CT730
Ban PLT
No comments:
Post a Comment
Due to past abuse and the ongoing issues that left me little choice to reduce time on twitter and IRC I have taken the decision to keep comments disabled indefinitely, apologies for this
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.