Aluminum ladder verticle

Just thinking maybe a ladder could make a good tunable vertical antenna, just need to feed it and get a few big clamps to.lock.the sections together once it is tuned, 20m easy maybe 40 as well.

So I beat the branch today, sort of. . .

I got it cut, but it just didn't want to let go, I maybe should have cut it a little further back, who knows, but I did cut it plenty behind the portion that was holding the antenna down.  What happened?

So if you click on this picture to blow it up you will see the cut off branch, and the antenna wire, amazingly enough the branch found a way to retain my antenna, literally we are in battle.  when the trimmed section of branch fell, I was astounded to see it go down over the opposite side of my antenna, so that when as it descended it pushed the wire back into the remaining portion of branch!  Wow!

Really, I thought, no biggy, I'll just bounce and jostle and it'll pop right off the end of that stick and I'll be in business!  Well, it didn't go down quite like that.  I jostled, I bounced, I pulled, and I begged, and that branch just held on.  So I pulled harder, and the wire broke.  :(  

So the branch, although having been cleanly severed by this astute weapon:

has won yet another battle.

Needless to say the contacts that appear in my log for today are being made on a sloper.  I'll have to fire the backyard end of the antenna back up into the trees again.  I may take the opportunity to rearrange a bit and get the front yard end more in line with where it should be, and possibly even change the length of the antenna a bit, I think that possibly 132' total length is not that great of a length, maybe a little shorter would be a bit better.  Any suggestions?

Also I read an article in QST today about PSKimmer  and I fired that up, it is running now on my 706mkIIg with the Signalink USB, but unfortunately I can't get the http://pskreporter.info page to come up, apparently everyone else did the same thing today after just reading the same article in QST and the webpage has been overrun with requests.  Maybe tomorrow it'll calm down some or later tonight, I'd really like to see that map.

73

Good DX and Good Luck

Catch you in the ether

You CAN have too many trees.

Well, at least too many branches.  I mentioned that branch that was holding me down in the last post, and my idea for getting rid of it.  Well, I tried it.  I made a "wire saw"  from a six foot section of 0.030" stainless steel wire by folding it in half and twisting it together.

So I shot my line over the offending branch and pulled the "saw" up with some paracord.  I began to pull back and forth in a sawing motion, for four or five minutes I did this.  Finally my homemade "saw" broke.  Now let me say, I did test this saw, I cut a small branch off of a tree that I could reach and it cut right through it in about a half minute. 

 Needless to say this tree is still keeping my antenna down right in the middle, really close to the feed point, which I think is not very good, it is much better to have your feedpoint higher than the ends than the other way around.  So I am very frustrated by this darn branch, I have to thank my wife(Stephanie) for helping me today, we tried a few other things and we got pretty darn close to pulling the antenna over far enough to pop it past and up over this branch, almost. . . .ALMOST!!  sheesh.  So I'm thinking that maybe I'll have to call in a professional, I still think the "wire saw" might work, but I think on this oak tree that I'm fighting with, I'll need a more robustly designed "saw", so look in the future for a possible redesign of my saw, or maybe even a commercially available wire saw/commando saw.

                                                          

Here is a picture of the gosh darn tree in all it's glory, that middle branch holding my feedpoint down from where this antenna could be if it weren't for it's pesky woodiness.  

I maybe should have spent my time today raising a shorter antenna, I want to put one up for 20-10m  a nice compact balanced line fed dipole.  Kind-of even toying with the idea of making my own feed-line.  We shall see. 

New wire for New QTH

Well, I learned something very important yesterday, if you want your neighbors to be happy about your antenna installation, just make sure you put it up on Thanksgiving weekend, loan out your air cannon for your neighbors to hang their Christmas light balls up in their trees and they will be very happy, even possibly forget what you were doing because they are so entertained with shooting lines up into the trees. :)

I put up a 132 foot dipole fed with balanced 450 ohm feedline yesterday, not without some struggling, I tried and tried to get it to pop up over this one branch, yet it is still stuck under it. Isn't there such a thing as a wire saw for cutting wood? If I could loop a rope over the branch and tie a wire saw into the middle section of the rope or paracord, then maybe I could cut that branch without ever leaving the ground, I am going to look for one of those.

The antenna works like a dream on 80m and 40m but not so fantastic on 20 and 10m, so I think I will follow this one up with a shorter dipole for the higher frequencies.

Also, I got a lot of my station set up yesterday, got the computer going, and a few of my certificates hung up, so that is pretty cool.

Still celebrating the arrival of the new cycle!

The 706 is much better.

A real vfo, some filtering and three times as much power makes the 10m opening much more fun!  I got my first ever qso to alaska today on 10m very cool!

10m has arrived.

Well, I've moved to a new QTH, long gone are the big antennas hanging high in the pine trees. Now my HF station at home is connected to a short 44ft doublet that is in the attic, and I have a tarheel II on my car. So, if your hearing me then it is most likely on one of those antennas. I'll tell you I really miss those big tall pine trees and all that open space at the old QTH. Hopefully one day before too long we'll get back to a home where we can have some space to operate from.

I've been operating VHF/UHF a lot since the station is so limited at home. Dstar has been fun, but there really is no replacement for HF.