Yeah its not a euphemism, I literally spent most of the morning digging over garden beds to get them ready for winter planting. There has to be an easier way than doing it by hand with a fork and hoe. Plowing the ho’s anyone? HAHAHA.
After a comment by Adam, VK2YK on 20m today, I was reminded that I had not posted this SWR plot since I moved the 20m radials about and got it happening. Well, as you can see its much improved now on 20m. The only way to fix 10m is to shorten the aluminum radials. Not sure I am keen to drop it and cut a CM or 2 off each radial LOL. Most of the needed parts of 10m is under 2:1, but if I get keen I will shorten them.
As far as the antenna goes, this is a huge improvement over what it used to be like with only 3 radials. Really, it needs 4 per band. Not the 1 per band it comes with.
Spots on RBN:
Not overly strong to anywhere, but its being heard and getting out.
Yeah antenna improvements have helped a fair bit.
I got excited today and moved the tribander, improved its radial situation, made it work so much better and found out why it became a dummy load. The 1:1 balun I had on it to stop rf in the shack on 10m was full of water.
It went from having 1 wire radial each for 20, 15 and 10m, to having 4 horizontal aluminium radials 2.5m long each and 4 wire radials 5m long each.
I am not so worried about 15m, the 40m quarter wave does a great job there, but getting 10 and 20 working better is the aim here. Under 2:1 swr would be fine enough. The 20m radials are not optimized yet, so the plot will change somewhat mostly i am trying to improve the 20m situation.
And here is the final business. Its not super high in the air, about 5m to the base of the antenna, but its good enough until I can build a tower that will support and rotate a yagi, The vertical will end up becoming a 2 element yagi, I have the traps already thanks to a mate.
And just to prove its working, the RBN plot.
