Friday 2 May 2008

Getting it up

The sealant cured on the slim jim, and its now mounted in its tube at about 15-20ft. Oddly, the SWR has gone up, and its now between 1.3 and 1.5:1 across the band, the lower figure towards the high end. Ive not had chance yet to do an on-air check, but receiving using the FT-290 plenty of repeaters and a fair bit of simplex is about. Interference from the ADSL modem was still bad, but some serious coil winding has removed most of it. I found the majority was coming from the network connection.

The HF doublet is shocking. Im blaming the change to a 1:1 coaxial choke balun, from the 4:1 collins. But the state of the feeder is also a worry, its been patched up several times and im sure there is still corroded sections. I have a 100ft roll of shiney new 450 ohm ladder line awaitin gthe rebuild. Probably i will go for a 135ft version, fed right back to the shack with 450 ohm. Im going to invest in a bottle of liquid tape for weather sealing the connections, and will also wind and solder the connections from the feeder to the antenna elements. Any splices in the feeder will be done to ensure continuity of impedence, and the feeder will be stood off from the fence etc along its path using electric fence insulators. I can then experiment back at the shack entry point with baluns etc.

I also took delivery of a 100m drum of 1.5mm2 conduit wire today, bought especially for antenna building, in particular for trying a 'stealth' 17m vertical mounted in the tree, with four tuned radials.

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