A two week holiday in France was the perfect opportunity to test the PA3FYM Delta Loop in the wild. After 10 minutes of construction the loop was up. I did put the Spider Beam mast up an pole so top hight was about 13,5 meters as advised by Remco. Continue reading “PA3FYM Delta Loop in France”
FYM-Delta-loop antenna by PA3FYM
Remco PA3FYM is a big inspiration of many of my projects. This time he convinced me to build the famous FYM-delta-loop as a holiday antenna. Actually it’s a quite simple design from 2015 of the well known delta-loop. In Remco’s design of the FYM-delta-loop it is tuned for 40 meters. Not accidental because during the summer every night there Continue reading “FYM-Delta-loop antenna by PA3FYM”
Diamond X6000
23cm @ PA1JIM
There wasn’t any 23cm ground plane antenna yet on the roof @ PA1JIM headquarters, only the double quad antenna. But the quad is pointing towards the PI6NOS-repeater.
Therefor it was impossible for me to open the 23cm repeaters in Den Haag and Rotterdam. Furthermore I wasn’t fully satisfied about my Diamond X200N for 2m and 70cm. It worked, but not beautifully.
Continue reading “Diamond X6000”
Mount an antenna on the car
After driving a few years now with a magnetic antenna foot and lingering about how good the antenna performance would be if I drilled a hole in de roof of the car, today was the day to do it. Henk PE1PEX helped me with the job. After 4 hours of the antenna mount was ready for testing and the whole car was put back together.
First test wasn’t disappointing at all. I could open repeater PI2RTD (about 65 km further) with only 5 watts from Henk’s driveway. We we’re very impressed with this result! Unfortunately I couldn’t test the antenna driving home from the job because Henk advised me to let the kit dry for at least one night. So as a good boy as I am I did.
To get a little impression the job from start to finish:
Double quad antennas for 23cm compared
With the 23cm transceiver still in development, I need a 23cm antenna. I got interested in a double quad for 23cm.
Advantage of a double quad for 23cm over other designs is a great front/back-ratio and a large opening angle. I will use the 23cm transceiver mainly for chatting on a local repeater PI6NOS. There is a free-line-of-site from my roof to PI6NOS. No need for a huge gain to open the repeater. I’ve chosen a fixed antenna position.
A few guys at my local club build a 23 cm double quad themselves. It isn’t a very difficult job. Only thing I didn’t like about it is it has to be placed in a plastic container to be weather proof.
Last radio market I attended I walked by a stand of EPS-antennas. The owner Paul PA3EPS, builds beautiful antennas for HF and higher bands. In his line-up Paul PA3EPS sells a double quad for 23cm. It’s a bit pricey in comparison with DIY. But then again, if you focus on construction, used materials and the fact that is weather proof as is…. anyway,it wasn’t a difficult choice. I prefer excellent quality antennas on my roof in order to avoid unnecessary presence there. That has something to do with a fear of heights.
Before I attach the EPS double quad for 23cm on its final position in the mast, it might interesting to see if there is a significant difference in performance between the DIY double quad (not yet tuned) and the EPS double quad. Unfortunately I don’t own much measuring equipment for 23cm so the only way to roughly compare the two is to check the signal of PI6NOS on my 23cm transceiver with both antennas in the same place, connected with the same cable.
The result you can see in this video.
Antenna with 80 km/h
Stormy weather here at the moment. Very strong winds (50 – 80 km/h) from west south west. Antenna mast is dancing around, great to film!
On top of the mast is my Diamond X200-N mounted which covers the 2 meter and 70 centimeter band. It is connected to my Kenwood TM-D710.
Directly underneath the Diamond you see my Fritzel 1:6 balun as heart for the FD-3 wire antenna. The mast consists of three pieces of green glass fiber army sticks which are painted white with UV-proof paint and glued together. The whole mast is about 3,6 meters (11,8 feet).
On the left you see my Antron A99 for 10 meter which is connected to my second antenna connection on the Kenwood TS-590S.
Moved antenna
Okay, so I moved my antenna to the other chimney of the house. Six meters away from the neighbors monitor (a Philips 190WV7CS/00) and after a thorough test on all HF-bands with 100 watt RTTY there is a little improvement. The striping has faded a little but not enough to satisfy the neighbor. So plan B came in action: temporarily replace the Philips piece of *&^(#@ with my 20′ Apple Cinema Display. As expected that solved the whole problem. No RFI whatsoever. So for now I’ll leave the monitor at his place so he can work. He’ll replace his Philips montor at a later time.
Let get on contesting!