Sometime ago I reported about a cool building project of the Team Thunderbox, some guys from England. I’ve noticed the link is dead right now. But no worries! Arend, PA2AWU did read that article on my blog and send me a message. He wanted to build this cubicle quad for 40m himself and so he needed the fiberglass telescopic poles. If I was interested in participate to get a few for myself.

Of course I was! So Arend ordered a few and build the cubical quad for the CQWW SSB this year. He send me an e-mail a few weeks ago to let me know that the cubical quad worked perfectly and he was surprised about the performance! 1400+ QSO’s where made on 40m. He also send me a picture of their quad (inserted in this message). Very cool!

Now I’ve got my four fiberglass telescopic poles and as promised I would build a Skywire Loop Antenna with them. The wire is already prepared, all the connectors are there. The only thing I need to figure out is how to keep the poles up in the air. Then I will take the whole package to a area where I can build the thing. Reports will be online shortly after of course!

Last fridaynight after a good Italian meal and a few glasses of nice wine it happend: I’ve temporarely overwon my fear of heights and climbed on our roof to put up the antenna!
First I’ve mounted my Diamond V2000A for 6m, 2m and 70 cm.
After a few local QSO’s I heard there were extremely good conditions on HF. Hmmm, still no antenna for HF….

One more glass of wine and there I went up again to put up my open dipole in an inverted L-shape. A few hours later I was on the air on 20m, 40m etc.
Still need to do a lot of work to the shack, but with the antenna’s up I think we can say: PA1JIM is on the air again!

Hope to hear you on the bands soon!