Tag: Antenna’s

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Hello everyone! It was a while since I post something here. Thats because we enjoyed a little holiday in the south of France. Not the Alpes this time but we went to the Dordogne. Very nice trip! We rented a big house with swimming pool (although it was way to cold to swim in it) and a nice garden in a place called La Lardin-Saint-Lazare (JN

When we arrived I immediately setup the ‘travelkit’ containing a fishing rod, about 6 meters high, a few wires for a 20m inverted V dipole, some coax cable and ofcourse my good old Kenwood TS-50 and AT-50. Very nice singals from all over Europe! Noise level below S0 what is so rare these days. Even made qso with Cuba and Florida!

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CobbwebA while ago I did a first try to build a Cobwebb antenna. I noticed that even on a very low operating height (about 2 meters above the ground) the Cobwebb received very well. Last weekend I did my second attempt to build a Cobwebb antenna for 10, 12, 15, 17 and 20 meter. Gave the construction a little more thought and this time I tuned the wires individually before putting the Cobwebb on the roof. I’ve made sure every element was resonant within the amateur band. No problems. When I put the Cobwebb on my dormer, this thing works like a charm!

On the receiving part I notice very strong signals. The signal strength seems the same as on the 3 elements beam over at the club. Weird thing though is sometimes at 20m suddenly there is an enormous noise level. Up to S8! But a little later the noise level drops to S1 or 2 and I hear a great deal of signals from all over the world. Can it be the opening and closing of the band?

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CobbwebAfter studying several articles on the webs I tried to figure out a concept construction for my first Cobwebb antenna. An awful lot of tie wraps, a few fishing rods and a almost 50 meters of electrical wire. A few hours DIY in the rain and you see the result beneath. First test results: even at only 2,5 meter height very nice reception! In comparison to my end fed wire it’s a lot less noisy and picks up even very weak signals. Last night I was even listening to local QSO’s of amateurs in North America on 20m! Transmitting is another story on this height of course. No one heard me since, but almost all dipoles are resonant in the band and SWR is good. I think it will be even better when it’s on good operating height of 10 meters. I’m planning to put it on a pole on the roof, then it will be 14 meters high and more ore less 360 degrees free around.
The construction is of course just for testing purposes only. I need to construct another feed point which is waterproof. I’m not satisfied with the tie wrap solution to attach the wires to the spreaders. I think it’s not UV-proof too. I’m thinking about drilling little holes in the spreader to put little screws in them. And the end of the dipole wires I want some elastic pieces in. Then the wires will be tight all the time. Just haven’t figure out what to use for the elastic material yet.
And the baseplate needs some adjustment too, no possibility to attach a vertical pole in it now and the spreaders are not properly aligned. So need to do some rework… Then again, it’s only version 0.1!