Tag: Antenna’s

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SkywireloopSome time ago I was reading about an full wave loop antenna. I was interested in this antenna right away. Since the preparation for the full radio exam I was told that full size antenna’s always outperform half wave or quarter wave antenna’s. The only problem is the space you need to make such an antenna operational.

Well, over here in the Hautes Alpes there is space enough! So I already bought some fishing rods earlier. A few days back I assembled the fullwave loop antenna for 40 meters. I placed the rods in a square with 10 meters between each rod. Put a wire in between and hooked it up to my TS-50. Immediately I noticed the difference between an open dipole (as setup in earlier article) and this skywire loop. It is much, much more quit on all bands, therefore I can pickup so many more signals. Almost every signal is stronger on the loop then the dipole. Only a few signals are stronger on the dipole. So as I already suspected from all the reading I did on fullwave loops: they perform very well! I will think about a more permanent setup of a skywire loop over here in de Hautes Alpes.

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multiband open dipoleAt my current QTH at 44.5362N, 5.9366E, JN24XM (Les Hautes Alpes, France) where I’ll stay the next week, I did want to experiment with a multiband open dipole. Therefore I assembled a lot of electric wire and some wood at home. The only thing I had to do over here was roll it out and find a place to put it up.

Although I’ve build the multiband open dipole for 4 bands (80, 40, 20 and 10m) and had to put 40 meters of wire up in the air, it is no problem to find a place for it here. The only problem is the 2 meters of snow. I had to ‘swim’ through the snow to be able to reach the trees. I can assure you my parents and girlfriend enjoyed my adventure!

After a few hours the dipole was up and running. The first contact with ON50WAASLAND on 80 meters was quickly made. This morning I’ve worked C4EURO on Cyprus on 20 meters. First impression of the dipole is good. My Kenwood AT-50 is able to tune the dipole on all HF bands except 30 meters. In spite of the very bad conditions I get pretty easy good reports. Although I think the multiband dipole is a little bit noisy.

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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!