Last night around 9pm I was browsing Amazon and found the same 64:1 unun that I use with my 40m EFHW. This antenna is my primary antenna for my “Transportable/POTA” setup with my FT891.

I decided that the last one worked so well for me that it was time to see if the 1st one was the real deal or a fluke.

Around noon today I checked my front door and found the Amazon Fairy had magically made the new 64:1 unun appear sometime between 10am (last time I checked for it) and noon.

I had a spare 100 foot roll of Princess Auto 18ga insulated wire in the shack and as a bonus for my home environment is was even green.

I quickly measured out 64 feet and then did the connection things. As with most of Eastern North America it was a rather wet day.

Around 4pm locally the rain stopped and I was able to remove the old wire and install the new antenna, once again using the fir trees on the edge of my yard for camo as not draw attention to the antenna.

The SWR is pretty good especially for a wire hidden in the branches:

6m – 2.5:1, 10m – 1.7:1, 12m- 1.2:2, 15m – 1.6:1

20m – 2.0:1, 40m – 1.3:1, 80m – 3.0:1

The bands are not the best, but signal reports (90w output pwr) were fairly well (S7-S9+) with the stations that I was able to contact.

All in all for what it is…. I’m impressed and the best part is that using the built in auto tuner on my Yaesu FT991a I can easily bring it down to 1:1 on all the bands listed above.

The results are the same on my Yaesu FT891 with the same style of balun and a 64 foot length of quality (Red) Princess Auto 18 ga automotive wire. The only real difference is that as I use the 891 with no tuner I have to be careful on some of the bands.

As the new install gets more use I will let you know if there are any “issues” with its performance.

73bob

Last night around 9pm I was browsing Amazon and found the same 64:1 unun that I use with my 40m EFHW. This antenna is my primary antenna for my “Transportable/POTA” setup with my FT891.

I decided that the last one worked so well for me that it was time to see if the 1st one was the real deal or a fluke.

Around noon today I checked my front door and found the Amazon Fairy had magically made the new 64:1 unun appear sometime between 10am (last time I checked for it) and noon.

I had a spare 100 foot roll of Princess Auto 18ga insulated wire in the shack and as a bonus for my home environment is was even green.

I quickly measured out 64 feet and then did the connection things. As with most of Eastern North America it was a rather wet day.

Around 4pm locally the rain stopped and I was able to remove the old wire and install the new antenna, once again using the fir trees on the edge of my yard for camo as not draw attention to the antenna.

The SWR is pretty good especially for a wire hidden in the branches:

6m – 2.5:1, 10m – 1.7:1, 12m- 1.2:2, 15m – 1.6:1

20m – 2.0:1, 40m – 1.3:1, 80m – 3.0:1

The bands are not the best, but signal reports (90w output pwr) were fairly well (S7-S9+) with the stations that I was able to contact.

All in all for what it is…. I’m impressed and the best part is that using the built in auto tuner on my Yaesu FT991a I can easily bring it down to 1:1 on all the bands listed above.

The results are the same on my Yaesu FT891 with the same style of balun and a 64 foot length of quality (Red) Princess Auto 18 ga automotive wire. The only real difference is that as I use the 891 with no tuner I have to be careful on some of the bands.

As the new install gets more use I will let you know if there are any “issues” with its performance.

73bob

There has been lots happening and no time to keep you in the loop and so here (once again) is the “Coles Notes” version.

The POTA Support your Parks event went better than I expected.

There were some family issues that kept me from taking my FT891 out into the local parks for activation.

However I did manage (as a hunter) to get 35 activators in my log with resulted in 6 new parks in my log as I slowly (very slowly) get towards the 3000 unique Parks in my log.

A bit of a “shucks” happened when a deal I had made for some new equipment for the shack fell through.

The other party (to his credit) cancelled the deal when he found out there was problem with the radio I was about to acquire from him.

It will need major repairs and most likely will not be finding its way into my shack.

And the final “downer” for the week happened yesterday. I entered a contest at our local FM broadcast radio station with the prize being a trip for 2 on a River Cruise along the St Lawrence River and last week they informed me that I won the trip for 2. Liz and I started to make plans

Yesterday I got given notice that the cruise had been cancelled and on the Radio Stations website I found this:

The radio stations, and its TV affiliate has laid off most/all of their on air staff as their Parent Company Corus Entertainment tries to restructure so they can stay afloat (no pun intended).

This is part an an email sent to me (the day after I got notified by the ticket agent that they had cancelled) by Corus which reads as follows”

“I want to thank you for supporting 96.3 BIG FM, and for purchasing tickets to the boat cruise.  Due to recent staff changes, we don’t think it’s the appropriate time to be holding a party boat cruise and have decided to cancel the event.“

Liz was looking forward to the evening out and we will still go somewhere but our feet will stay dry. (a small pun intended here)

Thinking about an earlier “3 Hour Cruise” from the past…has me thinking that keeping dry might be a good thing .

This would be the Punny side of life I guess…

73bob

There has been lots happening and no time to keep you in the loop and so here (once again) is the “Coles Notes” version.

The POTA Support your Parks event went better than I expected.

There were some family issues that kept me from taking my FT891 out into the local parks for activation.

However I did manage (as a hunter) to get 35 activators in my log with resulted in 6 new parks in my log as I slowly (very slowly) get towards the 3000 unique Parks in my log.

A bit of a “shucks” happened when a deal I had made for some new equipment for the shack fell through.

The other party (to his credit) cancelled the deal when he found out there was problem with the radio I was about to acquire from him.

It will need major repairs and most likely will not be finding its way into my shack.

And the final “downer” for the week happened yesterday. I entered a contest at our local FM broadcast radio station with the prize being a trip for 2 on a River Cruise along the St Lawrence River and last week they informed me that I won the trip for 2. Liz and I started to make plans

Yesterday I got given notice that the cruise had been cancelled and on the Radio Stations website I found this:

The radio stations, and its TV affiliate has laid off most/all of their on air staff as their Parent Company Corus Entertainment tries to restructure so they can stay afloat (no pun intended).

This is part an an email sent to me (the day after I got notified by the ticket agent that they had cancelled) by Corus which reads as follows”

“I want to thank you for supporting 96.3 BIG FM, and for purchasing tickets to the boat cruise.  Due to recent staff changes, we don’t think it’s the appropriate time to be holding a party boat cruise and have decided to cancel the event.“

Liz was looking forward to the evening out and we will still go somewhere but our feet will stay dry. (a small pun intended here)

Thinking about an earlier “3 Hour Cruise” from the past…has me thinking that keeping dry might be a good thing .

This would be the Punny side of life I guess…

73bob

If you were checking the Trans Provincial Net Website you might of noticed a small blurb mentioning I will be taking the summer off.

“Bob VA3QV will be away starting 18th May till  September 2024.”

I currently cover the 11am (EST) hour 5 days a week and I do enjoy being a NCS…. But… Now that the nicer weather is finally looking like it might arrive… I decided I would prefer to spend it doing other stuff compared to sitting in the shack for a while.

No doubt that radio will be a big part of my summer but it won’t be from the shack unless its raining.

As always if I am doing (or have done) anything interesting in radio you will be able to read about it right here.

73bob