I finally got some wire in the air. Well, not very much and not very high, but at least it is outside. One end is attached to an eye bolt outside the shack window positioned so I can reach it with the window open wide. From there the wire runs down to the workshop. I am not exactly sure of the length, Google Maps suggests just short of 30 feet. So pretty short! But it works, and the FT450D internal tuner can cope with it from 30m to 6m, except for 12m. Anything lower than 30m has SWR approaching 3 but otherwise it seems to be ok. Pity the sun is being naughty right now but it gets a good spread across much of Europe on 20m.

The wire feeds a 9:1 (I think!) unun and a 1:1 choke, then RG58 (*) to the patch panel. The cable needs to be routed yet as it is currently just running through the open window.

Signals received are definitely stronger than with the loft wire and Z11 tuner but it is hard to say exactly how much because of the time taken to swap leads, disable or enable the internal tuner, and tune the wire during which time the watched FT8 QSOs have ended and moved etc. However, with the TS2000X on and connected to the loft wire a random Italian FT8 signal was -17 on the TS2000X + loft wire and -9 on the FT450D + new external wire. Plus the waterfall on the two rigs definitely shows the advantage of the external wire. In fact, the wire length is probably similar to the existing loft wire.

So now I really must get round to running a wire up the garden which will be a lot longer.

(* Typical. I put RB58 instead of RG58, didn’t proof read, turned everything off for work and just got back to edit it now!)

So… that time of year again! Where did the last 63 go… Currently all my antennas are in the loft and this is something I have wanted to address for far too long. So 2024 is going to see some actual metal outdoors.

First on the list is the collinear for GB7RVB. The plan there is to use a TK bracket and put it up on a mast so it is just above the roofline. The issue I will have here is our house is silhouetted against the backdrop of far away hills and I just know there will be complaints. But as we do not have an external TV antenna there are many oversized examples around where people have clearly been done over by unscrupulous installers. We can see Emley Moor mast to the south plus at least two repeaters and our 6 element or so TV antenna in the loft provides perfectly good signal strengths so why the large ‘digital’ antennas? Anyway, they cannot really whinge at me for a collinear given all that metalwork along the rooflines. That’s my defence anyway! Depending on complaints, or hopefully the lack thereof it will probably get a coup, of feet higher as time goes on…

Next the QO100 dish needs to move to the house wall. The current location is about 5 foot off the ground and unsuitable for the new radiation rules. Siting it on the house wall avoids this and means I can up the power to DATV levels.

And for HF… my initial plan is for a random wire the length of the garden, from the house wall to the trees at the top. I have the wire and rope and assorted clamps etc.

I hope I don’t need to revisit this page in 2025 and still have work to do!