Another Hamfest is over… 160 mile round trip for me (ok, plus a diversion where I followed the signs to a service station which were ok until the last junction and I ended up on another motorway!!) but not a bad trip. Except for the roadworks on the A1… Anyway, a 6/4/2/70cm collinear came home with me and it is now installed in the loft replacing the existing 2/70cm one. Same cable etc. I also finished off the boarding over one bedroom – surprisingly the one where the antenna is and no, that’s not the reason for completing the boarding. Honest!

It has, as one may expect very little gain at 6m and 4m but replaces the 4m ground plane that I had and was rather in the way. Plus I never had any form of vertical for 6m.

I also managed to today the antennas up a bit. The 70cm big wheel is now no longer under the 2m big wheel and has its own place farther away. The 2m big wheel has moved so I can actually walk across the loft without needing to crawl under it.

I also recently acquired 2m and a 70cm QFH antennas from ft8.co.uk. These are really well made, being constructed from copper pipe and waterproofed. I will be experimenting with QFH antennas but wanted proper ones due to (a) being too lazy to build right now and (b) even when I do build one I need something to compare it to. Currently only the 70cm one in set up, in the loft again, and replacing a discone which was also in the way. This feeds a Cross Country Wireless HF-UHF antenna splitter and provides the antenna for three LoRa modules, one for TinyGS, one for radiosondes and one is a LoRa APRS iGate (RX only). The satellite reception report via the TinyGS console shows the antenna is working really well. My plan though is to replace this with a parasitic Lindenblad (seeing I am building one) and then actually use the two QFH antennas for satellite work. The only downside there is the need for more coax feeds into the shack from the hole in the ceiling, said hole already being full. But at some stage I need to enlarge it to run the LDF4-50A up for the QO100 dish once I move that from the garage wall. That will be a major tidying-up exercise!

Update: this project is evolving. See this page for the latest version. Kits are available in the shop area. The announcement of the MRF300 and MRF101 transistors by NXP in 2018 has generated quite a spark of interest in the amateur radio community and as soon as I learned about them I wanted to get some […]