Testing out a βNewly builtβ antenna
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 βTransportable/POTAβ 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 β 2.5:1, 10m β 1.7:1, 12m- 1.2:2, 15m β 1.6:1
20m β 2.0:1, 40m β 1.3:1, 80m β 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.
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All in all for what it isβ¦. Iβm 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 βissuesβ with its performance.
73bob