new 80m full size vertical

Finally !  One year after the installation of the basic structure, fantastic home-made work by Franki on5zo, the 80m has been constructed.

I'll never dare to post in detail why we needed a normal car, a small tractor, a 4x4 Jeep and a big tractor to place a piece of iron in the garden, but it has something to do with bad ground quality and a bad judgement of the terrain owner...

Back to the antenna.

In fact it exists of 3 parts : the 9,8m recuperated KT34XA boom, a spiderbeam fiber mast and some pieces to keep the wire (I use a wire for the radiation part in stead of the alu of the boom) away from metallic structures.

One day of testing learned me a lot of things : first with 8 radials laying on the ground I could cut the antenna to a resonant frequency on 3.550 Mhz with an impedance of 53 Ohm.

Second test was to put 8 the radials higher (between 1m and 3m above the ground).  A expected, the resistance came down to 36,6 Ohm, but the resonance point went up to 3795 Khz.  Perfect for SSB DX, but not really foreseen.  This is i.m.o. due to the extra capacitive loading of the hanging radials.

Third test : everthing again on the ground, but 16 radials in stead of 8.  This time resistance showed 46 Ohm (as predicted in ON4UN's low band dxing book) and the resonance point went down to 3524 Khz.

I kept the config like that.

In the middle of the night I went up to test the antenna.
80m band was completely closed, I was the only station. 

After a few minutes of CQing, I looked up reversebeacon.net were my signal reports appeared.
I was heard in PJ3, 9K and had a good signal in VE3.  Best signals came from DL, F en SM, but it was only around 23h30 UTC.

Anyway; this looks good for the future.
For the first time I could use 1,3KW power in stead of the normal 800W delivered by the Acom1000.
Not one single Watt of power return.

Next step : go to at least 32 radials and maybe foresee 60 radials on ground.

QRM was heavy, so I need to continue with the receiving part of the game.  
A first good test seems the Worked all Asian contest in September on Friday night and Sunday evening (because of the SSB fieldday in the same mode/band on Saturday/Sunday).

21m is high, very high, even in a big garden.  I used 2x3 ropes to protect the fiber against wind.

The testing setup with an 2KW unun and Wago clamps to keep radials together.

Finally a blog update

It has been very long time ago that I added a new item to the blog.

To be short some things has been done in order to prepare the next coming years of low sun activity.

- Franki, on5zo, made a metal structure that will be the base for a 80m vertical

- the 2 el 40m is waiting to be installed, but I need my 30m DXCC first

- the 30m dipole has been repaired last week, and since a few days I'm hard chasing new countries.  The counter went from a poor 45 dxcc on 30m last Saturday to 54 this evening

- baluns have been made for 2 beverage on ground antennas to be tested in the coming months.  I bought also a new 4 position remote switch powered over coax to connect the receiving antennas.
And a new rigexpert analyser is also available for the construction of the 80/160m verticals.

- I added a 4th passive 50Mhz element to the Steppir, but I only have 5W (ft817) on 6 meter

- The CW fieldday restricted 40/80/160m co-operating with on5zo was a success : 1st place

- the last 12 months I worked all new countries available on air.  DXCC mixed shows 309, with TN still to be confirmed.


First goal is now 30m dxcc to be earned asap ..

OJ0V QSL status April 2015

Hi Folks,

All QSL (buro, clublog, direct and OQRS) received until April 1st 2015 are finally handled.

A huge amount of buro cards have been delivered to the UBA national QSL manager, so they will arrive shortly to your club.

Average return of direct cards is within 2 days.