It has been a very long time since I have posted anything on here mostly because I have been inactive in the hobby. I spent a lot of my spare time dedicated to pipe band work/play and when things get busy in life our "lower tier" hobbies go onto the sidelines. This happened with radio. I also spent time working with vintage stereo receivers/speakers and I still am a big fan of physical media. I do, however, think that the time has come to get back on the air. I have actually set my bagpipes down for now for a number of reasons which I won't get into here but they are not gone...just off to the side after 13 years.
This time of year always screams "antenna work" for some reason. I think I have always been more of a winter operator so this feels like the start of the season...kind of like a hockey team. This past weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving) I finally took some time to try out one of the projects I have been planning for. I had purchased a 20' fishing pole similar to the old Wonderpole I had used for years which no longer seems to be available. I am trying out a "random" wire vertical (29') wrapped around the pole and mounted on a camera tripod with an MFJ-16010 L-tuner which is designed for random wire antennas. The tuner says that, for a random wire, no ground wire is needed. Yesterday I set this up for the first time and decided to try it both ways. I first tried with no wire on the ground side and then I added one because it just feels wrong without and I could find no info on line where someone has used the 16010 in this manner. I did see one YouTube video using it in this manner without a radial or counterpoise and they seemed to be having success however the video was short and not a lot of detail was given. I connected a 17' radial. I went through the bands figuring out the settins on the tuner for each band and was able to get a good match on almost all of the bands from 80 metres thru 15. 12 did not match well. I set up my chair beside the tripod and it felt comfortable again. I have missed it.
I heard some good activity briefly on 20 and 30 but the bands were in rough shape yesterday afternoon here in eastern Ontario. I will venture out again later in the week or next weekend to try again. I was forced to use a power supply as my old battery had lost its ability to hold a charge. I need a new battery as I hate using a power supply which can be noisy.
here are a couple of photos of the setup on the tripod:
The dowel slides into the fishing pole and sits on the 1"x 2" scrap of wood in a hole I drilled so it would have some stability. It seems pretty solid. More testing to come this week and hopefully some contacts with my rusty CW.
Cheers es 72/73
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