What a week, high winds torrential rain and me with Antenna work to do. I managed between the gusts and during mere showers to erect a Marconi T antenna. It’s only small simple affair 6m high at either end 10m of flat top, fed off centre. I read later (too late) that it is best to keep the top symmetrical.
Then comes the matching coil work, experimenting with different sizes and methods of tuning. Again now that has moved outside with high winds and rain, temporary, not so mechanically sound set ups are a problem.
I am not convinced that a Variometer is an efficient way of tuning, so I didn’t build one. I tried large coils, compound coils and small coils, I will go into that later with some pictures.
Aerial Current shows a nice 50ohm match on my little current meter.
For now, some results, I was pleased to see WSPR reports from my first transmission today.
2009-11-28 13:00 G4JNT 0.503850 -8 0 IO90iv 0.2 G3XVL JO02nb 212 51
2009-11-28 12:56 G3ZJO 0.503846 -26 -1 IO92ng 0.05 G3XVL JO02nb 138 99
2009-11-28 12:56 G3ZJO 0.503846 -33 -1 IO92ng 0.05 M0BMU IO91vr 76 143
2009-11-28 12:52 G4JNT 0.503850 -2 0 IO90iv 0.2 M0BMU IO91vr 119 39
It is not often that my signal has stained the database like that on this band.
The power level is neither the RF or ERP the PA gives me 160mW into 50ohms if my antenna is 1% efficient I shall be surprised so if I say 1.6mW ERP I am probably bragging.
So I now own 2 lines on the coverage map on 500KHz.
Radio - LF/MF to Microwaves 