Sidebar Sidebar
  • You can now help support WorldwideDX when you shop on Amazon at no additional cost to you! Simply follow this Shop on Amazon link first and a portion of any purchase is sent to WorldwideDX to help with site costs.

making progress: antenna

R

RustDemon

Active Member
Aug 21, 2011
134
10
28
so My antenna has been really low, no biggie really, it's an Imax 2000 so it got decent range anyway, but my truck has almost the same range. soooooo I grabbed some 2 inch steel conduit and sent the base of the antenna up another 20 feet. I hardly recommend trying to stand up and bolt an almost 30 foot long antenna\mast combo solo, it is virtually impossible. I did manage, but never again I'll have to bait a friend over with some beer and put them to work... :D

haven't tested out my new position yet. I did retest my SWR after my first aborted attempt at lifting failed near catastrophically. Fortunately no damage done. tomorrow afternoon I'll have to play around and see if it helped out any or not.
 

it should help out with the stations that was the weakest to you
before say 30 miles for example. you should see a small increase there
but for close stuff 10 miles or so probly not much. next time get a telescoping
masts. a 50footer woould be good.. enjoy
 
I cant go 50 feet unfortunately. by city ordinance if the antenna falls over (they measure from the base) it has to fall short of any power lines by 10 feet. I am at my limit with as high as I went. I would love to go higher but such as it is.
 
Making more progress today, moving the station indoors from the garage to the office so I no longer have to freeze during the 29 degree mornings whilst drinking mty morning joe at 4 am. I can sit here next to the woodstove and listen to all the idle banter aboyut how cold it is out.

Took me 150 feet of coax to make it to my desk top position. 30 feet of guy wire to span the coax from the garage to the house. 16 staples to tack the coax from the basement entry to the floor hole and 2 beers for moral. I need to pick up one barrel connector and move my power supply in. then the in house shack should be operational. :w00t:
 
Barrel connector installed. swr tested 1.0 to 1.0 perfect tuned. test broadcast hit skip to florida from maine on channel 2 cb band. :w00t::w00t: yes thats a double woot!
 
a little extra height will make a world of difference. I did a mount on the back of one of my old trucks for a base antenna with a 10' pole, then redid the mount with 35' to the base and man, night and day.

Best of luck with your tests, let us know!
 
I have been doing little playing around, trying to shoot the skip on cb bands, I haven't ventured into 10 or 12 meter yet (you have no idea how hard it is not to when you have a radio that's built for it), I have to get my ticket first, unlike some of the other locals around here (in my home town, I'm not talking about on the site) I prefer to do it the right way and legal.

I'm still keeping my eyes open for a decent 2 meter either base or mobile I'm not too picky I would almost prefer a mobile because of the resilience and compactness of the units. I would almost prefer mobile because I can stick it straight into the 3 tier bracket I made for mobile units


For some reason I only really seem to catch any skip from the south west of me, which is not a bad thing since I live in the north east of the country but I would like to catch some more from straight west of me. any one know the best time of day to catch skip from the west? pre-sunset? I'm pretty sure I can hear texas and mexico at certain times, but I can't seem to push hard enough to reach them.

also one more question, would it help If I tried using the upper or lower side bands to chat with distance skip?
 

dxChat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.


      Top Bottom
      Back