Back on the Air
ND2E is back on the air. For a few details about what was done see the article on the web site. So now it is time to get back into a daily operating routine and try to finish the WAS on 20M PSK before we are overtaken by good propagation.
There are still a couple of antenna experiments that need to be finished plus the build of some sort of 6 M antenna for use when we finally get some sun spot activity.
I also need to check out 10 M since my first tests on ten meters didn’t show that I was putting any power into the antenna. I don’t know what was wrong but I do know that the FT-857 is really finicky about the loads it will feed. So it is possible that the AT-897 auto tune unit just isn’t capable of tuning to the 10 M portion of the HexBeam. I need to break out the antenna analyzer and see what kind of impedance I am actually running. I need to characterize the antenna now that I have it in place and have good coax to it.
I will publish the impedance run when I have it finished.