10-08-2024, 04:35 PM
Yesterday and today, between bouts of chainsawing and mulching, I managed to make some, well, progress.
The sweeps of the commercially made G5RV Jnr were all over the place. Nothing where it should be and all very shallow - nothing under 4:1. So the decision was made to replace it with a custom made one. Better, it actually had meaningful dips all half a MHz above where they should be.
So made it half a metre longer on each leg and nothing changed. Mucked around a bit and in the end I decided to leave it for another day.
Next, on the other side of the "yardarm" up went a 20m dipole that I had used in Sydney as a steep inverted V. The sweeps of it were OK with the
lowest VSWR being just below the 20m band. Up, test, down, trim, repeat.
The VNA shows it around 1.3:1 mid band. Good enough for now.
I then pulled down the G5RV from the other side of the yardarm. 20m dipole went to 1.6:1. So more fiddling. Back down to 1.3:1.
So I plugged it into the radio, and dithered around in menus to get it out of digital and into something that would work with SSB. Tuned up OK. Switched to USB on 14MHz and no output. More mucking around (in Sydney I was unable to use voice for several years due to QRM).
Then it hit me.
The microphone wasn't plugged in... There's ya problem.
SB6A in Sweden was calling CQ. So I answered. Straight in. 9&5. Quite pleased...
The sweeps of the commercially made G5RV Jnr were all over the place. Nothing where it should be and all very shallow - nothing under 4:1. So the decision was made to replace it with a custom made one. Better, it actually had meaningful dips all half a MHz above where they should be.
So made it half a metre longer on each leg and nothing changed. Mucked around a bit and in the end I decided to leave it for another day.
Next, on the other side of the "yardarm" up went a 20m dipole that I had used in Sydney as a steep inverted V. The sweeps of it were OK with the
lowest VSWR being just below the 20m band. Up, test, down, trim, repeat.
The VNA shows it around 1.3:1 mid band. Good enough for now.
I then pulled down the G5RV from the other side of the yardarm. 20m dipole went to 1.6:1. So more fiddling. Back down to 1.3:1.
So I plugged it into the radio, and dithered around in menus to get it out of digital and into something that would work with SSB. Tuned up OK. Switched to USB on 14MHz and no output. More mucking around (in Sydney I was unable to use voice for several years due to QRM).
Then it hit me.
The microphone wasn't plugged in... There's ya problem.
SB6A in Sweden was calling CQ. So I answered. Straight in. 9&5. Quite pleased...