Antennas

A week of intermittent attempts at JT-8 on my ham radio failed to make any contacts. Not a single one.

I drove two hours west from Phoenix last Saturday to Quartzite, Arizona for the swapfest at the end of 2016’s week long Quartzfest. The pickings were slim, however, and I came away empty handed.

Ok, Ok, you’re right. It’s a new toy and I wanted to show it off. You’re absolutely right. But I learned some things and can do better on my next wire antenna.

One of my passions is experimenting with antennas, wire antennas for HF to be precise. I want to be able to improvise and adapt to the situation at hand whether I’m at home, traveling on business, or hiking in the desert or deep forest.

… is for younger men.

Regardless, the 40M and 20M dipoles are now installed in the attic. I left a little slippage so that, hopefully, tuning of arm lengths can be done at the feed point – I sure don’t want to crawl out to the end points again. [Phew!]

My wife and I live in Phoenix Arizona. Our house is situated on a nearly square 1960-sized residential lot. I mention the year because city lots have shrunk in the past couple of years and our 100x105 foot property might seem large in some areas these days.