Bxhome

Dad and me discussed several times about using our 1M mast segments as vertical antenna. After reading blog of Leo JJ8KGZ and his experiments with similiar antenna(s). I reopened this topic again and finaly dad and me went out to near peak try to build 1/4 wave vertical from our mast on 20M.

Dad loaded his 70MHz antenna. This weekend was 2nd subregional VHF/UHF contest, I took also ioIO antenna (144/430MHz) with tripod too. Weather was fine, it was sunny and little bit windy.

I quickly errected 5M high mast on champagne bottle as insulator. Then we meassured 11 radials and I soldered them to prepared base plate. After adding extra capacitance we finished with SWR 1:1.0 14.0–14.35MHz, nice! Worked several stations across Europe and Middle East. Heard Japan and US east coast too.

On 1400z started 2nd subregional contest. Unfortunatelly ioIO antenna was partly unassembled, so I forgot reflector of 2M part in garage. This caused little higher SWR on 2M and I used 5W only, it was fun to see reactions of big guns to my weak signal :-) I heard DL and YU7! Overall approx 30 QSO on 2m/70cm into OK, OM, OE with this lousy antenna in low height with low power.

Finally, we had a lot of fun and success in antenna construction and enjoyed this ham radio event outside home. Today we are already planning to try 5/8 wave vertical on 20M..