New Bracket

Last week I put a new bracket on the wall, with a pulley on the end. 

This makes it easy to experiment with antennas, in this case an Alpha Delta DXCC.  It's a fan dipole, with elements resonant on the 10m, 20m and 40m bands and with a loaded section to resonate on 80m (albeit less efficiently and with rather high Q).  The 40m section is also resonant on 15m (third harmonic, as there is a bit of rounding involved in the band designations).

I had the DXCC up already with a string slung over the mount for the TV aerial, but it was a pain to get up and down for adjustments, not all that high, and was fouling the wall.  This arrangement is much neater.


The SWR of the antenna on transmit has come down nicely thanks to a bit more height and space.  The reception seems a little improved too, although it's hard to tell as band conditions are better than they have been for a while just now and things were improving anyway.

I'll play with this configuration for a while, but might have some other experiments too... 

I'm Considering mounting a second VHF/UHF vertical antenna on this pole for the radio I use for digital repeaters.  That might give me a bit more flexibility and save some swapping of antenna connections when I'm using the station for different things, but then again it might be overkill...  On the other hand for digital repeaters I have plenty of power and can probably get away without investing too heavily in either antenna or coax...