[ADXA] directionally challenged

[rcurt at centurytel.net]

Good to see you back! I'm thinking that direction is way overrated anyway. I have been working on a "secret" pennant project. I think you may have slipped into my "lab" and took a peek at my "engineering" documents. I would send a picture, but I'm on my PC and the pictures are on my phone, and never the twain have met. The short story of this project is I am attempting to design a circuit  that will allow a person to reverse directions of the pennant without actually moving the pennant I haven't a clue if it will work, but I should know in the next week or 2. 


I'm all for banning ragweed and noise. Let's start a petition!


Randy/W5ZJ....pics will follow from my phone.


On Thu, 4 Dec, 2025 at 4:26 PM, Dennis Schaefer <dennisw5rz at gmail.com> wrote:
 

To: adxa

Which way is up?


During the DX contest, I turned the beam SE and worked ZF5T quickly on several bands.  They were booming in, with a big signal.  Saturday morning, I noticed  EU was weaker than I expected and ZF was coming in better from about 60 degrees.  Sticking with BIC guidelines, I couldn’t be bothered to go outside and actually look at the antenna.  



I tried unsuccessfully to work 4U1UN, a band counter on 10M.  The signal was best around 300 degrees.  I finally went out and looked,  and discovered the antenna was off course.  EU was much stronger when the indicator showed NW.  This was more than calibration could fix, so I corrected the rotator scale with a dry erase pen and will deal with it soon.  (I did bag 4U1UN once I got this figured out).  


Since my dead trees have been removed, I can put the Pennant receive antenna back up.  Last year, my main noise source was to the South so I put the null toward that direction.  The South noise source has disappeared.  I never did figure out where it was coming from.  Now the noise is from the power pole that is to the North.  Putting the null to the North is not ideal for DX but I think I would get the best S/N by doing that.   I need to figure out a new ideal location for the pennant and how to steer the null.  The weather is not cooperating with this.   


Maybe I should give the pole a few whacks with the BFH.  Although I have never done that, nope, never, I have heard of it being done.  But again, I’ve never done anything like that, no sir!  Did I mention that I would never do anything like that, and if I did, I would be sure nobody saw me :) 


73,
Dennis/RZ
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