[AK-VHF] Antenna work with man-lift

[Brandon Clark]

That's great to hear that some things are coming together with your station Ed. I know you've been fighting with equipment all year, and that gets exasperating quickly.

Not much new on my side of the inlet. The new HF antenna is holding up well. This fall I'm going to do some much needed updates to my website, so I'll put up photos of the antenna, balun, and choke.

The big VHF/UHF project for the winter will be a rebuild of the river antenna stack. The yagis are all good to go, but I will be rebuilding the mount that connects the rotator to the cross bars on the camper shell. The prior setup used uni-strut to bolt to the shell, and then a fabricated wood base to connect the uni-strut to the rotator.

The new setup is going to be all steel throughout, using angle iron to bolt to the camper shell, and a new steel bracket to attach the rotator on. When it's all done it should be a much stronger (and less fugly) setup. I'm also going to try to integrate cable routing to clean up the coax and rotator cable mess, rather than having stuff looped and zip tied on top of the truck.

Brandon

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-------- Original Message --------
On Oct 12, 2021, 20:54, Ed Cole wrote:

> Beautiful Fall day in the Sun and calm air. A bit chilly at 9:30am but
> wormed up at day went on.
>
> Fixed three things:
>
> Second 7-element 6m yagis now works; combined gain is 15.75 dBi (free
> space). Ground gain possible up to 20 dBi.
>
> Just in time to work FO/W7GJ on Rimatara Island and TM7MB on Hiva Oa
> Island in French Polynesia (W7GJ 6m-eme Dxpedition).
>
> Also got PL259 connector installed on second 2m KLM-11 yagi but still
> bad SWR* so didn't Install the 2-way splitter. but used a single LMR-400
> cable previously used for 6m for single jumper to the LMR-600 tower
> line. *LMR-400 cable showing aluminum oxydation/contamination, so cable
> will have to be replaced (not enough time, today)
>
> Using 147.300 repeater for test, single yagi produces S8/S9 return
> signal where vertical shows S7.5. Approx 10-dB improvement. Antenna at
> 45-feet.
>
> Also found bent director on 432-18 yagi touching driven element;
> straightened and now SWR is 1.2 432-446. Still need to complete cabling
> of the remote 100w PA and Preamp, before full use is possible.
>
> 73, Ed - KL7UW
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