[SixClub] Best laid plans...

[K8RI on Six]

I believe it was about a week ago, I said I hoped to have the BU antenna 
up the next day...Welll... The new AV640 is finally together and on the 
saw horses next to the R8 vertical.
Seems as I ended up on weight restrictions for a while...Again!
At least no more heart attacks or strokes.

I had wanted to try something different even though I'd really been 
impressed with the low SWR and band width of the AV-640 as well as the 
dimensions being spot of to get the proper frequency.

When I put the R8 up only the 40 meter band was close.  Six was 
unusable. The 3:1 SWR was supposed to cover all of 20, but the thing was 
resonant at 14.300, meaning I could only cover half the band with a 
tuner.  I'd also power limited more than the AV640.  The AV640 will run 
the legal limit SSB and CW while the R8 is (without going out to the 
shop to look it up) 1500 W SSB with no speech processing and either 600 
or 800 W on CW.  Both are 500W on digital.

At any rate, the R-8 was useless on all bands except 40. I thought 
possibly it might be something I did but our club president helped a new 
ham put one together a couple weeks back and they finally gave up and 
built their own matching network.

"Unfortunately" this new AV640 ran into some QC issues. A quick call to 
Tom at hy-Gain solved those, but they were items that should never have 
come up.  Just some tubing with the wrong threads and 4 bolt holes too 
close together.  They sent me new parts and are very good at standing 
behind the antennas.

Although when looked at side-by-side the R-8 looks stronger. It's not! 
Both antennas are pretty much the same strength.  BTW they were designed 
by the same person.

Sooo... N8ERF came over and move the AV-640 out to the saw horses which 
have the R-8 laying on them, still mounted on the 24' mast. I just need 
to remove the R-8 and install the AV-640 onto the mast.  BTW after 
running all the bands on the R-8 through the VNI I never even put power 
to it.  Unfortunately my wife broke up the shipping boxes and they went 
to the recycler yesterday.

So I'm a good week behind, but making progress.

73

Roger (K8RI)