[TVARC] A stunning 10M antenna

[Dennis McKinney]

You know Pim, they say when 10m is open you can work the world with a wet
noodle. Maybe it's true.. 😄😄

Dennis N0SMX

On Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 12:41 PM William De Miranda <pim.rdm34 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I worked (SSB, phone ) about 20 stations (US, Canada, Brazil and Colombia)
> dabbling in last weekend’s 10 M contest, with either of the following
> antennas:
> 1. An MFJ Remote auto tuner feeding a 1 foot #14 wire, one foot above the
> grass, or
> 2. Capacitive coupling to a piece of approx. 7 feet #14 ground wire,
> attached to my vertical via a switch at the base of my vertical, and a
> ground wire draping 1 foot above the grass to about 2 ft above the grass,
> thence attached to a ground rod at the base of the house.
> Here is how it happened:
> A couple of month ago I purchased an MFJ 600W remote antenna tuner from a
> club member, and installed it in a waterproof box underneath my vertical
> (Eagle One 31’ whip). Because the tuner is connected directly to the
> antenna above it, I decided I needed a lightning disconnect and grounding
> switch at the antenna, in a addition to the grounding antenna switch
> mounted outside the house, about 7 ft away. I purchased a simple SPDT 20A
> switch and installed it on the tripod at the base of the vertical. The
> antenna wire  was connected to the center contact, the tuner feed wire to
> the upper, and the ground wire was connected to the lower contact and
> routed as described above. I was planning to bury it below ground at a
> later date.
> When starting the 10M transmission responding to CQs of the contest, I
> could not get a good match with the remote tuner (duh), so I turned it off,
> and used my trusty Icom AT-500 tuner in the shack, which provided a decent
> match 😳.
> Today, when I went outside to turn the antenna switch to ground because of
> possible lightning forecast, I was stunned to see, it was still grounded. I
> forgot to turn it back on after the last batch of bad weather a week or so
> ago.
> So how did my signal get out last weekend?Was the tuner, terminating to a
> 1 ft piece of wire, one ft above the ground enough???
> Or was there a capacitive coupling between the switch contacts (about 1/4
> “ spacing) so that an off center fed, 38 ft antenna was formed with the
> feedpoint 7 ft above ground??
> Anyone?
> Pim, de K4PIM
>
> Sent from my iPhone
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