Dear All,
Many thanks to all the stations who have worked me during the last
week or so, for the very warm welcome I have received, and their
patience with my patchy morse capabilities! It has made all the
work involved in getting on LF thoroughly worthwhile.
Some details of my station:
Location: Brookmans Park, near Hatfield, Herts - just across the
road from the well known MF broadcast site - locator IO91VR.
Please note - the address in the call book is now superceded - but
any mail to that address will be re-directed OK for the forseeable
future.
TX: 100W from VFO & modified Maplin mosfet audio amp - manual
CW only at the moment.
RX: Homebrew superhet covering 0-150kHz. About 400Hz
bandwidth.
Antenna: Inverted L, 30m long and 5m high, two wires in top
section, joined at feed end and spaced 4m apart at far end.
About 8 ground rods spread around garden. Matching by adjustable
series loading coils, and multi-tapped ferrite cored transformer.
Aerial current 1.4A
Best DX to date - GW4ALG, PA0SE, MM0ALM, ON6ND.
Regarding the discussion on insulators, I am using W.H.Westlake's
4 inch "dog bone" insulators (see RadComm) - these are made of
some resilient black plastic, seem to be very strong, and I have
experienced no problems operating in the wet. I realise that I am
running quite QRP compared to some stations, but they are light
enough to string 2 or 3 in series if breakdown were a problem.
They seem quite a good deal at 75p.
I have also been playing with 10m telescopic fiberglass poles, of
the same type shown on GW4ALG's web pages, to prop up the
middle of my antenna and so gain a few metres. Like Steve, I
found these whipped about in the wind a lot, but have now guyed
them using monofilament "strimmer line" from a garden shop, tied
round the antenna wires with no further insulation. These were not
harmed by operating in the rain either, even with the key held down
continuously for 30 seconds.
I expect to be on LF on several days over the holiday period -
hope to hear you there!
Cheers,
Jim Moritz, M0BMU
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