I went to help members of the SPARC club take down Doug, KB0SDQ’s 50ft tower since he’s moving.  He had a hexbeam on the top, he said it worked really well, I bet it did up there.  We had a little issue with the rope as we lowered it down with a truck and one of the hexbeam support poles broke.  Quite a few people there so we made quick work of the project.  

So I got the hexbeam installed, took quite a bit of work but wow the reception is significantly better than my old off center fed dipole. This is the NA4RR model.  The hexbeam itself was really easy to put together.   I had issues with the mast.  Lots of issues.  The previous antenna was built with military camo poles which are 1.75″.  1.75″ leaves enough room to level the pole in the tripod so I figured I would go with that size for the mast.  I figured thicker was better so I ordered 1.75″ aluminum tubing with 1/4″ thickness.  For some reason I expected the antenna would have a clamp for…

I used some military camo poles I picked up at Hamacation to make a higher mast for my 80m OCF dipole. This added about 12ft to the top. I don’t notice a huge difference and the SWR got worse which was unexpected. I’m still able to get through pileups into Europe and have been making contacts. I’ve got my eye on a hex beam with a rotor for the next antenna. I’ve been using the club station remotely and rotator with gain makes a huge difference.

Can’t get enough antenna. One end of my lot to the other is 133ft, which is just about enough for an 80m off center fed dipole. This antenna requires a 4:1 balun. I went with an MFJ again because of price and because it had next day Amazon Prime. At some point I will upgrade to a Balun Designs I think, because they make one with a built in choke for antennas installed above buildings. 80m OCF dipoles are pretty cool because they are resonant on 80m, 40m, 20m, 17m, 12m and 10m. With the tuner I was able to make FT8 contacts on 160m, 60m, 30m and 6m also,…

It didn’t take long for the “more!” feeling and I quickly added 40m speaker wire to the balun and put it on a roof tripod. I did a fan dipole in an X pattern on the roof. This got me on 40m and 20m. I used the 468/f formula to measure out the speaker wire. By this point I also joined the local amateur radio club and one of the guys came over with an analyzer and I was pretty close to resonant right in the middle of the bands.  

After doing quite a bit of research I purchased a used Icom 7410 radio. I was looking for a radio with USB connection for digital modes and the ability to do an IF tap for a panadapter since I already had a couple RTL-SDR dongles. I found a Icom 7410 on eHam classifieds that had the filters and the IF tap already installed and at a good price. At the time the 7300’s were still going for close to retail used so I figured I could use the $500+ savings for other gear. I received the radio about a week before my callsign appeared on the FCC database(it was a long week)….