New antennas and activity

View from the front of the house

After the trials and tribulations getting planning permission for my mast, and several setbacks since then I have finally got the antennas up and certainly working, at least on 2 metres and 70 centimetres. I have not yet fired up the transverter for 23 cms (I hope it still works after all these years), but I am operational on the two lower bands.

So how is the receive set-up? On 2 metres I can hear the Belgian beacon ON0VHF on 144.418MHz consistently just above the noise, but at least as well with my 7 element yagi as the Hockley shop down the road used to with their 20 elements. This is in flat conditions, even poor. I have a GaAs FET preamplifier for 2 metres and am using Ecoflex 15 feeder, but to my ears the readability is not improved by the preamp, which says a lot for the “front end” of the old FT290R I am using as the main transceiver for the moment.

Much to my surprise I can also hear ON0VHF above the noise on 70 centimetres using my 2 metres rig’s stablemate, an FT790R, also dating from the early Eighties.

Currently I have 25 watts on 144 MHz and have got into Lincolnshire with 1 watt on 70 centimetres, a distance of about 87 miles in flat conditions, and my report was 57.

There is a lot to come, especially when conditions may be more favourable.

7 element LFA yagi for 2 metres, 13 element LFA yagi for 70 centimetres and 23 element Tonna for 23 centimetres.