Radio restored

In the Spring of this year (2024) I wrote a short post titled Radio Interrupted. The tree which was acting as my antenna mast was cut down and I had no other options. I didn’t have a working antenna for my home base station (i.e., QTH in radio lingo). This was fine, I really leaned into field operations and have activated parks for Parks on the Air 35 times so far this year.

But colder days are coming and I want to be inside operating my radio where it’s warm.

Antenna mast

I have no trees suitable to secure an antenna to and a suburban lot of 0.8 acres (3238 square meters). So my plan was to secure a mast to the side of my house, convenient to my feedline passthrough. I wanted to have it set up like a hoist or flag mast with a cleat on the bottom so that I can easily experiment with different wire antennas.

I’m not keen on ladders and heights. I knew that if I tried to do this project myself I would likely do a poor job of it. Better to have a professional do it. I reached out to New England Antenna. Gary, the owner, chatted with me on the phone and we came up with a plan. He did a great job installing exactly what I wanted, a simple mast and lanyard setup.

With a lanyard setup on a side-mounted mast it’s really easy to experiment with different wire antennas

40 meter end-fed half-wave (EFHW)

Although I like building my own antennas, it seemed that my 1:49 unun transformer wasn’t working properly. I’ve been too busy with work and Scouting to build kits; I really just wanted to get on the air. So I went ahead and ordered a commercial antenna. The one that I chose and am really happy with is an end-fed half-wave (EFHW) sold by KO4FSZ. It is really well priced. I took it out of the package and hoisted it up to begin using it right away. I didn’t tune or trim the antenna at all.

I now have the 40, 20, 15 and 10 meter bands with a resonant antenna. At 64 feet, the antenna barely fits into my yard when set up in an inverted V configuration.

Onward

I haven’t had a 40 meter antenna for a while. It’s nice to get on a band that has good night-time propagation.

I’m excited that with my mast and lanyard setup I can experiment with different wire antennas. In the future I want to build some monoband dipoles and some G5RV style antennas.