hf

Well, this afternoon I decided to fix a couple of problems with the bicycle mobile… firstly, the mounting of one noisy headlamp.  I’ve re-done the mount using a more solid piece of plastic this time, so we shall see how it goes.  No noise on HF so things are looking up there.  I also fixed the headset connection which was causing speakers to drop out… the problem turned out to be in the headset connection on the bike, rather than in the helmet.

It was approaching 2PM and thus nearly time for the daily Travellers net on 21.185MHz USB.  I’ve never made a contact on 15m before, but knew the antenna did tune up there, so I gave it a shot.  Ross VK5KMH popped up with a 58 signal out of Adelaide listening… after a prolonged silence, I decided to throw a call out.  Ross responded, reporting my signal into his station was also a 58 signal.

This was from the driveway at my home location, using 100W transmit power (not far from where I reached VK100WIA on 20m with a CB whip).  So evidently this home brew whip works quite well on 15m.  I have since brought the FT-897D inside and plugged it into my G5RV-like antenna, and after moving off frequency to tune, I notice Ross is still a 58 signal, so evidently my HF antenna doesn’t do much better than the whip does.