2016-09-01

Camouflaged Antenna up and Running

We have had some dry weather, so here is some antenna activity :

My R-6000 antenna has been spray painted green, and with some assistance from OZ7OVE and OZ1LH is now mounted with the feed point at 6m height.

Two days later I moved the antenna (alone), it took much of a day, in order to avoid destroying anything, and started camouflage painting mast pieces I have for the next antennas to be erected.

The improvement due to the height is noticeable on the higher bands, although the 6m signals from the R-6000 are still weaker than on my V-2000.

Update : Picture : The contrast between a camouflaged and non camouflaged antenna :


And - the signals from my 4m antenna changed. With two local stations about 20km away one got a bit stronger and the other a bit weaker on 4m.

Looks like I will have to do some 6m antenna building activities later.

Next up for a paint job is my 4m antenna, and that one will hopefully be mounted a bit higher than it is now.

Before the winter season I should be able to run all bands from 80m to 70cm in some capacity, possibly also 23cm. The HF dipole antenna should be back up and combined with the cable for the 4m antenna (yes, with a diplexer or triplexer). Some small 2m/70cm verticals should be mounted discreetly for local QSOs, and possibly I will use one of them as a pure receiving antenna (likely a short out-of resonance 3 band 2m/70cm/23cm vertical).