New Antenna Experiment: 30m Wire.

 Today I made the initial test of the 30m long antenna wire I had lying around. I located a low power (probably absolutely max power 100W) 9:1 UN-UN.

I found a free cable end at the end of the out-house, and strung the wire from there to the low end of the garden. Both ends are only about 2m above ground, and the centre is sagging, so it is only about one meter above ground. There is a lot of room for improvements. The centre should be mounted near the centre of the dipole, i.e. about 5 - 6m above ground, and the end(s) should be higher up as well.

This antenna is right now connected to the IC-705 with about 15m RG-58 cable. Not the best in the world, but for the low frequencies it will work. Surprising that the OZ7IGY beacon is clearly audible on 2m and 70cm, despite the low height. 

The dipole cannot operate on 30m, so the 30m band was tested. A bit of a surprise, a QSO with a French station was easy, even running the 5W from the IC-705.

For now the wire antenna is connected to the '705, and some improvements are in my plans:

- mounting the antenna higher up

- adding some "radials", a 50m long piece, and a 10m long one, to see if the 160m band can be reached with a decent SWR. Right now the SWR is a bit up-and-down across the HF bands, starting being low-ish around 3.5MHz.

- adding a common mode choke at the feed point, so I can avoid RF running into the shack (and some of the noise being picked up on the outside of the cable).

If the weather permits, some of this will happen tomorrow, as well as weather proofing the setup.

The dipole is now connected to the IC-7300, and can be used on 4-6-10-12-15-17-20-40-80m, using the built-in tuner on some bands. At the moment the '7300 has been set to 5W out on the HF bands, but there is, of course some reserve if I *really* want to work a station - new country or the like.

I am expecting some packages tomorrow, so I can start improving the solar power setup. I expect to add the IC-7300 as one more load for the solar power setup, so in essence the "mainly QRP" setup will running on solar only.