Fault in the 23cm Antenna System.

There seems to be a fault in my temporary 23cm antenna system.

The signal disappears intermittently, and I suspect a fault in the connector for the cable bypassing the rotator. I have ordered better cables and N-connectors, so as soon as possible that cable should be replaced. Another option could be intermittent voltage to the preamplifier from the radio (IC9700), but the cable/connector fault is the most likely.

I will need to get some assistance from some local ham(s), as the antenna should be mounted about 2m higher, still in a temporary position. I cannot do that alone. The risk of damaging the antenna is too high.As the antenna is standing in my backyard and surrounded by houses and trees, every meter in height will help, so it will be interesting to see how much the signals will improve.

At a later stage I epxect to mount the antenna in 8-9m height. That is what I can do here. There will still be trees in the way in some directions, but it should be above houses in most directions.

Small Improvement of the 23cm Antenna System.

The past few days I got all the parts located for my X7000 antenna. This is a 5m long 2m/70cm/23cm vertical, so it should have a decent performance when used for 23cm alone. Today I got the X5000 (1.8m long) antenna replaced with the X7000. The feed point is a bit lower for this one, but due to its length the top of the antenna is about 2m higher than that of the X5000 was.

I also got a preamplifier mounted close to the antenna, but due to the high cable loss (maybe less than 10dB) the effective TX power is not much more than 1W, and the feed point is rather low, about 4m.

The signal strength of the "local" beacon is a bit higher on average, but not significantly, probably mostly due to the cross polarization loss.

The first experiment was with the usual local stations, and the received signals were not surprisingly well improved. The transmitted signal was improved, too. Progress.

A test with a station a bit further away was a part success. I could hear the station intermittently (sounded like a mobile station with flutter/fading), but no reception of my signal.

More tests are needed when other stations become active and available for experiments.