/P (kind of) in the garden...

Had some spare time this morning so setup the Buddipole (with a repaired whip as I'm still waiting for the new delivery from the USA) in the garden. It was a nippy 4 deg's with a bit of a breeze. Didn't use a tuner, just used the MFJ antenna analyser to ensure lowest SWR on the Buddipole.I was specifically listening out for EC1CW on 14.285 as he was due to activate EA1/CR-001 - Buño, but I didn't hear him. Maybe another day. However, his SOTA patches are great! I bought two off him and the quality is superb. See below.

The FT-857D and associated gubbins in the garden today...

 EC1CW -Diago's SOTA Patches all the way from Spain

Anyway, I was able to work the following on 20M:

Date/Time              DE         Band     Freq    Mode    Op        
2011-01-30 13:15:00    RT3LA      20m      14.255  SSB     Mikhail V. Bogomoltsev
2011-01-30 12:58:00    LZ2ZY      20m      14.309  SSB     Radoslav (Rady) Nikolov
2011-01-30 12:49:00    OK4PA      20m      14.274  SSB     Pavel Prihoda       
2011-01-30 12:18:00    RV1CB      20m      14.292  SSB     Oleg N. Ignat'ev

Antenna...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT8rTZhtgAI&feature=youtube_gdata_player


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Test Post...

Is this actually working?

My Rockmite 20, built one day over the Christmas Holiday!

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My VX-8GE

Great little dual-band radio with a built-in GPS for APRS operation.

I join the Buddipole broken whip club!!

I decided to set up portable in the garden to test the new Buddipole antenna I got for Christmas. I was navigating the 20M band for contacts when on 14.200MHz up pops YT1E near Belgrade. I was able to work him and got a 5/9 report off him. Top! The Buddipole works. It works really well!! I tuned around a bit more and was just contemplating a change to another band when the wind tipped it over. Darn!! It's bust one of the whip antenna and so ended the fun for the day. I have ordered replacement whips from Buddipole in the USA, in tactical black this time though at a V.reasonable $12.00, but have learnt a valuable lesson... Always guy your antenna, or anything else that can wave about in the wind for that matter!

 http://www.buddipole.com

FT-857D

New Radio!