I finally got the HFC-3015V installed today, apparently the hottest day this year so far, I tried installing the antenna without placing any wood within the PVC pipe where it bolts to the mast and found it to be impossible to fix securely without it crushing the tube so it definitely requires the extra wood inside.
The installation instructions say to fit with a counterpoise if going to used on 17, 20 and 40m bands however doesn't give any recommendations on length or amount of counterpoises required. I ended up fitting two, approximately 4 metres long.
The antenna is fitted with an LDG RT-100 ATU on a short 0.5m RG58 patch lead and feed back to the shack with some Ecoflex 10 I had spare.
I've not had a good chance to try the antenna out yet but checked to see how it would match, on 20m it gave an VSWR of 1.6:1 which wasn't too awful however on 40m I got a VSWR of 1:1 which was quite impressive now this doesn't of course mean it's going to radiate well but least it's matching on the two bands I use the most.
More to come once I've used the beast for awhile.
No comments:
Post a Comment