Today, I decided to take advantage of the pleasant weather conditions and set up the Buddipole by the Estuary at Dawesville. I’m still only operating on 20 metres since unfortunately 15 and 10 are always showing fair and poor propogation when I check. hamqsl.com.
I set up at around 6:30 UTC and decided to operate at the Dawesville Estuary where I was able to set up on the sand near the water. I also figured that I’m facing in an Easterly direction which would help for long path Europe. The following photographs show the setup near the Estuary.
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I set up the antenna for 20 metres, connected the FT450 and the antenna tuned effortlessly immediately. Unfortunately I realised later that it was resonant a bit too high up the band and did not operate well below 14.200 Mhz.
I put out a CQ and was pleasantly surprised to immediately receive a call from Harry, I3KAN who announced that conditions were poor between him and VK6. I don’t think I’ve ever received a reply to a CQ call on 20 metres from a station in Europe so I was thrilled! I then spoke with Franc, F5PAU who I speak with quite often and was pleased to receive a 5/5 report which is better than the usual 5/2, 5/3 reports.
I’ll need to take greater care next time I set up this way to ensure that the antenna is resonant at a lower frequency on the band. The FT450 would not allow me to transmit below 14.200 Mhz on some occasions which was very frustrating. All in all a good test. I’m looking forward to trying the Buddipole in this location as a horizontal dipole and see how it goes.
Tagged with: amateur radio • amateur radio gear • buddipole • Buddipole antenna • Dawesville • Dawesville Channel • Dawesville Estuary • portable • portable radio session
Filed under: Amateur Radio
