[UK-CONTEST] Antenna advice

[Anthony MW0JZE]

Hi all, 

Just thought I would share some of my experiences on 40 and 80m in my small garden. 

Space available (in the air) 85 foot by 35 foot 

Lawned area 50 foot by 20 foot approx (its an odd shape) 

In this space I have a home brew aluminium 40m vertical with a unadilla 40m trap on top with a 80m wire leg running off to the bottom corner of the garden for the inverted L at the same height at the 40m vertical. Vertical is placed in the centre of the lawned area and is easily erected and dismantled if needed. I have a 2 foot deep hole with a scaffold pole sunk in concrete as the base and cut off at ground level, concrete is about 4 inches below the turf to keep the xyl happy! A aluminium base plate is then used to attach the radials to, again underground. All the radials (62 of them) are just under the surface and the coax is also under ground with a home-brew current choke (2lt coke bottle full of sand with 21 foot of coax wrapped round it). 

Some nice examples this year are, 

TX5C 
VP6DX 
few TI's 
KP4 
ZF 
YV 
VK and the usual EU 

Traps can be found here 

http://www.unadilla.com/traps.htm 

I am sure many of you have delt with them in the past. 

I have only taken 80m seriously in the past 18 months and have almost 100 dxcc worked in my limited radio time, ok the radials are no where near the full 1/4 wave length but you do the best you can. This is by far the best solution I have come up with for 40/80m DX in my limited space. 

I was running 2 fishing poles last year, one 1/4 wave for 40m, that's easy just cut to length. And another 12m fishing pole with a coil placed 8m up, I used "vertload.exe for this measurement". This worked well with some good DX results but I thought I could do better. And I had to make my choice of band at a given time as I could not have both in the air at the same time. 

Loads of ideas on this page also. 

http://www.dxzone.com/catalog/Antennas/ 

Can send photos if needed, happy to help anyone with a small garden :-) 

Thanks go out to the EU 009 gang for bringing this antenna to my attention! 

73's Ant MWØJZE 
Elecraft K3 #485 
MC0SHL DX & Contest Group 
www.mc0shl.com 
www.mw0jze.co.uk 
www.pmtdxgoup.co.uk 
Eat, Sleep, Dream the ultimate DX Holiday!