Hello from North Wales

[Alpha_Greywolf]

Hello,
I'm based in North Wales, UK
My interests lay in heading towards grid independence for comms and emcomms.

Currently using a Yaesu FT817ND with homebrew inverted V on a 6m fishing pole.

My QTH is at sea level but has mountains on 3 sides... to say coverage is fairly limited would be understated.


I'm looking forward to getting to know the members of the forum and learning from your experiences, then sharing my own as I push forward with my experiments (or playing with wire).

[gil]

Welcome aboard :-) Look up NVIS, quite useful in your case...

Gil.

[Alpha_Greywolf]

Thank you Gil,

Yes, NVIS looks like a way forward.
I have to work out how to get a 80/40m antenna in a garden with less square meters than a 6man tent. :o

My 40m inverted V wouldn't look out of place in a Picasso exhibition, I have to make the dipole arms so contorted to fit the space.

[gil]

What about a square loop?

Gil.

[Alpha_Greywolf]

Square loop could work and is one I'm looking at, along side the half-wave end fed.
I do have a small (dis)advantage, my QTH is over Sandy soil as such the ground losses are low... but getting a good earth is like catching fog in a bucket.

[gil]

The half-wave end-fed would solve your ground problem, but you would need a pretty tall mast or tree... I wouldn't worry too much about the ground with a full size horizontal loop... You might just have to try...

Gil.

[Alpha_Greywolf]

Try


That is the fun of amateur radio, we have a licence to experiment