Well the foot of snow melted finally here in the Dallas area and today was a nice warm day in the 60's. So this afternoon I decided to try my new Buddipole now that I have the needed extra coax to get the antenna away from the house. My first try was to put the Buddipole in a vertical dipole position. On PSK31 I made a quick contact to Ohio with a 599 report. I felt comparing the Buddipole and the Slinky dipole, the Buddipole was picking up stations better.
When I ordered the coax from Buddipole, I decided to order the counterpoise as well so I could try out verticals with the Buddipole. So after my PSK31 contact to Ohio, I put up the 20 meter vertical per the directions of the Buddipole user group website. As you can see from the pictures it is pretty tall. The mast goes up 16 feet, then with the whips and extra length poles I estimate it is up about 25 feet. You might be able to see the counterpoise dropping down toward my daughter swing set. I tested the antenna with my Dad's antenna analyzer and found it was resonate on 20 meter band and had a SWR of under 2.
So time for the test. Right away I noticed a major increase of stations on PSK31. I immediately made contact with Venezuela and Azores Island with only 50 watts. So then I thought I would tune around the SSB area on 20 meters and heard more stations than I have ever heard. Mostly stateside, but also a few DX stations including Trinidad and Venezuela. Then I listened around the 17 and 15 meters and heard phone stations there as well. I am a believer in the Buddipole, but more a believer in the vertical version. I will try to play with a 40 meter version as well tonight.
****UPDATE 2/21/2010*****
I put the buddipole back up today to see what I could do on a weekend. On 17 meters I got a 579 RST report from Northern Japan and 599 RST report from Mexico on 20 meters PSK31. This antenna is working great. Oh and I was only using 40 watts out put to contact both.
No comments:
Post a Comment