Monday, September 12, 2011

Mystery Antenna and Strange CW Moments

Readers will remember in my previous post I had lowered the cobweb antenna and mast in anticipation of the predicted severe weather.  At a loss without my beloved cobweb and with the current mast height set at a mere 20 feet there was a noticeable drop in signals. So having a brainwave I decided to drop the 30 meter antenna hanging up in my silver birch tree and replace it with the mystery antenna just so I have some reasonable coverage while this stormy weather continues, to be honest I doubt if I will have time this week to raise the cobweb back up, so it will be a while before things are back to normal.

Because it’s been some time since it was last used I’d forgotten how good the Mystery antenna is especially on 20 meters and with a bit of tuning on the ATU I can work most of the bands from 40 up, except 15 which for some reason the old antenna really dislikes, not sure why this is but I shall trawl the net and see what comes up, unless someone else has an explanation?

Had one of my weird CW moments yesterday, just sat in front of the radio and no matter how I tried I couldn’t get my brain in to the receive mode, either everything was too fast or my writing skills were up the shoot, and when something did sink in I froze on reply, very strange!

In the end I gave up and in desperation had a listen to the local sideband chat on 80. The main topic seemed to be the bad weather that was heading our way, but unfortunately the chaps talking had very dull monotonous tones and soon I was so bored I fell asleep and was only later awoken by some chap trying to tune up his amp, it does make a great alarm clock!

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