Today, Simon Zl1SWW and Harry Zl1BK trialed an additional reject filter on the 5575 repeater receiver to see if it made any useful improvement to RX sensitivity. No significant difference noted so the filter was removed. It was then play in the park time. Four antennas were set up: ZL4ROB, ZL1SWW, ZL1BK and ZL1DL. Robs was a new 40m endfed and after a bit of tweaking, performed really well, with a Cook Islands contact made on 10m, amongst others. Simon put up his trusty 40m endfed as a sloper from near ground to his 9m pole, resulting in the highest elevation antenna.
Dave ZL1DL utilised the club pole to host his 80m endfed. Even so, elevation of a 40m length of wire was somewhat problematic – probably a big tip there as why so few people bother with portable 80m endfeds. The combo of too long a wire, initially, and close proximity to the ground saw the antenna resonate around 3 Mhz. Shortening by a metre, puzzlingly, made no difference. It was then David, ZL1DRV pointed out the antenna connection of the balun was shorting to the metal support pole. A quick adjustment to the support fixed that and with another trim, the antenna dipped around 3.75 MHz. A quick qso with Luke ZL1LMB, location Gold Coast, on 40m showed the antenna was working superbly. Well not quite proof or superbly, as Luke was remoting into MP IC-706, around 100m away…
Later on, Maurice ZL1MPU contacted ZL7D on Chatham Island, so despite any lack of fine tuning, the 80m endfed worked, showing that a throw and go can work.
After packing up, mid afternoon, we adjourned for coffee and had a quick trial of Rob’s new / old acquisation – a PRC-6 handheld green radio. As the PRC-6 operates in the 50ish MHz area, it is a candidate for 6M. Rob enquired as to whether we might have any crystals that would be suitable; we showed him the “loosely” cataloged collection of 1,000 or more and suggested he might like to “have a look”. More on the PRC-6 later.