Category: DX Commander

Jonathan running the OTHER stream simultaneously. I’ll put some links in the live-chat.

Jonathan starting on 40m and going up to 20m later. I’ll start on 20m and move up to 15 and 10 soon. Recap: Callum is running station # 1 and Jonathan on Station # 2

@mike-M0MSN

BIG UPDATE! Amazing. These are Band-Pass filters. Mandatory for any 2-Station ham shack. Or Two Radio / Two Radio setup. Ideal for this weekend when Jonathan and I will be running on both 40m and 20m bands (for instance). See what you think!

This is a Ham Radio Antenna designed to be economical, easy to build and have amazing performance. Also a great match to 50 ohm coax.
Parts used:
– 4 DX Commander Rapide Poles
– 2 Rapide Ground Posts
– 3 mast-to-boom-element connectors
– 5m of RG58
– Spanners, electrical tape and a tape measure.

Pushing the limits of the Yaesu control cable length and mechanical strength. This video was recorded last Saturday (19th Oct) with Mike M0MSN and myself.

https://www.youtube.com/@mike-M0MSN

Last time out, we had a successful first lift and have had it guyed and upright for a week before fitting trying to fit the control cables for the rotator.

Before that, we broke the Create Rotator. We fished out the Yaesu G-450 and did a successful "launch" with a 6:1 pulley.

This is a 12m tower project for an HF Yagi / Quad etc. long story.. *BUT* the guys are dual-use as both a 40m 4-Square switchable antenna array – as well as the tower. ALl lines will be replaced with Dyneema after we’ve sorted it all out.

There will be 4 vertical antennas coming off each guy point. Accuracy is mandatory for both the 4-square (impedance matching and gain etc) and you’ll see shortly in another video why they need to be spot on because when we move to a non-stretch Dyneema rope, all 4-guys need to have same tension when the tower is lowered and raised.

Further, the tower needs to be totally detuned from 40m so we have a fibreglass insulator to change the resonance to around 9MHz. We COULD add a further insulator above the rotator to move that to about 24MHz. More of that in later video. There will be a temporary yagi going up on the top of this tower which will give me time to develop the multi-band quad antenna.

The rotator will eventually be replaced. The vertical force specification on the G450 is 200Kg. I broke the Create RC5-1 which had double that. There are no sideways loads on the base of the tower so I only need to worry about vertical loads.

The start of the construction is here: https://youtu.be/SbMy_82XRDM

"Part 1" is this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_pQN0pMvmA

The "disaster" video is here: https://youtu.be/4eiEd00N5GU

We covered the planning of this tower on a previous video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmgUGuoudb4

We also made a video about Quads – which is the target of this tower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r9ff32j9Yo

And here is some information about 4-Square antennas which will surround the tower (tower will be de-tuned off 40m): https://youtu.be/joWUH2PgGZg

The NEXT video in this series is when we fit the top of the tower, fit all the lines (ropes), add an extra guy-point and make the tower fully operational – as well as site the 4-vertical elements (non functional currently until we connect it).

The next video after that one in this series is to make a temporary yagi mono-bander for 20m and fire at USA. Then finally, rotator cable, ethernet, control wires etc up the pole.

Finally, we will lay the radials down for the 4-square and connect up the control box.

After a complex lowering job yesterday (there’s a video coming out about that), currently the tower is down. Today I am adding more guys to the tower, fitting coax and hopefully raising the tower back up later. I have a Yagi that would be nice to get operational. Videosto be released: Adding the rotator cable and making the Yagi.

Last year, Django (my dog) ran into one of the guy lines and managed to destroy my freshly built and newly designed trib-band vertical which was on an 18m / 60-ft pole. I am trying to rebuild it on a 12.4m telescopic pole.

Last time out, we broke the Create Rotator. We fished out the Yaesu G-450 and we’re going to try again – this time with the whole 13m (42.5-ft) and a 6:1 pulley. Wish me luck!