Well, this is new for me. I decided to finally have a go at HF work. With the layout of my place, it made sense to have an end-fed long line antenna. My shack is at the front corner of the house and there’s a gap to the fence, and the fence is around 25 metres long.
I’ve ordered Dipoflex for the antenna, and I have a copper pipe to drive into the ground. I have 3D-printed a dog-bone insulator for the far end.
The unun itself was a DIY kit. Had good reviews so I ordered it. Comes with almost everything. I need to figure out strain relief when it goes up.
The kit came with a weatherproof box, SO-239, two posts with butterly nuts, enamelled cable, heat shrink and connectors, plus the torroid.
I put it together using my old Snap-On gas soldering iron which sadly is on its way out after only 38 years of service lol! I was expecting my Antex to arrive but it was delayed so I cracked on.
The left post is for ground, the right for the antenna wire. As a test, I slung 10m of 1.5mm cable from an old reel of twin and earth onto the antenna, shoved it out the window and turned on the radio. Last night I listened to someone in Wales and someone in Poland. This morning on 20m I heard an Aussy station!
Bear in mind, this wasn’t grounded or matched at all, so there was no transmission and no tuning, just a length of wire chucked across the garden!
I’ve ordered some superflex and a couple of ferrite rings, one for connecting before the unun, and the other just outside the shack. I may not need both as the coax run (if I can figure it out ok) will be around 5-6 metres, possibly a little more depending on how high I can get the unun. In addition to grounding to the copper pipe, I’ll drop a length of dipolex down and along the ground for a short run to help return currents.
I’m going to see how I go on bands as-is. I don’t yet know where I want to go, so having a random wire that can do 10-40m will be a good start, then maybe look at an external matching unit if I want to expand.
I have an Icom IC-7300 – just starting to learn its functions at the moment while I am unable to transmit.