More Antennas

October 1, 2025 K5ZD Uncategorized

I made it through the CQ WW RTTY contest with just the C31xr for 10 and 15 meters. This was extremely limiting as I could only use one radio at a time for these two bands. I also had a second 40-2CD for 40 meters that needed a home.

September 25, 2025

I had two Hygain 155-CA antennas that I wanted to make into a stack on the south tower. I started putting them back together.

As with the 20-meter antennas, some of the hardware was bent. One of the gamma match pieces had broken off. They didn’t end up perfect, but good enough.

October 1, 2025

I still had the sidemount at the base of the North tower, so I used it to build the 40-2CD.

October 5, 2025

I installed a side-mount bracket on the north tower to hold the 40-2CD.

October 6, 2025

Another beautiful day for antenna work. I was joined by Mike WA3C with the goal of getting the 15m stack and the lower 40 installed.

We started with the 40-2CD on the North tower. It was a very straightforward job to pull it up and work around one set of guy wires. The stacking distance (90′ over 40′) is a bit close, but I was looking for the ability to beam in multiple directions more than I was looking for stacking gain.

We then moved over to the South tower and started by installing the rotating swinging gate mount. I obtained this sidemount from W8JGU more than 35 years ago. It has been very reliable and is easy to work with.

The mounting height was a bit tricky because I wasn’t sure exactly how high I could go before the 15m antenna would hit a guy wire. I did some math and lucked out getting it in the right place on the first try.

Next up was to raise the two 155-CA Yagis. It was easy to work these through the guy wires.

Both 15m antennas were installed by 11 am.

Time for a quick SWR check. Not as good as I had hoped. Since the lower antenna (curve on the right) was the one with the damaged beta match, I will need to do some fine-tuning by moving the shorting bar. The SWR for both is too high on SSB and not as good as they were in MA, but good enough for now.