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Back on 2m
August 23rd, 2019:
So, not a big station by any measure, but a nice location and an excellent 6 element LFA quad from Innov Antennas. I'm very pleased with the antenna - picking beacons from around Europe today.
The LFA-Q (Loop Fed Array Quad) Low-Noise Yagi takes a lot of the good points from the LFA Yagi and adds some more. the LFA-Q is a quad with a difference. Rather than placing symmetrical square or triangular shaped loops in a Yagi configuration, the LFA-Q uses the LFA Yagi style loops to produce high levels of side suppression, the difference being every element is a loop rather than just the driven element.
The station:
- TS-2000,
- No amplifier :( ,
- 20m Ecoflex 15 Plus,
- SSB Electronik SP-2000 mast-head preamp,
- 3m Exoflex 10,
- 6 element LFA quad on a Yaesu G-1000DXC rotator.
Only one day after getting the antenna assembled there is a nice lift - worked EA8TX in IL18qi, that's 1619.7 miles. Note: the pre-amp is getting on a bit (like the TS-2000 and G4ELI) but works well. If I buy a big amplifier I'll have to rethink the preamp setup.
To monitor the band I use the Airspy HF+ Discovery, sooner or later I'll get a small board inside the TS-2000 so I can use it as a panadapter.
The Daily Grind
Helford River After many weeks of poor light, I finally got a few decent photos of the Great Northern Diver on the Helford River. All photos taken with Canon R7, RF800mm f11.
Stolen, one nice beef bone from neighbour's garden. The evidence is currently being eaten.
What do you do when you take a break from SDR coding? The answers obvious - write something else, in this case a nice map of the world with greayscale, space wetaher, time etc. The reason for this map is that I need the time in front of me along with the greyline for 80m dx-ing, so why not combine the two? Version 1.0.7 is now available here.