Web Updated;
06/07/2011
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Testing, Reports and Conclusion.
Testing the aerial for resonance.Clips were connected to the coil and fed back to the Mini-VNA analyser. The braid of the feed line was connected to the black lead and the inner of the feed line to the red clip. Just a quick note for those who have not dealt with enamel wire before, any part of the wire which is electrically connected needs the enamel coating stripped off first. I found the quickest and easiest way of doing this was to use a sharp knife or similar and simply scratch the coating off. A test can be made with a multi-meter set to impedance to identify connection quality. Once the best settings had been made the results were saved using the Mini-VNA and are displayed below.
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Conclusions:-
The project on the whole is a success. The aerial is relatively easy to produce with the minimum of tools and knowledge.
I was having problems with tuning the aerial on the bands, particularly 40m's. The great thing about Amateur Radio is there are plenty of Ham's with experience waiting to lend advice. Upon sending out this project a few idea's came back and I have experimented with these. Thank you to all of the contributors!
The most helpful advice was to provide another counterpoise at 10m long (¼ wave at 40m band)
This allowed tuning with reasonable results on the 40m band. Obviously the aerial is very small for 40m and nothing too special should be expected, however I have made a couple of contacts into Europe using 60 watts and received 5-5 and 5-7 reports!
20m's and 6m's is where the best results have been and very encouraging too.
I'll keep this web site posted with more results and reports as I manage to tune other bands.
If you have had any results with similar aerials or even advice, please drop me an email or make comments in the guest book!
Thank you for reading.
73
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