The picture was taken at the start of my first outing with the BP and my Yaesu FT-817. Unfortunately about a minute after the picture was taken it started raining and my outdoor operating was scrubbed for the evening.
N9PUZ
Tim McDonough, Springfield, Illinois, USA
This page was last updated on July 6, 2003
|
|
After some experimenting with a home made "Buddipole" antenna design I decided to take
the plunge and purchase the commercial version I'm holding in the picture to the left.
The picture was taken at the start of my first outing with the BP and my Yaesu FT-817. Unfortunately about a minute after the picture was taken it started raining and my outdoor operating was scrubbed for the evening. |
Well the rain and my schedule have let up some now. I got to play radio for a couple of hours and made quite a few contacts using the Buddipole and my FT-817. Power output was set to 5 Watts. The Buddipole was in the normal dipole configuration. Height varied from 6 to 10 feet. So far all my operating has been on 17 Meters near the HFPack calling frequency.
What a hoot! The band was cooperating somewhat but I was getting decent signal reports out of California, Texas, and Florida. My QTH is near Springfield, Illinois so all were respectable distances. There's a slightly noticeable difference on receive depending on direction. Based on signal reports it appears to have a much bigger effect on transmit.
Still hoping to work W3FF "Buddipole to Buddipole" one day soon!
Life and work have been hectic lately but over the Thanksgiving weekend here in the US I got to do a lot of "walking portable" work while visiting my wife's family in Southern, Illinois. I made a lot of 17 Meter, 20 Meter, and a few 40 Meter SSB contacts and finally did work Budd (W3FF) but he was at home and not out wandering.
In addition to the normal dipole configuration I got to try out the BP as a vertical and a sloper. The sloper configuration seemed more directional than the dipole. I made a couple of Colorado contacts with it and by rotating it I could see a difference of several S-Units on my FT-817's internal meter.
[July 7, 2003] Okay, it's been a while since I made an update here. The big news is that I used my commercial Buddipole as the main antenna for our local club's 15 Meter SSB station on Field Day 2003. The BP was tuned with an analyzer prior to the event and mounted on a 30 foot Rohn mast during FD operations. The band conditions for HF in general were not good but we were very pleased with the Buddipole at 30 feet!
73,
Tim