The mission was to erect the new Hustler All Band vertical antenna on a tilt-over mast that was donated to us by Hilton Myer ZL2MN (SK). ZL2TC, ZL1TJ, ZL2AL, ZL2MY, ZL2MO and ZL2SS assembled bright and early on Sunday morning ready to do great things. The weather was warm with sunshine and perfect antenna weather.
We had two jobs to complete. The first was to repair the 80M/40M trap dipole which had one leg disconnected from the a supporting giant gum tree. The spud gun soon took care of getting a line over the top branches while Laurie installed a new halyard line on the top of the VHF dipole mast.
The second job was to assemble the Hustler vertical antenna and get it on the mast. The photos below tell the story.
And does it work? Yes, indeed it does. A quick run with the antenna analyzer showed resonant spots near where they were supposed to be on each band. The morning turned into afternoon and there was limited time to check how well it will actually work and we left around 3Pm. We were getting some good signals through on 15M and 40M Comparison with the trap dipole showed that the vertical was noisy. We expected that. In any case, the job is done and the antennas are back in operation.
Our next project is getting the bigger mast up to put the tri-bander on. That will happen at the next working bee.
73, Lee ZL2AL