So you want to call CQ, you tune around the band a bit and find what appears to be a quiet spot.  You ask a couple of times if the frequency is in use and get no response, you are good to go right?  Maybe not.  From a pure etiquette stand point you are, but there may be a very week DX station on a nearby frequency and you just made it impossible for many people to work that station.

The solution, look on the spotting network and make sure you are 3+ kHz away from the DX stations frequency.

Update: 9/22/18 Reworked the guy lines over the summer.  Just put it on the analyzer again.  Looks pretty good.

Have not been active that much but have 40M phone contacts in Russia, Virgin Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil.

Update: 6/21/17 Grass is growing in and I just re-installed the bleeder resistor and shortened the antenna about 8 inches.  Best I can get the SWR is 1.8:1 on 7.212.

Update: 6/11/17 Must be working OK, worked a new DXCC, Paraguay (Daniel ZP5DBC)

About a year ago I purchased an aluminum tubing kit from DX Engineering.  I used this kit along with some PVC pipe to make an insulated mount to create a 1/4 wave 40m vertical.  I mounted this to the corner post of my wood fence.  I used RG58 to wind an air choke and installed a bleeder resistor to eliminate static build up.  I installed a couple of radials on my fence.  It makes a great 40m receive antenna, but a very poor transmit antenna.  Below are some photos of the current installation.

My plan is to install a post near the middle of my side yard and install 20 radials. I purchased the radial plate from DX Engineering.

On Monday May 29th I purchased a 44 post and cut it to 5ft.  I also purchased a vinyl post jacket.  Next I dug a hole 3.5ft deep and place 6 inches of gravel in the bottom.  I post inside the jacket and placed in the hold and added 2 bags of sackrete.

On Tuesday I designed a home made tilt mount out of angle iron and 26s.

Wednesday the radial plate arrived.  Everything remounted and the first 2 radials installed, only 18 to go for a good start.

Well I had enough wire for 22 radials.  Hauled in 5 tons top soils to cover the radials with about 1 inch of soil and then added grass seed.

I also ended up removing the Air Choke.  I also tried a 1:1 Current Balun.  The SWR is best directly feeding via the coax.  Currently 1.8 to at 6.914 MHz.  Need to shorten the antenna a bit to get to 7.212 MHz.

Will post some results after final tuning and some on-air time.

After upgrading to General my first HF contact was on 1/24/15 with KB6UNC in Utah, USA.  My 100th entity contact was on 2/12/17 with C31KC in Andorra.

Only a couple hundred to go

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