Monday, June 13, 2011

Preparations to put up the Diamond KV-5, a 5 band antenna - PART 3

The fun installation turned out be a complete nightmare.....

The KV-5 was set up at ground level... and it worked really REALLY well.... The SWR was absolutely perfect.  So it was time to put the KV-5 on top of my mast in the back yard.

There it is :)
I was so happy..... But that changed rapidly....
I hooked up the antenna to my ts-480 and tried to tune it.... but.... NO band would tune....
The 5 bands were perfectly set up , but now high above the ground it was totally messed up!

Not having a clue what i did wrong, i wrote an email to Diamond in Japan....
And their answer was pretty clear... "KV5 is required to install at the ground."

I wrote a reply stating my frustration that the manual is not clear at all on the location to install the antenna. There is no note at all that you can not install this antenna on a mast. nor is there a note that you can only install this antenna at ground level.

I called my supplier and he and I came to an agreement that he would take back the KV-5 and supply me with a Falcon OUT-250B , a many band 7,16m long GPA. (google for exact specs....)

So now we have........


I have not had the time to test it really well.... but it tunes on all bands, and it receives more then my weird wire antenna.....
In the upcoming weeks i will see how it works and compares to other antenna's......

73's

Friday, June 3, 2011

The Papers arrived !!!! YEAY !!!

Today my license papers finally arrived. so i am now officially a full licensed ham amateur....
I have been using my new call for the last few days already, i don't really know if i could, but my old call was revoked on the site already, my new call was there, and even QRZ was already automatically updated.

I will scan the license later to put it up here.... Can't help being proud of myself that i managed to motivate me to get my Full license after having my Novice license for about 16 years already.

Alex

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Preparations to put up the Diamond KV-5, a 5 band antenna - PART 2

Even though it was really hot outside in the sun , i did some more preperations for putting up the antenna.
I did not make any photo's yet, so I'll add them later.

I started out with a nice trip to the local DIY supply store called Gamma.
I needed some copper pipes,  2 2m pipes, Special ground wire (5 mm wire used in electrical installation)
And some other small parts....

I started with putting the copper pip into the ground... Using water as "drill" you can push 4 meters of copper pipe into the ground EASY.... Don't go deeper with the copper pipe then needed. Copper pipe no goes for 11 euro for a small 2 meter pipe which is the smallest pipe (12 mm).
when that was done i connected the ground wire to the lower wall bracket.
Of course the wire runs through a grey PVC pipe.

When that was done I started to prepare my 6meter long mast pipe. I wanted a possibility to hose a wire antenna to the top, so I made a rope installation.

Tomorrow probably will be the final day of installing the antenna... finally.... but it is said to be really hot again.... If its too hot then i will wait till Sunday where it will be a bit less hot.

Photos will follow later.