A day after the birth of my son (12th December) a package arrived from Elecraft! Of course the first week I’ve got something else on my mind but I got anxious soon to heat up the solder iron!
First I read the manual thoroughly and unpacked all bags and packs. According to the manual you have to start with the 4-band filter board. Then build the front panel. Last (but not least) it’s time for Continue reading
My birthday present of this year was getting a bit dusty. So after a days work this afternoon I decide to put it in the air for a test run. A few days ago I bought some nice mast pieces of 1m20 each. So I attached the BuddiPole to one of the mast pieces and build 6 of the pieces (the BuddiPole itself around 16 meters up in the air). It was kind of scary standing on the roof, holding the growing mast with two hands in the (little) wind. But it worked! I attached the temporary mast to my other 2m/70cm mast with some tie-wraps. There was virtually no wind, so not much could go wrong.
Back in the shack I did immediately notice the low noise level and strong signals. Of course it’s high altitude is also responsible for that (less QRM) but the SWR is flat on all of the 15 meter band! Thus it’s design and construction is quite nice. In less then an hour I worked 5 new DXCC-entities (countries) on 15 meter: Bahrain, China, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Cuba!
I think we can safely say the BuddiPole is working nice! Next time I’m putting it up in open field.
A great birthday present this year: a BuddiPole! Always wanted a simple but flexible portable antenna for the outdoor activities. Until now I used a glass fiber fishing rod with 2 pieces of wire so I could work on 20m. But that is not a small package which you can drop in your rucksack easily.
The BuddiPole is a cool piece of hardware which you can build almost anything you (portable antenna-wise) would want. It’s usable for 40 to 2m. It’s possible to build a much smaller vertical BuddiStick with the components of a BuddiPole. An ideal solution for apartments or hotel stays where it almost impossible to setup a big (even portable) antenna.
On little side note: when you’re in the ordering process, consider what kind of base you going to add. You can choose the tripod or (in the BuddiStick-modus) the table clamb. Because when you don’t order a base(like I did) you have nothing to put the dipole on.
Now I really need to fix my Yaesu FT-817 so I can test my portable setup on a quiet place somewhere out there.