Brain Bender

All week I've been trying to work out what this is supposed to do all week. It came from the base of the my vertical HF Antenna. It's some kind of inductor that has one end connected to the shield and the other end connected to the actual antenna. The centre of the coax is connected to the same point on the antenna through the middle of the inductor. To see me dis-assemble the antenna or if you have any suggestions keep reading past the break.

Right down to earth

So this afternoon I finally thought to check on why my HF radio isn't working very well. I finally had the great idea to check the resistance between the actual antenna and the bracket that holds it's base. This bracket is what I've connected all of my earth wires to and should be separate to the rest of the antenna.

Guess what...

It aint... Looks like the reason I've been having such poor reception is because the antenna is actually being held to ground. So it turns out that any reception has actually been the result of a bad thing. Keeping positive though. I am going to say it's something to do with the impedance at RF being not = to 0 ohms.

So over the course of the week keep an eye out for how I fix this problem with too much grounding as opposed to my original theory of not enough.

Cheers,
Rex

Hot Stuff and a finished project

So I have finished installing the radials on the vertical antenna. In the end I decided I'd read the instructions and see how they say to earth it and this is what the instructions gave me:

This is my completed attachment to the bolts that hold on the insulator at the base of the bracket. Check it out after the break to see how I got to this point.