The last weekend in April provided just enough of a break in the wet and windy spring weather to put up a new HF antenna. I built an 80 meter full wave horizontal loop antenna. I have fed it with 450-ohm ladder line which I have never used before. The ladder line goes into a 4:1 balun outside the shack and a short run of coax cable comes into the station. Thanks to my friend James for climbing the trees and setting up the pulleys in the trees. After about 4 hours of outside work the antenna went up successfully.
The 7th Call Area QSO party (7QP) occurred on May 4, 2014. This was the first big test of the new antenna and it was very successful! I didn't work the entire time the contest was running but I still managed to make 113 contacts throughout the day on 20, 40, and 80 meters. The bands were wide open and even running 100 watts was able to have tons of fun.
I will be putting up pictures of the new antenna in the next couple of weeks.
