SHACK ATTACK

HAD A GOOD 'SORT-OUT'

Got up this morning (Saturday) and it was pouring down with rain and it was set to stay for the whole weekend so I turned to the Shack and decided to rip it out in readiness for the Flex-SDR. The IC-7100 is moving to the truck, so I disconnected all the cables and made the antenna-switches redundant. The incoming coax-cables will now go straight to their relevant radios.

When the rain stopped watering my garden for a few minutes, I ran to the truck to try out my TowBar Antenna Mast Bracket. I got this from Callum (M0MCX) at DX COMMANDER and let me tell you - it works a treat!

On his website it shows an antenna-mast mounted off the ground, but I think it's MUCH more stable if you let the mast rest on the ground and then tighten up all the bolts. I might even make a spiked cup for it to sit in. Callum describes it as "experimental" because he's obviously mindful of something going pear-shaped with  the errr, less careful of us. You can just imagine the mayhem if a big yagi came crashing down on your car, lol.

Common sense tells you to exercise caution when using something that is held up by a clamp on a steel ball! And that's why I prefer to make sure the mast sits firmly on the ground, taking the strain off  the towball bracket. Anyway, we'll see how it goes when I get out in them there hills :-)