Running it up the Flag Pole

 I've finally received the cheap eBay flag poles and put them up. 

Yep, they flex. Needs a saddle on the fence to give it some support. 

One saddle, and quite a reduction in lean. A little more pressure on the saddle than I'd like, but it's by no means fencing wire tension.

Twins? Flagpole on the left..

One end to the other... 

One of the first things I discovered and hadn't accounted for was just how much flex was involved. It was a lot. The tension creates a lot of bending, and it's necessary to find a balance point between how much bend vs how much tension you'll accept. I'm still fine tuning that. They're never going to be 100% straight. The tension isn't that great - it's enough to try to keep it reasonably flat, but it certainly isn't tensioned like fence wire!

The problem with the above is that the antenna that should have just fit, doesn't. It's too long. If you pay attention to the pics, you'll see that the 80m side of the traps is down on an angle. Not much I can do about it with poles that flex. I suspect even if I had solid steel up there, this antenna would be a fraction long. 

I thought about trying to tune it - the original design is tuned at a height of 3m. I've got it between 6 and 7m (the house end is up higher), but I couldn't work out much from the limited analyser on the G90. The way the antenna wire is anchored would be problematic as well - I just don't have the right gear to reclamp it properly if I shorten it. 

The positive side:

My noise floor has dropped. A lot. 

In this earlier video, I was connected to my vertical because it was quieter than the 40/20m trapped dipole that I had running just below the apex of the roof between either house. You can see on the signal meter that the noise is high, and that was typical. 

In this first test, you can just make out an ongoing QSO on 80m - at 8am. What you can also see is that the signal meter is nice and low. Normally everywhere across 80m is between S7 to 9 in noise. Definitely a great reduction. 

This is my first test at 40m. Not much going on, but again, that signal meter isn't doing much work. Certainly a lot less noisy across 40m. 

No idea yet if any of this translates into a usable antenna. I hope it does, given I'm pretty low on options now to do much else. This was the hail mary for a horizontal dipole. The only other HF thing left now is to upgrade the vertical with something that at least has a counterpoise. 

I'm rapidly running out of distractions that keep me from pushing on with my Standard license study. 

I have been a little frustrated that I can listen in on the 6m nets - assuming that this new antenna doesn't give me some improvement on that front, I may need to build:

If it works, it'll at least be useful when I upgrade and can actually use the 6m band. Fairly annoying though that I won't be able to use FT8 on it given it falls in the Advanced licensee part of the band, but still.. it's a project.  Possibly inside some PVC piping, attached to the mount next to the flag pole outside the window.