Coax Debate

I've been tossing up coax.. again.

Right now, I have the vertical coming in on RG213 and the dipole coming in on RG58. Both run up through the ceiling, down the wall and into my study. 

Close by in that ceiling space is a solar hot water panel and whatever else is going on up there. 

I've been thinking about two things:

- Getting rid of the wiring coming through the ceiling and making up a panel for the window to pass through. That'll take probably 2 metres off the vertical's cabling (not much value) and closer to 4m off the dipole. It'll also shorten my ground run. My windows though are horizontal sliding so I'd have a long panel and I'd have to put some effort into securing the window. It also means that I can't put the flyscreen back on in its current form (though I could probably have this changed). I'm not sure if there's necessarily a lot of value in it. 

- Changing the dipole over to RG213. It does have a fair run length - I'm fairly sure that there is the best part of 15 to 20m from the dipole to the switch in the study. I'd have to use RG58 still to get from the dipole feed point to the ground (weight minimisation), then RG213 running parallel to the house and fence, up into the ceiling and down into the study. My only real considerations for this has been the losses given the length (watts matter when you're limited to 10w) and any improvement in resistance to interference. Interference minimisation is probably the primary motivator. Bringing this run in through the window would be quite a bit easier than going through the ceiling. 

I'd also then have to consider if I use RG58 as my patch leads from the antenna switches or run RG213 all the way. The RG58 would certainly be a lot easier to work with, and I can at least use toroids to help deal with noise inside.

In other news, I ordered an Avair AV-200 power/SWR meter recently to use with the MAT180-H (whenever it arrives). It's here. There's some difference between how it reads power compared to the power meter on the ATU100. The ATU100 does read higher. At some point I need to do some more comparisons. 

I'm working on printing a holder for the AV400 I use for the VHF side of the IC706, and the AV200 for HF (yep, I know I can have one that does both but I won't rule out having another HF rig at some point...). It'll also hold the MAT180-H. It's dimensions are pushing my printer quite a bit, and I've had to resort to fairly thin walls. The initial design was going to weigh over 700g and take a week to print. I thinned it down to around 440 grams and 2 1/2 days. It doesn't look like it'll be terribly strong. I do need to print some rear bracing (I didn't put it on the design to keep it simple), so I'll use that for some strength and I'll use some blocks to stop the meters getting pushed back. 

If I really need to, I can print side walls and glue on for additional support. I may also print inserts yet for the shelves. I added a few mm of space as there is some variation between design vs print. Once I see how much actual space I have, I may print some inserts to strengthen it up and keep the gear a little tighter. 

I would have preferred to have over engineered it, but big prints bring greater risk of them dying part way through and I don't have any more rolls of PETG (and don't expect to get it quickly now). There's also that risk of just being "wrong" and needing a major rework. This way I can get the bulk of it done, then just break the rest up into little pieces.

I have other things I'm working on too, but they're unlikely to happen, so I'll keep them under wraps for now.