Testing the Screwdriver

I took the screwdriver out into the backyard today, using the kids cubby house as a bit of shelter and setup. I didn't bother rolling out my foil mat - the cubby has a tin roof and I decided that'd do for today.

I took the Malachite SDR out with me just to see how I'd go receiving.

Excuse the mess....

Straight off the bat on 40m I started picking up some really good signals once I had the antenna dialled in as well as possible. In this case, I can get the SWR down to about 2:1, and that was good enough. 

 

The quality was simply superior to anything I receive in the house. Coming from the garbage half watt speaker glued into the back of the Malachite pointing away from me. 

OK then. 

Heading back inside, I'm back to a higher noise floor on the dipole and fair bit of break up. 

I'm starting to see why HAMs like to have shacks. Unfortunately the kid's cubby also works as the smoke house for my smoker, so it's not exactly a radio friendly space. 

From the viewpoint of the screwdriver - I think the controller is a success. It works reasonably well, it controls OK, and it's not all bad. Happy with that.

That set of results tell me that perhaps I need to try some new things in the house:

- Firstly I might need to try the dipole coming in through the window rather than up a wall, into a ceiling space, down and around. Worth a try. 

- Maybe I need to move the radios from where they are - perhaps further away from all the gear directly behind them and see if that makes much difference. I'd rather not given I have wall mounted monitors, but perhaps if the above doesn't do much I need to try it.