Happy Easter... and debating the use of 75Ohm cable

Happy Easter fellow HAMs.

It was good to be able to jump in and grab a few images from the "Women In Space" event, having avoided the earlier InterMAI event - because, well.. Russia. 

I'm now on leave for a couple of weeks. 

In a week from now we should be a couple of days from starting the new shed/workshop/mini shack. It really hasn't mysteriously gotten any cheaper to have built.

My $600 garden shed has well passed $2000 that I'll still be paying off in a couple of weeks, and we haven't built it yet. And I don't yet have new batteries. 

I've been scratching my head thinking about antennas. The two antenna that I use situated really to be used in the house. The vertical in particular. 

I had considered putting the old vertical up, but that creates some access issues. It would either need to go in the very narrow gap between the shed and the fence - either at the back, which will be near on impossible to access once we build the sheltered section next to it, or be near the front of the shed along the side fence. In direct line of sight for everyone this side of the street. I doubt my antenna farm makes as popular as it is. 

I think the answer is simply to start sharing the antennas - specifically the dipole. 

It's centre point is about 12m closer and most of it is further away from the noise of the houses than the vertical. 

I need to put some thought into what that will look like; some kind of automated switching magic would be awesome but expensive, and money needs to go towards other things. 

A cheap option might be a manual switch box mounted where the feedline connects to the dipole. I might just need to come up with a water proof solution to keep it covered. 

Then there's the cabling. 

I really can't justify running RG213 or LMR400 on a 30m run. It's going to be routed along the side and back fence... through garden beds and what not. 

I started comparing RG58 and RG59. For the most part, it seems that I can buy RG59 cheaper than RG58. My understanding is that on HF the use of 75Ohm won't matter too much beyond less than perfect SWR. 

I'm not 100% sure I want to go down that path yet. When I can fund it, I'll assess my options then I guess. Obviously with such a long run, there's benefits to the better cable, but I'm not sure what my use will really be like yet. 

For the VHF, I've resurrected my old Diamond D150 discone. One of the elements had broken off and vanished. I was able to fabricate a new one to suit. I do have a TV antenna eve mount spare. I might be able to mount the discone on that and attach to what we refer to as the "smoker" area - essentially a 1.5m wide area beside the shed that will be covered, will hold the solar panels and will have some shade cloth to help protect my smoker from the elements when its running. 

My old Retevis RT95 never sold despite a few efforts, so I think the world is suggesting that I keep it. That'll be one for the shed. I suspect the G90 will go with it, as will the SDR and the SDR switch - assuming that I can generate enough power to keep the SDR running. 

I could go down the path of just using the IC706 in the house with the vertical, but I do like to poke around 80m, and I need the dipole for that.