Since my last post (gee, maybe I should start a(nother) blog)*, I’ve installed an M2 Systems HO Loop in 6m on the roof out back — up about 20 feet is as far as I can get it at the moment — and connected it to the 450D. It just works for the local 6M repeater with the external LDG tuner kicked in. It’s really meant for SSB farther down the band, and it seems to work fairly well for that.
I also bought and installed last Sunday an End-Fed Matchbox Antenna from these folks and got it about 20 feet up in a tree sloping down to the side of the house at about 8 feet. It tunes everything from 40 and up pretty well. 80 is problematic (likely just need more wire) and 160 is fuggeddaboudit (as I figured it would be). It also works 6 in the repeater end of the band much better than the loop. Sunday I was able to listen in to the Sunday INARES voice net on 3.900 LSB but I doubt I would have been able to check in as it was very fade-y. It would be fun to get my hands on a 30′ push-up mast and see how well the end-fed works as a vertical. I think most of my trouble with it right now is that it just isn’t high enough off the ground, and frankly it’s oriented in the wrong direction.
Sometime in the next few weeks I hope to have the boy down from Fort Wayne to help me get the G5RV in the trees. And I really want to install a vertical in the back yard this spring after the thaw 🙂
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* Which, as you see, I have now done.