Well, no #POTA today, but #DXCommander is tuned up, so plan is next weekend to go to a park and make some contacts.

#HamRadio #antenna

Finally took some time to actually take some initial measurements of the #DXCommander

It got too dark to keep messing with it, so hope to finish up tomorrow morning. Depending on how the rest of tomorrow goes, I may even try to do a #POTA activation with it... #HamRadio #Antenna

Morning. Dry. Not yet horribly hot. Tipped-down the #DxCommander because I saw one element had let go & another was close. It's just electrical tape still, heatshrink will happen later.

Got it sorted & up.

Came in to check tuning. SWR is near zilch on 6m, 10m, 12m, holy cow, this is going GREAT...

Oh, maybe flip the A/B switch from dummy load first, goddammit.

Starting again...

I MIGHT move #HamRadio masts today.

Now that I've had a while to get to know the #DxCommander #MultiBandVertical, it's clear it has different compromises from the #TuneATenna. I can't get dead-on resonant on ANY HF band, like I can with the Tune-A-Tenna.

HOWEVER, the optimum height above ground for a vertical on any band is 0ft. For the #InvertedVee, it's different on every band, & the Tune-A-Tenna is only remote-adjustable for element length, not height.

#HeightIsEverything on VHF.

@KI5SMN

You know your fan dipole in the attic?

Same trick works with a vertical.

Two wires riding up from the base, spaced maybe 8" apart. One goes up to be a 40m 1/4wave.

The other goes up as high as your pole or tree or whatever goes, then as needed, does inverted-L to use up the rest of the quarter-wave wire.

Dual band vertical. No traps. No crappy, lossy traps.

See: #DXCommander

@lpbkdotnet I have a #DXCommander. I had the pole and the metal plates at the back of the shed from years ago and bought the rest of the parts as spares from the website. Part way through commissioning it: tuning, finding best site, and even more radicals...

I spent my lunch cutting some hexagons out of HDPE chopping board, and slotting them onto a telescopic flag pole.

My #homebrew #HamRadio multiband vertical #antenna build is getting a bit more serious!

Design is heavily inspired by the #DXCommander and TBH if I wasn’t building this as a learning exercise I’d just buy one - they’re better made than I can do with hand tools in the home shop!

I’ll buy one eventually, but I’ll appreciate it much more when I’m done screwing up this build!

@Jake Hi Jake! Which #DXCommander model do you have?

I think I’m going to buy a #DXCommander multi-band HF antenna. I designed and built something similar years ago which worked really well, but Callum’s design and engineering looks a lot more polished and robust! #hamradio #hamr #amateurradio #amateurfunk Has anyone on here used one?

We had a bit of a snow storm the last couple days. Didn’t lose any antennas this time! #hamradio #antennas #dxcommander #winter #snowstorm