Fixed my Hexbeam again today - One side of one of the 17m elements broke in a storm we had back in November and because of all the rain we've had, it's just not been possible to do anything in the garden because it's just been waterlogged. The hanging part of the element had wrapped around the centre of the aerial making it difficult to turn so I've been stuck with a fixed heading Hexbeam and no 17m since then.
Today I lowered it, re-terminated the element and installed a fix that should stop this happening again. The whole process took a couple of hours and then I spent a happy afternoon on 17m, I didn't work any new slots or anything like that but it was good to get Colombia, Kuwait and Indonesia in the log. Yesterday I worked VK on 20m with the aerial pointing due west so it was bang off one of the sides!
A few weeks ago I picked up a Yaesu FTM-300 and I've got it in the office on a Nifty stand so I can natter on a local YSFReflector.
17m is my favourite, it is good to hear a lot of the usual suspects from the Caribbean coming though last few evenings so hopefully things will pick up a bit. I've not done a lot recently, Seychelles and Suriname yesterday on 20m, Guadeloupe Friday then the Vatican on 6th March and that's all I've done this month. Heard a bit of decent stuff coming through over the last few days, I ppent 2 hours calling Namibia on Friday without success, similarly heard Japan and East Malaysia for the first time in ages too but I had no chance in the EU zoo.
Glad to hear you got your Hex sorted, VK on the side of the antenna great stuff, I've been looking on the cluster and people down south always seem to get the good prop
I've never heard of the Nifty stand before but the look great! I need a stand for my 891 but can't bring myself to buy the Yaesu separation kit, I bought the RJ12/RJ45 extender wires for a fraction of the price.
Talking of new bits and bobs, I've just recently picked up a (second hand) SDRplay RSP1a and so far I think it's a great bit of kit for the money - I'm really impressed.