Category Archives: Antennas

One year since last post

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And a lot happened in the past year. After 6 years in Bangkok (HS0ZLE) and 6 years in Vietnam (XV9Q, XB9BPO) we finally came back to live in France with my wife and 2 kids. We arrived on December 22nd. We were installed in Geneva for the first 3 months and then moved in a house beginning of March next to Swiss boarder.

Thanks to the help of F8KCF, Annemasse Ham club, I was able to mount an Ultrabeam VL2.3 which I had in the boxes new since Thailand (more than 8 years) on my Prosistel Mast at currently 10.5m above the ground.

The station has improved also. As soon as I arrived in France I bought a Power Genius XL to have the full Flex/4O3A line for SO2R.

Current working conditions are:

  • Flex 8600 (Flex 6600 as well)
  • Maestro C
  • Tuner Genius XL 2×2
  • Power Genius XL 2kw
  • Antennas:
    • Ultrabeam VL2.3 @ 10.5m above the ground
    • DX Commander Classic with 80m i/o 30m which is covered by the UB VL2.3
  • Antenna Genius 8×2

This has helped me improved drastically my DXCC count as I added around 49 new DXCC from France reaching now 249.

When I arrived in France in December 2024 I had in my log around 3000 QSOs overall from France while having my license since 1997. Which means only a few contacts were made while living in France. I am almost reaching 10,000 now thus 7,000 QSOs were added in the past 9 months.

I have been working on a few projects since I am now in France such as a program I have been developing lately and which I will discuss in a separate post. Also the CQ WW SSB is coming in a week and I will do it with a new Contest team TM3P, I will also discuss about it later.

CQ WW SSB 2024

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Arrival

For this CQ WW SSB 2024 I booked the house on the beach to be able to have better working conditions as well as a quieter location compared to my home location.

I arrived on Friday night and installed the BuddiHex on its 7m Mastwerks.

I also installed the Flex 6600 / SPE Expert 1.3K-FA, the Flex Maestro C, laptop and network. All went well and performed the job within 1h30.

Contest Start

Started the contest straight at 7am local time with a good pile up on 10m with USA and Japanese.

But I must say that having this activity showed me how difficult it is to work a contest from those location such as South East Asia. No one has the beams turned to us and it is impossible to break the EU/USA wall. I could hear so many stations at S9+ here who never replied. I tried to call CR3A for 30 minutes without success. Conditions are definitely modest with a Hexbeam @ 7m above the ground and 1kw but frustration is very high when working a contest from South East Asia.

On Sunday I woke up at 3.30am to try and see what I could work on 20m, this is usually when we have New Caledonia as well as Carribean/USA. Again same story heard some new ones like V47T very strong but impossible to break the EU/USA pile up. Conditions have been excellent on 10m while 15m and 20m were dead during the saturday but at around 10pm local time the bands finally opened up and were full of signals !

On Sunday morning I went for a sleep at around 9am and when I woke up I saw the antenna / mast on the floor, it was heavily raining with a lot of wind and the antenna felt down while asleep. Two arms of the BuddiHex broke and I cannot repair so this signed the end of the contest for me last contact on Sunday morning at 1.49z or 8.49am local time almost 24 hours before the end of the contest.

Anyway the pile ups were a lot of fun even if not very long.

I end up with 792 contacts, not may multipliers as a majority of the contacts were Japan / China / USA.

Thanks to all who worked me or the ones I worked.

CQ WW SSB 2024

Baby Loop Antenna

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I purchased a Baby Loop Antenna from Ciro Mazzoni in Italy a few years ago.

The antenna was sent to France as it could not be delivered in Vietnam due to prohibitive shipping cost during Covid period.

It took me 1.5 year to get it back to Ho Chi Minh City as I needed to wait for shipping prices to be more reasonable.

I have installed the Baby Loop Antenna in the garden here downtown Ho Chi Minh City.

Here are a few photos.

For the time being I am still trying to find the right place for the antenna, unfortunately I do not have many options.

Sometimes I get very high SWR depending on the heading of the antenna or where it is in the garden. For example, I tend to have higher SWR when it is on a sloping ground.