Bought by mistake?

martinedwards

Well, nearly!

Put a silly low bid on a Carolina Windom CW 80 Special on ebay.

Radioworld have them at £135 plus shipping.

under 30 euro inc post cant be bad.......

now I have to work out where to put it!

martinsvi

well, If you don't need it, I'll buy it off you wire alone doesn't come as cheap

martinedwards

gimme a chance to try it out against my G5RVjr in the same bands in the same condx......

martinsvi

I expect a detailed review

Quaderno

Sounds like a good price, but doesn't buying antennas take half the fun out of it?
I'm still surprised how well my 20m attic-dipole works from 40 to 10mtrs. It's made of steel core clothes line that cost €2.99 and a cheap balun...
It's certainly not perfect and I don't really have any comparison, but it sure gets the signal out and is completely invisible to anyone outside. That being said, if I had the space I would probably also try something longer outside.
Yesterday I bought a 2/70 magmount antenna for the car, it got plenty of reasonable reviews and including shipping and tax/customs came to just over €27. Should be here in time for Christmas.

martinsvi

Quaderno wrote: »

doesn't buying antennas take half the fun out of it?

yes and no. I've been into hobby just a few months and I already have built at least 6 or 7 antennas and bought just one. You kind of have to have a commercially made antenna near by to know if your diy antenna is any better/worse

as for the wire antennas - of course they're easy to build, but you're not going to find 40m of antenna wire for 30eur

martinedwards

what HE said!

I have a long wire with a home made Balun, and I have all the bits for a 80m horizontal loop, I've also made a 2m copper pipe J-pole, and back in the olden days when I was a nipper at school I built a 5/8 omni for my CB out of 15 feet of 3 core copper wire, the snapped off vertical section of a GP27 1/2, and an aluminium shower curtain rail!

I tried making a OCFD a while back and it was poo, mainly (I think) because I used cheap rubbish wire.

what I NEED is someone who works at rewinding industrial electric motors and take some time UNwinding a few......

watty

My 22m long wire is exterior grade PVC (stiff) twisted shielded microphone cable as it cost nothing All connectors tied. It works a bit better than €4 of clothes line.

TV LOPT core with coax wound on it as a balun and then 1.5" PVC pipe and 16/0.2 PVC wire as matching transformer.

martinedwards

temporally mounted, about 10m up with the long leg horizontal and the shorter leg sloping along the eves of the house.

2 s points better on RX than the G5RV jr, tunes well on 40, & 80.

10m contacts from Kazakhstan to Argentina. haven't had a chance to play at night for 40 & 80 DX.

I'll still keep the G5RV jr as I discovered this morning that a Namibian station (huge pile up) was more audible on the G5 than the Windom though it was still very low.

I reckon it's a keeper!

martinedwards

since Sunday.........

10m:
Euro. Russia
Kazakhstan
Dominican Rep
USA (East coast, Texas & California)
Brazil
Curacao
Estonia
Turkey
Romania
Ukraine
Slovenia
Croatia
Slovak Rep
Bulgaria
Hungary
Qatar
Canada
South Africa

15m
Slovak Rep
Euro Russia

40m
England
Isle of Man
Italy
Germany
Ukraine
Euro Russia

80m
Switzerland

martinsvi

what modes? can you give me a link to antenna ebay page?

martinedwards

modes?

MOSTLY cw, but a little SSB, PSK31 and even a single RTTY.

my standard ebay search is Radio communication equipment, USED, in Europe.