ScubaJungle
Active Member
Hmm, that does look good, but to be honest I'm not big on early-adoption. The 7300 is looking real good, and I'm starting to get excited to have it!Or......wait a month or three and get the new Icom IC-705. Its a small radio that has the same display as the IC-7300 and has HF, 2m and 70cm. With a 100w HF amp it should be very similar to the 7300 and you will have VHF and UHF. Add an LDG tuner and you will have up to 10:1 tuning range on HF instead of the more limited 3:1 of the internal 7300 tuner. The performance of the 705 should be similar to the 7300 and if worse, not much worse. IC-705 All Mode Portable - Features - Icom America
Now I'm thinking about an antenna. Not sure if I should make a separate thread or not, but for now Ill keep it here
.
I like the idea of the doublet/dipole with ladder line, and the ones I've used on the spyserver have gotten really great reception.
Since I'm in limited space, I'm thinking of building a helical doublet with slinky and ladder line. I don't see any obvious reason why this wouldn't work, but is there anything I'm missing?
I figure if the G5RV "JR" is about 52ft, I can get that down to half and still get coverage up to 40m-60m
The design I was thinking of was:
Slinky - Slinky meet at center insulator, go to ladder line. Ladder line goes down to center insulator and into coax, coax starts with 6 spins for balun.
slinky Ctr ins. slinky
~~~~~~o~~~~~~~
||
|| ladder line
o ctr ins.
O coax - 6-turns
| coax
My biggest question about this is that I've seen specified lengths for the ladder line - is it necessary to have a specific length, and if so, can I also put that into a helical pattern for saving space?
I have a 8-10 foot balcony, so I really don't have much to work with and need to get creative. I can use the inside of my apartment, and I can go from balcony to window and get probably 20 feet total across outside, a bit more inside.