6m vertical on the tower

Placed the 6m/UHF/VHF Watson W2000 (Diamond V2000 clone) antenna in the mast this weekend. It is not on it's final place but so far on top at 16m height. Didn't have much time to play with it though so really don't know how it performs. SWR is the same as on the low 6m long mast. I did receive a 4X4 (Israel) station on FT8 and some europeans. As soon as I made a CQ on FT8 I was spotted in Spain, Denmark and Germany. At least I made one QSO with a station in Germany. I don't think there was much ES at that time...however 6m can open within 10 minutes and close in the bext 10 minutes. Propagation can be very local, it is possible I work DX and a station 50km south of me does hear nothing at all. 6m is a strange and unpredictable band. And because of that it is attractive to radio enthousiasts.




I have changed my shack setup a little. Had to find a place for the rotor controller. Besides that you see 3 switches on the right side. Switching the digimodem, audio NIR-10 filter and a antennarelay at the bottom of the mast. Missing the voicekeyer in the picture since I didn't use it anymore so sold it. Well, the Icom IC-706 looks a little small in that space. Hopefully I will replace it by a IC-7300 in the future. The extra connectors you see are the jack plug for the footswitch and the mini DIN for the computer voicekeyer.


Next step is to install the 5 element 6m ZX-Yagi. I'm cleaning it and have to make some repairs. Hopefully I find some time to install it in the mast this week.