Experiments with equipment for a remote site continue ... Bernard has now completed breadboards for connecting his Four Square remote controllers to Arduinos (both Mega and Uno arduino boards are on the breadboard) at each end (remote site and in Wellington). Now, for writing the software ...
by Mike ZL1AXG A four square antenna has now been built and assembled, assisted by a number of local amateurs (Doug ZL2AOV is photographer, Bernard ZL2BD, James ZL2ET, flatmate Josh, and Malcolm ZL2UDF and myself are in assembly mode). Full testing wasn't possible because 20m at the test location in Grenada Village was full of local QRN at S6+ and peaking over S9. It did, however, pull in stations on 15m, even if it was not designed for that band! The team are busy assembling the portable four square array for 20m. The array takes about an hour to assemble: four antennas, four feedlines, a control box, coax and an ethernet line back to the rig and remote control, and 32 radials! Bernard ZL2BD measuring the impedance at the feedpoint with his antenna analyser. Note that we found in this first test that the initial feed arrangement wasn't satisfactory, creating too much coupling to ground. Doug reworked the "feet" giving them nice painted toenails (in British racing green). I started this project with the intention of engendering interest in phased vertical arrays. I imagine that the club will get to play with this antenna (and hopefully others like it) in our annual efforts in Oceania DX Contest and CQ WW contests. 20m was…