Phase box connected

Yesterday (Saturday) SM2XLL came over to help me out at the station. I never climb the tower when being there alone, the same goes for the chainsaw because it is too dangerous if something happens. So he did watch me while I did first climb up to 55m to add the side support for the top 6el yagi. This had to be done since it was removed when we moved the beam during the 40m lift (thanks again Gunnar, SG3P). When I had started to work on that boom support the rain started and it kept raining like crazy until I had done all work in the tower, approximately 2.5 hours. When I came down there was barely any dry spot at all on me. I got the 180 degree cables connected and the antennas hooked up to the new stackbox, making it possible for us to phase shift the different antennas and steer the vertical lobe into four different angles. These angles are 6,13, 17 and 25 degrees. All three antennas are always in use, just phase shifted.

The first tests of the system shows quite a lot of signal improvement to some stations. Beaming EU for example some guys were 15dB louder on a higher angle compared to all antennas in phase. When we tried some towards US most of the time 6 degrees was the best but when band opened up more 13 degrees sometimes worked better. So I believe that during really good openings the higher angle might be useful while towards west coast I believe that 6 degrees will be better almost all the time.

Here are some pictures and also a video from the tower

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