Night forest adventure with 20m 3el. Superantennas yagi

I promised myself to have "radio evening" every Tuesday evening regardless of the weather and other circumstances. Today it was the first such event. I went to the forest (to the "picnic hill") with YP3 antenna, 5 meters long mast, FT847 and 18Ah battery. It was about 10 degrees (quite cold) and veeery bad propagation. I made only one short qso, some North American station heard but they didn't hear me. My battery seems to be not enough for power levels > 30W - I have to work QRP or change battery. The new experience was assembling 3 elements Yagi antenna for 20 meters in complete darkness (with head lamp only), erecting it on 5 meters mast and the disassemble again in complete darkness a few hours later. I see my expeditions in Autumn/Winter will be limited due to condensation appearing on equipment- about midnight everything was wet what not necessarily must be good for radio...

Superantennas YP-3

Just received ordered YP-3 from superantennas.com and was eager to see how it works. I chosen some parking with some recreational area above Zurich (with beautiful view for the city and all it's HF noise included :))) But was calm, accessible by car and with enough space to build this construction. Antenna is well designed and easy to mount. I used Buddipole mast (5m) - just for test use is ok but for this antenna is too weak. Actually I'm looking around for stronger and higher mast.



It was just weekend with CQ WW DX contest and I could heard many stations calling but I didn't want to participate in this contest so this time I was just SWL. I tested antenna with VNA and found it working really fine - SWR about 1.4 and really high difference in signal strength when directed towards the station and in other directions. For 20m band my 5 meters mast is definitely too low.