Thanks Mike.

Thanks Tommy.

Thanks Chris. The Icom 703 was my first HF radio which I bought when I got my foundation licence. After a few years I sold it and very quickly regretted that decision. So much so that I went out & purchased the radio that you saw in the video. I can't remember what I paid for it but I recall paying more than it was actually worth. These days they are becoming very hard to find & sell for a small fortune if you are lucky enough to find one on the second hand market. It's one of those radios which I won't be selling. It's staying with me!!!

Hi Stephen. Good point about the directionality on 20m. I didn't mention that in the video.

Hi Leigh. Hope you get your feeder & antenna issues sorted for the weekend. I'm also hoping to be on air over the weekend. Probably not heavily but will do at least a couple of sessions. There is a trail of thought that a couple of us may operate from my 3 acre field but that's very much weather dependant. If it rains too much over the next couple of days the ground will become soft & we will end up getting motorhomes stuck in the field (which is what happened last year). I don't want to end up dealing with that again! I might also do a livestream from the field if we do manage to get down there. We'll see how things go. Plans are currently extremely fluid!

@@AmateurRadioUK hi mate. Yeah me too I will not be on for the whole weekend solid. Just in the process of trying my 10m mast in different areas of the 8x8 garden before I try and find another pl259 in the house. If no joy I have a 2m slim jim floating around somewhere I can cut the plug off. Should be alright if o use my 10m feeded and efhw close to the house and I can pass it through the window. Oh exciting times ahead then yes of course weather permits and water levels. Very windy here blowing the mast about. Yeah sounds good with the livestream will always try and join if I am home plus got an antenna up. Motters

Hi Gary. 10 watts from an old Icom 703.

Hi Ronan. I activated a summit with a kite antenna in Wales 2 days ago! I need to review the footage to see if it can be cobbled together to make a video. Unfortunately the weather was much worse than forecast, so I didn't get as much footage as I would have liked & what I did get wasn't great (rain water on camera lens etc). I'll have a look to see if it's salvageable.......otherwise I'll have to go out & have another attempt! You may have seen them already but there are a couple of videos of my early attempts on my channel.

I use a Jubilee clip (I think they call them hose clamps in most other parts of the world) with a bit of aquarium tube slide over the top of it to prevent it from damaging the fibreglass mast. It's quite an old video (one of my very early videos which I should probably re-make) but you can see it here:- kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rtmgkpejvL-qe2Q.html

I use the 7m mast from Spiderbeam.

Hi Chris. I've got a couple of DIY lithium packs made from 18650 cells. It was a while ago now but I made a playlist on it:- kzfaq.info/sun/PLFgm1CoA6ptwclbMO8hncbr_7-_YI-Avq When running more power from the FT-857D I have a bigger version with a larger capacity.

@@AmateurRadioUK thanks James

The mast that I was using is fibreglass (as opposed to carbon fibre), so not a problem. I've always steered away from carbon fibre for precisely that reason. I personally have not tried this with a carbon mast but anecdotally I have heard of people finding that the carbon detunes their antenna. My guess is that you would probably be able to compensate for this by adjusting the length of the wire.

Oh, missed that it was fiberglass. Cheers!

Cheers Brian. I also watch Fraser's channel with interest. I talk to Fraser fairly often (we have a little WhatsApp group), and we do like to exchange a few ideas here & there.