AmateurRadio.com

Several months ago I built an UNUN, like the one I use for my portable ops antenna, but this one was going in my attic.

I finally had time this weekend to get this thing installed in my attic.  I cut a piece of wire 30′ long for the radiator.  My shack is in the basement, and one wall is the garage wall.  So I drilled a hole at the bottom of the garage wall, and in the ceiling of the garage.

I then ran my coax from the basement up into the attic – very easy.

Then came the fun part, walking on roof trusses to get the wire installed.  Pretty easy, and luckily it is still cool outside.

Once installed I went down to the shack and hooked up the KX3 to the antenna.  It tuned up nicely on 40 thru 10 meters with the internal tuner.  So I put a quick CQ on 20 meters and was spotted coast to coast on the RBN – success!

About 11:30 pm on Sunday night I had time to get down to the shack again and see what was going on.

As soon as I turned the radio on I heard W1AW/5 (NM) calling CQ with no takers.  So I threw my call out and he came right back with one repeat on my call.  We exchanged 599 and it was fun.

I then spent about another hour messing around with FLDIGI and WSPR – with no success.  More to report on this later….these modes are all new to me, so there is a pretty big learning curve.

So now I can actually have some ham radio fun from home!