Yesterday, Sunday, December 6, I completed the installation of my Hy-Gain AV-18VS vertical (almost). Everything is in except the connection of the ground wire from the antenna itself. I thought I had measured accurately and had bought more than enough ground wire. But I bought two meters less than I actually needed so it means another trip into Masaka. Since it is the ground from the antenna, I can splice in a piece and attach it to the copper rod I drove in yesterday.

The antenna came to me when I lived in St. Croix shipped in a box so the sections were about 54" long. This made assembly simple there. When I packed to move to Uganda, I had to put everything in suitcases whose sizes and weights are determined by American Airlines. I cut the pieces in half, disassembled the coil and mounting base, then put everything in my bags. To reassemble it here, I took a hacksaw and cut short slices lengthwise into the end of each new section made when I cut existing sections. I then spread the aluminum tubing so it would fit over the corresponding section and fastened it together with hose clamps.

With some tinkering, it went back together just fine even though it is not exactly perfectly straight. There is a slight deviation in the length, but only a tiny bit. I installed the antenna on an 18" long piece of plastic pipe inserted into a hole I cut into a 12" X 18" wooden board which sets at the intersection of two roof peaks. The building is sort of an offset T with the intersecting ridge sitting a little south of exact center. The roof is metal so I want to keep the antenna insulated from the roof panels. I ran 4 guy wires from the plastic mast to hooks installed on fascia boards, connected the tuning coil, hooked up the coax feedline and the ground wire, then Voila! an antenna is born.

I brought coax with me but the run is longer than any one piece I have which means a splice. So, I dug in the few parts I was able to bring along and found a barrel connector and 2 PL-259 fittings. (Only 2! I don't know what I was thinking. I have more in my supply in Florida but just didn't throw them in. I really doubt anyone in Uganda has ever seen one.) I had bought a soldering iron when I first arrived in Uganda because I intend to assemble a couple of QRP radios. The soldering iron is some Chinese brand so I wasn't sure if it would get hot enough to solder the center wire into the center pin of the connectors. I plugged it in and left in on for several minutes. It was easily hot enough. I checked the plugs for shorts with a meter and hooked things up.

All this time I was praying the power would stay on long enough to get things assembled and test the radio. Power typically goes off at least once a day and sometimes stays off for several hours. I am working on a backup system. Interestingly, the shops in Uganda are situated together by type. Most shops are quite compact and specialized. One street will have all hardware shops. Another will have plumbing shops, yet another street will house all electrical supply shops, several sit side-by-side. If you go into one and they don't have what you're looking for, a runner will head out to other shops to get it. The price will be the same as if you had gone to the other shop. In Kampala a few weeks ago I went shopping for a DVD player. Tom, my Ugandan friend who knows the ropes, took me to the street where they are sold. There are a couple of department stores a bit like KMart only much, much smaller. Prices in them tend to be higher than on the streets. I found a player, then headed back to the car. We passed a number of shops selling Honda generators so I stopped to look them over. Tom told me they are all knock-offs from some Chinese factory. There are only two businesses in all of Uganda that sell genuine Honda generators, neither of them in that particular district. When I looked at the generators on that street, they looked like Hondas - same design, same color, even the same sound. But when one looks closer, the fit and finish is not the same. There are small ripples in the metal covers, slight deviations in the fit of the covers, and the like. But they are very cleverly made counterfeits.

Back to my shack. So with antenna feedline in place and the radio gear grounded, I decided to fire things up even though the antenna was not yet grounded.  The Icom IC-718 I brought with me runs off power from an Astron SS-30M power supply and sends a signal through a MFJ-974 tuner. I am accustomed to vintage gear - Kenwood and Drake - and brought these pieces (which used to belong to Michael Sheets who used to live on STX). So I am still learning how to push all those blasted tiny buttons. Getting the antenna tuned up wasn't too difficult.  I don't know what you do, but before I ever apply a signal through a tuner, I adjust the controls for the strongest INCOMING SIGNALS, figuring the receiver must like the tuning so settings for a transmitted signal can't be far away. After I did that, it was an easy matter to find the lowest SWR reading which in my case is 1:1. I listened for awhile, but did not transmit. I was able to hear some English speakers, one from Michigan. There are many languages in this part of the world, and there are call sign prefixes I do not yet recognize. I expect to get on the air today. Since the building on which the antenna rests is an off-center T, and the long part runs east and west with the intersecting T running south, which direction(s) do you think the signal will favor? Any ideas?

By the way, the map coordinates of Masaka, where my shack is are latitude 00 degrees, 20 min south, longitude 031 degrees, 46 minutes east. Altitude here is about 1150 meters, about 3700 feet.

Tomorrow I'll send along some photos and more tales from ham radio safari. Thank you for your comments. I try to get them "approved" so they will post on the blog, but my Internet connection is often too slow to allow me access. I write these blog posts using Windows Live Writer which lets me compose off-line, then it will post it when I can log on with me ever having to actually visit the blog server. Approving comments requires a visit to the server which I usually cannot get to work. If you post a comment, please be certain I am grateful and will get them approved as soon as I can.