I’m hoping that the transverter I’ve put together using a couple of boards off eBay and the 5-element yagi I’ve put up in place of the 2/70 white stick will help me get off the ground with this year’s Challenge.
I’d previously tried using the white stick and my beat-up old FT-817, but wasn’t able to hear any of the activators I listened out for.
The yagi’s pointing just west of north, which is the direction in which I have the lowest horizon. To my west there’s a hundred feet of hillside, and more distant hills of similar height wrap all the way round through south to north-east. I don’t yet have a rotator for the yagi, but I figured that pointing that way it stood a reasonable chance.
Today, whilst trying the transverter out for the first time, I noticed, first, that 2 metres is totally devoid of CW Skimmers in this part of the world, so you’re not going to hit RBN, and second, that at least two of the spots on 2 metres today mentioned using a vertical antenna. I could, however, use the VHF SDR at Hack Green, and it could just barely hear my CW, but not my SSB signal.
Next step will be making an antenna suitable for use on a summit (Maybe something like this oblong?) so that I can give the transverter an outing. Are activators mostly using vertically-polarized antennas? I’m guessing that chasers with SSB/CW-capable base stations probably have horizontally-polarized antennas to go with them, but maybe they also have the option to switch to vertical?