I’m delighted to confirm that the work I discussed a week ago has been completed along with some additional work that wasn’t planned.

Instead of just replacing the low quality HF coax with  Messi & Paoloni RG-58 Military Spec coax and connectors I’ve also replaced the coax on the VHF/UHF D-31 Discone with  Messi & Paoloni Airborne 10 coax and connectors. After doing that I realised there was a need to carry the upgrade to it’s full conclusion and change the internal coax as well. I completed this on Thursday running the RG-58 Military Spec coax and connectors from the input feed switch to the FT-710, the IC-705 and the SDRPlayDx. I also replaced the coax running from the input feed for the VHF/UHF D-31 to the living room with Messi & Paoloni Unltraflex 7.

All together quite a lot of work and not a small amount of money to buy the coax and connectors. I think in total it came in just under £200. So what is the result of all this work.

On HF 20m my noise floor has fallen from around a constant S6 down to an amazing S1 – S1.5 and my incoming signals have substantially increased in strength. Incoming signals that were lost below the noise floor are now clear as a bell.

On HF 40m it’s very much the same. My noise floor has dropped from a steady S9 to a much more usable S4 – S4.5 and incoming signals are boosted.

On VHF/UHF receive signals are again boosted and the noise floor reduced to such a point that I’m now receiving signals that were totally invisible to me before the upgrade.

All I can say is that the results are absolutely and it feels like I have installed new radios. Or, another way of looking at it is my radios are now working exactly how they should have been working all along.