In the early hours of this morning I decided to do some proper testing of the new antenna. For the first half hour I made several SSB/Phone contacts all around Euroland without any difficulties on 20 and 40 meters including a QSO ito mid France which was not possible on my old antenna so the north/south slope seems to be improving propagation dead south.

After doing the SSB/Phone work I switched over to doing some Digital FT8 work with the idea that even if I didn’t make any contacts I would at least be able to see where my signal was reaching via the PSKReporter web site. As you can see from the above screen capture I’ve was being received down in Australia on 20 meters and to my absolute joy I was picked up in Japan on 80 meters. I’ve never been able to work 80 meters before so that’s is going in the book as a total success.