Topband antenna experiment

First i lay some mesh on the lawn and pinned it down with some old metal brackets i had lying around. If you look at the path on the right you can just make out some copper wire running over the grass up towards the footpath. This goes around the mesh and is staked into the ground with some old 6inch bolts i found. I scraped away the enamell on the copper wire then wrapped around the bolts which are hammered into the ground. Although the mesh looks like its bent upwards it is in reality flat, i cut this part of the grass before i put it down and that was nearly 2 weeks ago and i am now seeing the grass is growing through the mesh. Hopefully this will be invisible next summer or im in a lot of trouble! The feed point is visible in this pic and will soon be mounted in a plastic container on a post..

Copper wire runs up and down the lawn and is wired to the mesm, this will be pinned down to the lawn.

Just visible is one of the bolts that the copper wire is staked out with. Thats the earth come counterpoise which will be improved as time goes on.

Going up over the house is the 1/4 wave element. It goes up and over the now redundant TV aerial.

This pics shows the other side of the house and a black insulator and a line tying it off. Thats the 80m antenna which resonates @ 3.5mhz. The wire to the right is the 160m extension.

The loading coil which has about 40ft of wire on it layed on the washing line and the fence. Not pretty i know but its all measured and using a MFJ analyser its 40 ohms and resonates at 2mhz a little high but i will get it lower on the band when the weather gets better and im not at work. With this mess im having great fun working Scotland, Wales London etc with less than 20w....it works!