I guess I lied… got a 2nd wind. Got the 1st crack at it up in the air. Due to reach (rope not long enough), I have a LOT of fold-back at the top; probably 8’ or so. This turns out good, as its best tune is 2.15MHz, just a hair above the 160m band. Close enough that rig’s internal tuner can work with it at 1.996, where it’s now CW beaconing @ 15W. Let’s see if anyone hears it overnight.

#HamRadio

Oh Dopey Me, thinking that since there's only one menu setting in the FTdx3000 about CW beacon (the period between beacons is set to 90 seconds), that it would just continue until I stopped it.

Alas, no. Come morning, I find that RBN has not picked me up at all overnight. Likely it's because this shorty-dummy-load isn't getting out at all. But the fact that the CW beacon was not transmitting all night may also be a factor.

Next on the agenda, bring it down, and un-fold as much of the fold-over as I can. Try to get it down to be tunable on the FT8 frequency. Between FT8 and WSPR, that will tell me a lot more about the viability of this antenna than the RBN would.

Why? Because you need a bunch of special $#!+ to be an RBN monitor. But WSJT-x users are ALL potential monitors, so there's many, many, MANY more of them.
#HamRadio
#AntennaExperiments

#GoodNewsBadNews ...I went out and un-folded the top portion of the #ShortyVertical - there had been about 5' folded over, now there's none.

The Good News: The usable bandwidth is decent. The 2:1 SWR range is 130kHz. That's more than enough elbow room for my intentions.

The Bad News: Un-folding the top to make it 5' longer did not move the lowest SWR frequency one bit. It's still at 2.15MHz.

It feels like 50' AGL just may not be enough to do this. I can go longer, but it'll REALLY slope.

Of course, I can go much longer, and instead take up a bunch MORE "slack" with the "meander" loading section. I was hoping to not do that.

Well, before I go completely crazy and bankrupt myself with wire costs, let's put the external tuner in the circuit. It can tune a much shittier match than the radio's internal tuner can. Let's see if we can get it to cope at 1.84MHz.

Well. Interesting. Probably old news to y'all, but I'd never before had anything that could do anything on 160m, so I knew absolutely bupkis about the band.

All day long, nothing.

Then, after the greyline went by, & it's dark out, li'l green pins all over the US map... so long as they're also in the dark. Fascinating contrast to other bands.

I've now actually had my 1st 160m contact on FT8!

The silly shorty 160m vertical (at a mere 50' tall), works (to some meager extent)!
#HamRadio

Got another just before bed.

Got up a little before the sun, and picked up a couple more.

This ridiculous contraption works.
#HamRadio
#AntennaExperiments
#Shorty160MeterVertical

External tuner was able to get this ridiculous thing to a reasonable match on 40m.

It's doing pretty OK on 40 as well.

I’ve just started another experimental tweak on the #HamRadio #TopBand #ShortyVertical. I took up “slack” in the #MeanderLoading section by increasing the number of zigs/zags from 6 to 18 (triple), & brought the hula closer, so they’re about 6’ apart (about half what they were). I was hoping this would lower the SWR dip down into 160m band. Nope; it rose to 2.58MHz.

Counter-intuitive.

Not sure what the next tweak will be.

Maybe add element length at the base; it’ll have to slope a lot more.

Tried that. Added nearly 10m more wire below the loading section. Dip only got down to 2.1MHz. Half as much improvement as I’d expected.

Can’t add another 10m because the feed point for this recent tweak is almost at the curb. Hmm.

So maybe back to 6 zigs/zags, but even further apart than before, to “eat up” more wire, plus the added 10m, & aim for a 75deg slope.

Depends on tomorrow’s WX, I guess. Done for the day. Almost mosquito hour.