My XYL Catherine (VK4GH) and I are lucky that we live on a couple of acres and have room to play with antennas, which include the broadband 40-30-17-12m hex beam and the TH6DXX for 20, 15 & 10. Our main 80m antenna is a horizontal 160m full size loop, fed with ladder line, which works extremely well.There are various other dipoles and loops. We also have a home brew 20, 15 & 10 spider beam for field days and have experimented with 40 m verticals and 2 sets of 2 x 40m dipoles arranged at right angles, feeding into a remote switch box.

Catherine enjoys the competitions, while I do the antenna building, so even though the station is very basic it is set up to be easy to work in a competition. Station consists of an Elecraft K3 driving an Acom 1000 amp and the new Palstar HF-Auto Tuner. We enjoy portable operations and usually try to go camping for any field day or contest that lends themselves to portable operations. The backup radio for portable is another K3 with an auto tuner, and when in a serious competition we use a KPA500 amp. We took part in our first dxpedition to Lord Howe Island (VK9LA) in March 2009 and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

For more photos see VK4GH

TH6DXX beside the radio shack

Broadband Hex Beam