Of course when buying our present home in 1999, I had planned on erecting a nice crankup 55 foot tower for my planned HF, VHF, UHF and microwave antennas.  After doing some measuring and planning since the tower would require a considerable amout of concrete, we called a local concrete company for an estimate as to cost and how they would get it in our back yard which is only 60 feet wide north to south and 270 feet east to west.  Unfortunately our back yard faces property owned by Baltimore County with recreational facilities for softball and other sports.  An elementary school is part of the property to the east of us.  Anyway, the concrete salesman said they will not drive their cement mixer trucks on County property  and besides, we would have to have part of the rear chain link fence temporarily removed.  They cannot get a truck in from the front because of our large car port.  He said the only alternative was to pump (air blow) or bring the concrete from the street in wheel barrows.  I told him I would think about it and of course time went buy with other duties such as redoing the house, painting and having sheds built.  Here it is, 2010 with no tower but we have managed by using a roof tower on the garden shed which holds the antennas for satellite, 144, 432, 1296 and 2400 MHz.  Being retired puts a strain on purchasing or renewing antennas and other gear.

In 2000 we needed an antenna for the low bands besides a 40 meter dipole which gave us 7 and 21 MHz.  Many hams frown on the multi band verticals but we went ahead anyway and purchased the Cushcraft R8 vertical for 40 through 6 meters.  It has performed very well with many DX stations and WAS worked 3 times since the year 2000.  Even though our radio gear has built in trimming tuners, we started using an old standby tuner, the Heathkit SA-2060 which is heavy duty with a good roller inductor.  One evening we experimented to see if it would tune the Cushcraft R8 on 160 meters and sure enough it did.  The coax run from the shack is about 95 feet of RG11 direct burial to the R8 antenna which loaded as part of it.  We were able to work many stations forcing it to tune to roughly 1820 KHz and the first station worked was W3DF Dan who lives west of us about 60 miles. 

We recently acquired the Flex Radio 5000A and decided we needed an antenna dedicated to 160 meter CW operations.  There was much confusion since there are so many 43 foot verticals available, with considerable reading and asking other hams about  the 43 foot verticals advertised by DX Engineering, we went ahead and ordered one. It arrived in less than 36 hours via UPS and we started right away unpacking the tubing and parts.  One person can easily construct and install this vertical since it comes with a base, toroid balun, lot's of clamps to hold each aluminum pipe and large U-bolts.  It must be mentioned here that the MFJ company also makes vertical antennas but they cannot compare to the DX Engineering type.  Since it can be taken down easily by loosening one clamp at a time and lowering the remaining sections, we temporarily placed a 2 inch pipe in the ground and erected the antenna, 43 feet in the air.  The only radial as such until we can finish them is a number 10 wire connected to the antenna ground and a chain link fence about ten feet away.  A ground rod was driven in the ground near the base and also connected.  Luckily when burying coaxial cables after the new shed was built, we had ran additional RG11 for future use.  The new antenna was connected and were soon in the shack turning on our radio gear.  The Heathkit SA2060 tuner is ideal for extreme mismatched loads and we soon turned the roller inductor and the 2 capacitors for maximum noise from the receiver.  We turned off the internal tuner in the Flex 5000A and set power out for 10 watts and keyed a series of dits for tuning.  I was surprised when the controls were very close to being a 1:1 SWR and we then increased power to about 80 watts.  This was at around 3 PM without any stations on but could tell by the atmospheric noise the antenna was hearing OK.  We put the tools away then did a little work in the garden and soon was eating dinner with the XYL.  Around 9 PM, we turned on the rig and right away heard some stations around 1.815 or so.  I made a CQ up higher and a station in North Carolina came back to me and said I sounded great near Durham.  I then worked 2 more stations who were surprised I was using one of the 43 foot verticals they had heard so much about with many people claiming they do not work that well. 

Now in 2011, we started haing problems with the R8 creating noise and very eratic on 40, 30 and 20 meter bands.  Luckily the upper bands have been open everyday and will repair the R8 when the weather breaks.  The DX Engineering antenna will have to take it's place which will work out well.