Improving Performance on 12m band

Folded back the Western side of my zig-zag antenna by 60cm. Due to folding constraints, I had to make three layers for the folding for this 60cm! Mounted the antenna limb back on the garden fence, a bit more nearer to the mounting point as the length had been shortened and the anchoring nylon rope was not long enough to reach the previous anchoring point. So the angle between the second and third layers of the zig-zag linear loading would have increased a bit. Yet the final result was better. SWR on 12m came down to about 2.25, though 80m still showed HI SWR. SWR on 30m seemed to have increased a little bit, but it was not of much concern for me as I wanted to try out 12m only.

Tuned SWR in the radio was 1 while the external SWR meter continued to show elevated SWR in the feedline as usual. This video clip was taken during a CQ call on CW. This time I am using the average power display and forward power goes up to 85 watts and reflected power about 17 watts. As I mentioned earlier, the reflected power will be again pushed back to the antenna of which I expect about 85% to be radiated.

CQ call with this setup showed longer distance pick up at 3370 miles at RN4WA on Reverse Beacon Network with signal to noise ratio of 6 dB at around 5 pm. As SWR was lower than in the morning, I was more confident to sent the CQ call this time. Still there will be some resistive loss in the feedline due to multiple back and forth reflections as the SWR is elevated. Planning further adjustments tomorrow to get best possible SWR on 12m. Last year I had worked VK9CV Cocos Keeling DXpedition on SSB, using my end fed half wave dipole antenna and built-in antenna tuner of FT-710. That is the only contact which I have made on 12m so far. Hence I am interested in working 12m band more.