On site testing of antenna loading coils!

You can get a glimpse of my 80/20m loaded coil inverted V dipole antenna under construction here. The green central part is a piece of PVC pipe covered with insulation tape. Inside there are direct connections for the antenna elements from either side to the RG 213 cable as I do not have a spare 1:1 current balun. Thick black cable running from the mast to one side is 15m long RG 213 cable going to my radio shack. The orange coloured three segment telescopic pole also holds my 40/10m combination inverted V dipole antenna at the top. The 80/20m antenna has been mounted half way through, at a height of about 6m from the ground. A nylon wire can be seen coming down on one side. That is being used to pull up the 40/10m antenna up on to the tip of the mast.

I pulled up the ends of the 80/20m antenna after untying from the lower supports in the garden and removed the insulation tape covering the ends of the loading coils. Then I scraped the joints of the antenna wires with the coils to get good electrical contact by removing the leftover remains of gum from the insulation tape. This is one loading coil being tested for inductance, while connected to the antenna elements. It shows an inductance value of 122 millihenries.

Now the second loading coil is being checked for inductance. You can see that initially there is minimal variation with values fluctuating between 122.2 and 122.1 millihenries. Towards the latter half of the test it has rather stabilized to 122.1 millihenries. The values are similar to those which I obtained while testing prior to attachment of the antenna elements.