Now that's better!. had a re think about the 4 metre handy yesterday. Considered a j pole ant that i'd seen in the emporium, but after doing a wiki on same decided there was too much metal work around the fixing point here, apparently the j pole would not be over impressed with that.

Decided on plan B. Home brew dipole. Found an old telescopic fishing pole in the shed to support the wire elements. Taped some wire either side of a chocky block and proceeded to to trim until the swr and impedence became respectable. Started at exactly a metre on each element, but must have ended up taking a couple of inches from that. Unfortunately i forgot to note the resulting length before i taped a the whole thing up propper and erected the pole.

The feeder, indidentally, had to approach the feed point at an angle rather than neatly up the pole to achieve 50 ohms.

Back in the shack i eventually heard a station calling cq loud and clear on 70.45, where on the previous quarter wave, was way down in the noise. Good start. Returned his call and imediately he came back and gave me a 5&7. Nice one!. The ant was a success. My audio was a bit quiet apparently, as has been confirmed by other station since. There doesn't seem to be any mic gain facility etc in the menus, so have to live with it i guess. Still, we are up and running on 4.

Tuned in the the regular net run by a station near Wareham (20:30 Wednesday 70 .475 mhz), which is a fare lick from me. Worse, there is the New Forest between us. I did read a lot of the Wareham stations overs however, but could not make out his complete call sign. What with not hearing the other stations on net either i didn't think it worth attempting to make contact.