View from the rooftop
At last, the new antenna is installed, thanks to Andy "radioredcat" who braved the elements (it was very windy as you will hear in the video) to raise the antenna just enough to clear the rooftop as it was almost scraping it when vertical.
The upper and lower reflectors had also been mounted on the outside of the reflector boom (I had overlooked this when following the instructions) and the overall difference in reception is quite impressive and clearly noticeable. It's amazing how much difference one metre can make.
Gain is improved but I am no longer able to take Belmont down to a low, noisy level, presumably because the extra height. Belmont is only 39 kilometers away and can be seen from the rooftop.
Because the antenna is now higher above the rooftop it is able to function more naturally. However, it's always interesting to note there are usually subtle differences when you move any antenna and this can throw up some interesting things. Stations which could easily be nulled before become slightly more difficult to null and spread across a wider beamwidth, while it's vice versa for other stations. Weird how these things happen, but it's just a simple case of the antenna functioning more naturally now.
What impresses me more than anything is the continental scatter which now just lifts right out of the noise almost instantly and become noise free. I will get some recordings of this over the coming days to demonstrate. My old Triax FM5 would often struggle to achieve the same.
I still have my noise across much of the band but it seems slightly quieter at times and isn't so much of a problem at the edges of band 2. Hopefully this will improve soon as it can be a DX killer at times.
