40m is Open

Missed the Four Days in May again, but at least I played radio today some, may even it the band up again.
40m is open!
Started at about 9:30, worked a fella in North Carolina.
(BTW, did the run fer the bacon get cancelled? I missed the memo.)
then, turned on the dx, worked a couple that I've worked before, Peter HA8RM, and  Mauro I1MMR.
Setup is non-standard at the moment. I'm inside the house, running a line out the door, to my end fed half wave antenna. Still need to get out the W3EDP and string it up...
maybe Saturday at work.
Rig I'm running is "The Killer Watt Radio", it's an SW-40 in a custom aluminium case (I butchered something up from Radio Shack the way I wanted to), and a 10 turn pot.
I also modded the bandspread so that it would cover 7.005 to about 7.070 MHz, I can tell you that's about as far as the bandpass filter will take it. I get about 80% max power on the edges of the band because the bandpass filter wasn't designed for a 65KHz spread.
Rig is also battery powered inside, using some 7AH SLA I got from a guy on QRP-L
so yeah,
Ham radio wise, things are looking up!
Life is good.

More Fun with End Fed Antennas Part 2

This is Part 2, Part 1 may be found here:

http://skattagun.blogspot.com/2013/06/more-fun-with-endfed-antennas-part-1.html

There is was, early (like 03:00 early) Sunday morning, and I was stuck with a film canister full of fail. I thought that maybe if I let the goop inside dry, the SWR problem would clear up! Makes sense right?

After waking up very late Sunday morning, I decided to check out the SWR, and it was still high, but not as high, 2:1 as opposed to OMG:1. I decided to wait some more, but in the mean time, I had a couple of other things I wanted to try. First of all, I wanted to try and build the antenna inside a sturdier box. Something that wouldn't let the antenna connector rotate, like the film canister does.
After wrapping and prepping a second iron donut/capacitor combo, I checked SWR again. Instead of going down, it went back up! over 4:1 this time. Time to cut my losses. I chopped out the matching unit, and opened it up, check out what I found:

It is green

Let me assure you, that things were not that color when I put it in the canister! Figuring this was a "Well there's your problem!" type moment, I prepped a small radio shack container I had left over from a previous antenna project. I stuck an eye-hook in one end, drilled out the other, and affixed a BNC on the cover.

EFHW Box Mark II

after buttoning things up and ensuring that the internals were shorting themselves out, I deployed it, and tested it.

EFHW, 20m model, DEPLOYED!

Boom, Match!

I got everything set just in time for the afternoon thunderstorms to move in and ruin the radio fun...
no more QSOs just yet, and I'm going to make some more refinements, but as it is, it works!

Next up, EFHW and W3EDP Showdown at the Shack in the Back!