On Air Again
For the shortwave bands, I am using the GAP Eagle DX antenna. Its a vertical multibander for the 40, 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10 meter bands. Its about 6.5 meters long (21 ft) and for a shortwave antenna relatively small, although my neighbours may think differently about that.
Nevertheless, a few month ago, the cable clamp, which held the radials of the counterpoise together, burst and I had to find a new one. That was a bit tricky, since all parts of the antenna are from the US and therefore have the US measures. So most of the clamps I found in DIY stores were either too short in length or too thick. In the end I found a cable clamp, which was originally meant for a hosepipe. Today I mounted it together with the radials and the antenna is working again.
Next to that, I tried out my new tuner, the MFJ-941 E. I got it used for a reasonable price. To test for the limits of the box, I tried to match a 1 meter long aluminium pipe for 40 meters and it worked! Ok, I did not hear anything on the frequency, but at least the SWR was all right.
After that, I attached my "frying pan" antenna to it, which consists of a pan and a 1.75 meter long radiator. I built it using the instructions by DL7PE (sorry, this website is only in German so far). Beneath the pan is a pancake coil, specially designed for 14 MHz. Without matching, it had a SWR of 2:1, with the tuner, it moved to 1:1. I could hear a lot of stations, a bit weaker in comparison to the GAP Eagle, but when considering the small size of this pan antenna it performs pretty good actually. However, its really difficult to tune without a tuner, although DL7PE says that it should work without one.