Journal ·
A NanoVNA showed up and now I have opinions about antennas
No transceiver yet, but the NanoVNA got here first and I've been sweeping antennas all evening.
The transceiver is still somewhere between China and my mailbox, but the NanoVNA got here today, so obviously I dropped everything else and started sweeping every piece of wire I own.
I didn’t fully appreciate how satisfying this little device is until I actually had one in my hands. You just connect it, and suddenly there’s a whole curve on a tiny screen telling you exactly where your antenna is happy and where it very much is not. My EFHW has this one dip that’s almost exactly where I want it and a slightly worse one further up, and I spent way too long just staring at it feeling weirdly proud, like I built the antenna myself instead of just testing it.
I also tried it on a random length of wire I had lying around from a previous “I’ll definitely use this for something” phase, purely out of curiosity, and the SWR curve was exactly as chaotic as you’d expect from an antenna that was never actually designed to be one. Educational, if nothing else.
The best part honestly is that now, when the uSDX finally does arrive, I won’t be flying blind — I’ll already know which antenna setup is actually worth keying up on and which ones are just going to make the rig unhappy. Small win, but it feels like real progress instead of just waiting.
Speaking of waiting: still waiting. The mailbox situation remains unresolved. More on that very soon, probably with increasing levels of impatience.
73, Iskra