Dropped by the construction site today, exterior siding is being installed and internal drywall is mostly completed.

Not pictured here, I checked on my office, I had a few specific adds for the builders, RG8X coax to be ran from my office down to the unfinished basement where I will drop it outside eventually for a few HAM radio antennas. And a fiber optic line from where the Ethernet is being collected. And lastly an additional dedicated electrical outlet for my radio. I’m attempting to isolate anything that will be connected to my radio station to decrease radio frequency interference in and out. The fiber optic line will be future proof from a speed perspective but also as it lacks conducting elements in the wire it won’t pick up noise from electronics in the house and thus I can avoid bringing that electrical noise into my computer when using digital modes while connected to the internet. The isolated power will do a similar job decreasing the noise on the line from other electronics that would be on the same breaker. I also asked for the hot and neutral wires to be twisted together (the hope being that this will help cancel any noise picked up from other devices in the house as RFI but will need to study the dedicated circuit more to see if that was done.

My plan is to mount a 2 meter wavelength antenna in the attic and run a 80 meter wavelength end-fed half-wave dipole out to a tree about 25 feet from the ground to do Near Vertical Incident Skywave propagation. With the goal of establishing regular consistent communication with my brother at his property a little more than a hundred miles away. He is approaching the same pursuits as I am roughly with a homestead. I was able to produce a map of his place with the contours of the land and a few rough ideas for his property. Pond locations, house site locations etc. I’m not a professional engineer but I’m pretty sure he had a very cost effective 6 acre pond site if he wanted it, lucky duck. I’ll be glad if I can squeeze in a little frog pond. I’ll probably get a meshtastic thing set up eventually too, to see what that is all about. But no plans yet.

That would leave me with one more external antenna that I don’t know what to do with yet. Any suggestions welcome. #grownostr #hamradio #homesteading