Today I took a day off so I could go to the Taste of Dublin Festival but in the morning I wanted to finish the installation of the cabling. So this was my starting point:

Again I soldered an eye into the end and closed off the cable so no moisture would get in. I also cleaned the copper contacts and sanded the corrosion off everything and treasted the surfaces with some compound I ordered from the USA: No-oxid. That should hopefully keep the connection electrically conductive in a highly corrosive environment such as a boat.

By the time I finished this it was time to go to the festival to meet my friends and continue later in the afternoon.

[some expensive food tastings in great company later…]

Now I had the controller and coax cable to install (also temporarily) under the floorboards of the cabin to the table. I need to change that once I go sailing but for now the location of my equipment in that corner suits me.

It was a great opportunity to do some vacuum cleaning in places that I normally don’t get to:

And here you can see the controller for the antenna tuner and the grounding for the Yaesu rig attached:

The transmitter is set to 1.875MHz (the 160m amateur radio band) that I had never ever in my life been able to use before. The green LED on the controller box indicates that the antenna tuner was able to make the standing rigging resonant for this frequency. SUCCESS!

SWR test setup:

Here are the SWR graphs generated by the Icom 705:

This rig can’t tune the 15m band but the Yaesu has no problem. I don’t know why yet… Same for 12m: 10m is fine:

(addendum 10/9/2021: I have also noticed that in wet conditions that the Icom 705 can’t drive the antenna tuner to tune where the Yaesu FT-857D can tune it. Needs to be investigated.)

That evening I made my first ever (FT8) QSO on 160m with Guernsey GU8FBO!

In general the antenna is working much better compared to the ATAS-120 and the YouLoop for reception. It’s a great addition to the boat/shack. I’m happy I finally set it up.