Hi All at Martin Lynch

Finally got some good weather for a couple of days with no wind here in Stirling, Scotland to get on with building the Optibeam OBW 10-5.  My initial correspondence with Thomas DF2BO at Optibeam was excellent before I decided to purchase the antenna.

From my order at Martin Lynch it took approx 6 days to arrive here.

The OBW 10-5 is a pretty straight forward antenna to build although if you come up against any problems Thomas DF2BO is only an e-mail away with an excellent service.

The longest time spent was tensioning up the antenna till you were satisfied it looked OK not so easy at ground level.

At ground level we fitted it to the stub mast and two of us lifted the whole antenna into the rotator cage this was really the hardest part for us as we were working to quite a small area with obstacles garden shed etc.

However once on the tower an initial check to see the antenna was sitting well, and a check with the antenna analyser the swr was really the same as the spec in the manual.

My first contact with 100w was with Bogdan VE3BDM, subsequently I have worked into Brunei V8, West Malaysia 9M2 all on 20m. So now I'll spend a bit more time operating to put the antenna through its paces but first impressions are really excellent.

Thanks all at Martin Lynch for a excellent service delivery etc.

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