Some six months after my loading box caught fire and damaged my house and conservatory, the insurers have finished most of the repairs. I have re-erected the mast at the house end and reinstalled my inverted-L Marconi, so am back on the air again.
The main difference is that the inverted-L is now fed at the far end of the garden, rather than at the house end. This has the advantage that the vertical section and most of the antenna is further from the interference generators (plasma TVs, switch-mode PSUs, low energy lghts etc) in the houses next door to mine. It has two disadvantages: firstly it has to be fed by coax and ATU adjustments need a trip up the garden; secondly the vertical section is much closer to a tree which will absorb some of the signal (though that effect will be much less in the winter).
My new ATU hut. Far left is the antenna wire. Inside the hut is (left to right) the loading coil wound on a pedal bin; the grey metal box is an ex-Decca station variometer; above it is a Russian WW2 antenna current meter; on the right is the toroidal transformer, with a spare coil/variometer at the back. On the far right you can see the plastic pipe through which the coax cable is run (I have not finished filling in the trench).
