Since 1982, my remote site at Waianakarua has been used for MW and SW DXing of the listening style... i.e. no tramnsitters! Please visit my Waianakarua page for more on its use as a haven for MW DX!

As a ham site, the lack of tall trees or anything else to support antennas has been a hindrance and one attempt using low-slung vee-beams (about 3 - 4m high) revealed the inadequacies of such a system.

On Saturday the 8th of March 2008, with the help of a friend, John Clements who owned a bucket-truck and a dual-wheel trailer and with my son Scott, we moved a 16.8m high steel tower onto the site.

The tower was kindly given to me by Nigel and Jenny de Geest who owned a holiday-home about 1km away.

Lowering, moving and raising the tower took 4 hours and was much harder than I'd anticipated, though I'm sure the various wires I'll hang from it along with the Beverages as receiver antennas, will make the hard work worthwhile DX-wise.

I will add another 6 metres, maybe more and possibly add a wire beam or two also...

You can follow the progress on the Waianakarua blogspot.