S9 v31 antenna report

Have used the S9 v31 for a few weeks now. Receive is excellent, seems much more quiet than my dipoles. But, although I have a good system of radials in place, still have trouble getting out. I believe it's caused by my radial plate. It's actually a piece of plumbing hardware using for sink for toilet mounting. My sense is that it's not all that conductive, plus its painted and I don't think I scraped off enough paint around the screw holes to make good contact with the screws connected to the ground wire from the unun and the ground wires themselves. Will replace it with a better plate shortly.

The antenna itself is quite easy to put together and get on the air. I painted numbers on the clips that hold the telescoping sections in place. Avoids the problem of putting them on in the wrong order. I swapped out the nuts that came with the unun for wing nuts, which minimizes the need for tools.

The only tool needed now is a hook to pull the wire out of the telescoping tube during assembly. The S9 came with a rug hook tool which has a dangerously sharp tip. I replaced it with a crochet hook which does a fine job, weighs less and has no sharp point.

The only other drawback to my current setup is the fact that the radials are in a 180 degree pattern because the antenna is just a few feet from the wide of the house. This distorts the signal pattern, but there is no room to spread radials a full 360 degrees.