AmateurRadio.com

As always I was up early today, the house very quiet only to be interrupted by the coffee bean grinder swirling beans into a brew mixture. The temperature this morning was a nice 14C (57F) and rising to 30C (86) and then the humidity on top of that. According to the weatherman, this is going to be the trend for the next few weeks. The dog days of summer are here! 

With coffee in hand, I made my way down the hall to the radio room to look for life on the bands. Space weather indicated K index of 3 but the solar flux was topping out at 173, very nice to see this high flux numbers. I tried 20m looking for a faint sign of CW life but the only sign of life there was the Digi section of the band. As I write I will continue to glance to my right and see if the band scope shows any hope. 

Last evening I joined in the K1USN slow speed contest or SST for short. The contest is an hour long and the local time for it here in the Maritimes is 5-6 pm or 20:00-21:00 UTC. I was calling CQ SST between 16-18 WPM and made 13 contacts. Not bad for July when most are on holiday or the summer sunshine calls them to home projects or just relax outdoors.

Well it seems 20m is beginning to show some signs of life as I bring this post to an end. 

This past weekend the IARU world contest was in action and I planned to enter the CW category. The contest morning started just fine for me BUT in the corner of my radio room, a boxed Hustler 4BTV was calling my name. The weather outside was great, the mounting base was installed and the ground radials (all 30 of them) were also installed. As I was making CW contacts my mind at the same time was spinning. The weather here has been sunny and clear for very few days and the upcoming week looked once again rainy. The same little voice in my head was telling me " Mike a contest situation is great for testing a new antenna"
Well, a few hours into the contest I jumped off the operating chair and decided it was time to finish the 4BTV install! The little voice in my head had won out. Just the day before I had marked the antenna tubing with the rough measurements for length setup between sections. The only thing left was to put the section together and tighten things down with the provided screw clamps or as I call them hose clamps.

Copper paste

I did purchase copper paste to use on the pipe-to-pipe connection for good connectivity and help stop corrosion. In no time the antenna was together and ready to be mounted on the ground pipe. I was delighted with how light this antenna is, making it easy to lift and install.
The initial SWR was somewhat close to what was written in the DX Engineering manual, there was just some fine-tuning that needed to be done. I wanted my configuration to be in the CW area of the bands. Thank goodness I have an antenna analyzer, this made very short work of fine-tuning the antenna. I will make another post regarding the details of the SWR and adjustments.
Once the antenna was set up SWR-wise in the area of the bands it was

Marking the antenna sections

off to the contest again to see how it stacks up to the Endfed antenna I have been using for 2 1/2 years. Using the new antenna I started calling (CWing) "CQ CONTEST" and I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Now having said that this was the first time using the antenna so a fair comparison would be over the course of a month or so with varying propagation conditions. 

More to come regarding tuning, assembly and results.

The days finished product

The RG8X coax was placed in 3/4 inch PVC electrical pipe and at each end for the PVC pipe I affixed ENT tubing. This is very hardy plastic tubing that usually is encased in concrete and used to pass electrical wires in. Now you may wonder why I did not just use ENT for the complete job? The main reason is I had PVC pipe on hand and ENT here is either sold in 10 or 30 foot rolls. If I chose 30 feet I would have a majority of it leftover and ENT is pricey as well. 

I now attached the base section of the Hustler 4BTV to the ground pipe but before doing so I ordered from DX Engineering the SO-239 add on kit. This is a fantastic kit made of stainless steel and allows a PL-239 connection and it can be mounted in 3 different directions. Also for all the connections I picked up some pure copper anti seize compound. This allows great connectivity and also very good for all stainless steel connections. 

As an added precaution I wrapped the screw located on the bottom of the 4BTV antenna with self amalgamating splicing tape. I also wrapped the PL-239 connection with the same tape. I find water has a way of getting in at the most inconvenient times so I like to make it very difficult for this to happen. 

My next step is to install the radials and tomorrow the weather man is telling me it's a great weather day to put down some radials.

Now where was I....today I decided to start cutting radial wires. I purchased 150m (500 feet) of 14 gauge stranded green wire and the radial production line began. I am using ring terminals for 1/4-20 bolts and I choose to purchase 10 gauge terminals as I can solder 2 14 gauge radial wires to them. My property is small and I have certain areas where the radials can be 25 feet and other spots only 4 feet. I am putting out as many as 500 feet will allow me and if I need more then I will purchase another roll of wire.......but that stuff is not cheap!! 

I have been doing some reading on the internet regarding the radial length. The consensus seems to be if your vertical is ground-mounted (mine is) and the radials are just below the ground (mine will be) then length theory  is..make them as long as you can but being in the ground and not raised radials certain lengths are not important.

And so it begins

In April I posted that my birthday gift had arrived which was the Hustler 4BTV vertical antenna. Well, this week the installation began and weather permitting I can move closer to the complete installation. We have been having more days of rain than sunshine for June along with some vacation time away from home the antenna had to wait. A few days ago I began by installing the support pole for the antenna. To me this is one of the most important steps as the antenna is no good to me if it falls over, begins to lean or becomes loose and unstable. 

The hole was about 4 feet deep and I used fast-setting concrete, this product is poured into the hole and you then add water and stir. I placed my 1 5/8 metal post in the hole, made it level and waited. I decided to use a metal post used for fences as this was readily available at the building supply store. It was also a lot cheaper than buying a 10-foot piece of metal electrical pipe (called EMT). 

Making certain it's level

As advertised the concrete was dry in about 40 minutes, having said that I also had to fully understand once the concrete was mixed with water I have very little time to make sure the support pipe was level before things started to harden.  

Once finished I added a cap that was temporarily taped in place but will become permanent once the job is complete. At this point that was it for the day as it was very hot and humid out as well I wanted to leave the concrete overnight just to make sure it was fully set.

The finished product

The next step in the dig a trench from the house to the antenna base for the coax. 

 Hmm something is just not as it should be? 

For about a month now I have been on the low side with receiving comments on my blog posts. Don't get me wrong I am not full of myself thinking my blog posts grab thousand of readers BUT I usually get a few comments. A fellow blogger  Bas PE4BAS  posted on his blog regarding a similar issue he was having and both our blogs are hosted by Blogger.  He found changing a few settings within Blogger did the trick for him. I followed his lead and did the same. I thought all was good until I had some emails from readers informing me they were unable to leave a comment. I was told that all seemed to go well with the comment bot and a comment was submitted but it would never appear on the post......

So here we are again.....if anyone out there has:

- Had the same issue with their blogger blog and found a work around let me know?

- If anyone has tried to leave a comment and it failed to post please let me know?

- Finally does anyone know of a no issues blog host? I have looked at WordPress but it seems for what I want to do I have to pay? 

Instead of the frustration of trying to leave a comment just email me at [email protected] or try leaving a comment and see that happens but do email me as that for sure will get to me. It gets very frustrating when things are just working fine and someone somewhere has a bright idea to change things around.