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The End-fed antenna I have now is the W1SFR KX3 helper End-fed antenna. It's a great antenna and is working nicely. It is very well-made along with a 100% satisfaction guarantee, I have been very happy with mine and have used it without issue as a full time antenna. So with all this positive feedback why am I looking at and purchased another End-fed antenna? The W1SFR has a maximum rating of 100 watts. With my digital operations I have to be mindful that my End-fed is only rated at 100 watts max and I imagine that is an SSB rating. The other "thing" is the W1SFR uses the coax shield as the counterpoise and it has been causing me some grief at my  home station, some lights and our washing machine. I wanted to stay with an End-fed antenna as it fits on my property nicely and over all I am very happy with the performance of the End-fed type antenna. The antenna I decided on is from Ultimax Antennas and it's their Ultimax DXtreme, their 33 foot model. You can order the Ultimax antenna with lengths from 33-124 feet. I chose the 33 foot model as it just fits my property nicely, it would be great to go for something longer but at this time I am going with easy and convenient.
On the Ultimax site it says that the DXtreme antenna covers 6m to 160m and that ALL DXtreme models are of a different design that work most efficiently with the length of wire it is sold with. This End-fed antenna has a rating of 2kw which is more than enough of a buffer for me. Unlike the W1SFR End-fed antenna the DXtreme has provision for a counterpoise. I ordered the counterpoise that Ultimax offers for their antennas. As with most End-fed antennas an antenna tuner in needed and I have my new LDG AT200proII. I will be interested to see if I can get the antenna to tune on 80m! I would imagine the bandwidth may be narrow but that is where the AT-200proII tuner comes into the picture with its ability to call up a memory tune in no time.
The DXtreme antenna arrived here last week but the weather has not been co-operative for me to install the antenna. I don't want to rush the installation as some heights are involved and at my age, I don't bounce very well anymore!

The other day I was very pleased to work a new one using FT8  Kazakhstan UN7CBY Vladimir. I had seen him in the waterfall in the past but was very happy to get him in the log on 30 meters.

Getting the AT-100pro ready to sell.

About a month before the New Year I had a look around the shack and realized that I moved some items down to our new home that I used just as much as when they were at my old QTH.......these items were only taking up space and gathering dust. I decided it was time once again to put some radio items up for sale and send them on their way to someone who can use them. This gave me some "ham bucks" and to be honest I did not need much but what I did get was a new LDG 200proII antenna tuner and a new Endfed antenna which was the Ultimax DXtreme Endfed antenna   I did have the LDG AT-100pro (not the proII)  I say "did" because the LDG AT-100pro was sold. The reason I sold it was the LDG AT-100pro tuner is rated at 30 watts when operating digital modes. With propagation being what it is these days I have moved some of my operating toward FT8 digital. I would like to move a bit beyond 30 watts and the only way that can be done was to change out the LDG AT-100 pro to the LDG AT-200 proII tuner. A nice surprise was the LDG AT-200proII was able to tune a great match better than the LDG AT-100pro did. For example, I never had a decent SWR on 60M and for some reason when I switched to the LDG AT-200proII the tuner was able to tune 60m to a very decent SWR. I can now operate on this band without any SWR issue.  On the bands were a tuner was needed the AT-200ProII outperformed the previous AT-100pro. I have the interface cable from LDG that connects the tuner to my Icom 7610. This makes using the LDG tuner a breeze. The tuner when in tune will automatically reduce the Icom 7610 power to 10 watts. When a match is found it's stored in the LDG tuners memory using this interface cable I am able to operate on 30m and then go to 60m and when I start to transmit the LDG tuner reverts to the memory tuned position for 60m is a split-second, and I am good to go. If the band I chose does not have a stored memory tune then the tuner will perform a full tune at a reduced wattage of 10 watts. I just have to operate and the interface cable looks after the LDG tuner and getting me the best SWR. In my next post, I will look at the Ultimax DXtreme Endfed antenna.

As 2019 moves closer and closer to becoming 2020 I wanted to spend time and look back on 2019. I looked at my blog posting history from 2019 and it was a slow year for posting. This had to do with working long hours and just too tired to get on the radio or to blog for that matter. My new Icom 7610 did not see too much operating time. During July, my wife and I had some heart-to-heart talks and I decided to retire. We both agreed it was time to move on to the next stage in life. The only thing that was holding me back was the change I had done the work thing at the same company for over 30 years. To just stop what I had been doing for so long made me feel uneasy but I put my notice in and by the end of July I was retired!
The next change was the location...... Julie and I both agreed that living in downtown Toronto was nice but it was time for a change. A slower pace was very agreeable to us both, so we decided to move to the east coast of Canada. We sold our condo in Toronto and purchased a home in New Brunswick and started to pack and move. I have to be honest I have NEVER made this many decisions in a single year in my entire life.
Fast-forward to the present.....we are settled in New Brunswick and my new call is a 2 letter call VE9KK. In Ontario, 2 letter calls are very very hard to get. In New Brunswick, I had a choice of 2 letter call signs. I chose a call that had good CW qualities. I have put up an EndFed antenna the property is small and the Endfed was my desk drawer taking up space, so I decided to put it into service. I'm now in my 5th month in New Brunswick and to date, I have logged 447 contacts as VE9KK and the first months at the new QTH I was unpacking and setting the house up. My first contact was on October 13 with IU8DON and since then I have logged more contacts in two and a half months than the first 7 months of 2019 as VE3WDM, I made a total of 311 contacts so it looks like retirement is treating me well in regard to my radio hobby.
I'm Looking forward to 2020 and what are my goals.......I want to look into the CWops cw academy program as this is really the only option I have found that works and can get my code on the upswing. Get involved with the local amateur radio club in town the Moncton Amateur radio club or MAARC. I would like to explore contacting some DXpeditions both CW and FT8 and or FT4. The above goals seem like a good start for the year as I don't want to go overboard with one hopeful goal after the other.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my blog readers.

I was very pleased to see my FT-8 signal on 30m spotted in China the other day. I could not see them on the waterfall but none the less it was a nice surprise to see.

Snap on Choke

A few weeks ago I was on my radio and once again I experienced some RFI issues with my PC and my morse code key. On my PC the mouse was moving all over the screen and the morse code key when using it I had extra dots and dits being sent. I use snap on chokes but I have seen in the past the chokes have become unsnapped and the choke is not able to do its job 100%. After my mouse and morse code key issues I move my radio desk out to look behind and have a look at the installed chokes. I was not surprised to see a number of chokes that were unsnapped. It was time for me to take this issue head on and solve it once and for all. I decided to put toroid chokes on each end of each

Not sure if this is normal

cable. I also decided to wrap each snap on toroid chock with zip-ties, I re-wound each toroid nice and tight and added the zip-ties to secure them. I am happy to say it has solved my RFI issue for over 3 weeks. I did have a question, I did notice on a few of my snap on chokes the cores had some markings on them. I am not sure if this is normal or if there was an issue with the cores?

A shot from PSK reporter of my signal FT8 signal on 30m. No problem getting into Europe and I am very pleased with my Endfed antenna set up at only 20 feet off the ground. The power is set to 30 watts. My go-to software for FT8 is JTDX alongside JT-Alert. I am also running the Win4icom suite as well as AClog software.