Author Archive
Part 3 of ham radio and condo life
March 16th, 2019 | 
Author:  |
| Failed Hy-gain tape dipole |
Let me begin by saying this segment on antennas assumes you are looking for something that is either hidden or looks like something it's not.
Most (but not mine) town homes have a garage and driveway to-which you park a car in. I have found a very simple way to get on the air is to put an antenna on your car and run coax out to it. Now having said that you don't want to run around town with a huge antenna on your car (maybe you ...but not me) There are many fast connect/disconnect mounts on the market. As for the antenna I have seen and did have a multi-band HF antenna. I did operate my home HF radio with a multi-band antenna.....yes I did say I had no driveway or garage but more on that in a minute. The antenna I used was something similar to the Comet UHV-6 mounted on my car. There is also the Hustler triband adapter to allow 3 Hustler resonators to be used at the same time. With these types of antennas or similar ones you can run coax out to your car in the driveway connect to the antenna and your on the air.
In my case my townhouse at the time did not have a driveway or garage it was a common car parking lot. So what I did was I buried LMR 400 in plastic tubing out to where my car was. I terminated the coax to an SO-239 in a small plastic box. The box was in a small bush and unseen. When I wanted to go on the air I connected a small jumper of coax from the box to my car antenna. I was able to use this for about 3 years.
 |
| Attic DX-EE |
 |
| DX-EE stand offs |
 |
| Weaving between rafters |
 |
| Backyard side kick |
I did end up mounting the High Sierra sidekick antenna in the backyard close to our deck. It was in a very hard spot to see and I was able to remove the antenna when not in use and bring it in the house. I was able to conspicuously bury some radials and was able to get a decent SWR.
 |
| High Sierra attic attempt |
 |
| Mobile whip dipole |
 |
| Alex loop in living room |
PART 2 of ham radio and the condo life
 |
| Roll-top open and it's a nice station setup |
 |
| Ham radio gone under cover |
Ham radio and the condo life
Ham radio from a city condo…….I have been doing it for close to 7 years now and it does have it’s challenges. I have had great success with some cool world wide contacts. In Canada it’s tough to get into the housing market right out of the gate so many younger ham’s are getting their foot into the market with condo living. Then those ham’s who are retiring and want to downsize are considering condo life as well. I am here to say that in condo life there is also ham radio!!
Before we talk about the nuts and bolts of condo ham radio lets deal with some of the basics. I have always found it avoids condo board letters if you read and understand the rules and guidelines of your particular condo. Yes get used to it if you are going to move into a condo there are rules and expectations. What does this have to do with ham radio………well if you are seen as a respectful owner (or renter) of the condo board, residents and property it can go a long way.
For example most condo guidelines (nice condo word for RULES) do not allow “permanent antennas” on the balcony. This rule is yes for Amateur radio antennas but I believe the condo is concerned about the mini satellite dishes springing up or HD antennas. Just one of many challenges a condo radio op has to creatively deal with. In my case I have the MFJ 1788 mag loop and in my newest condo (6 months now) the antenna is portable and it not “permanently” mounted on the balcony. In my humble opinion having a low key antenna is important. Having whip antennas extending over the balcony or wires making their way down the side of the building just invites a letter from you know who from the office of your know where!! Like it or not we are all human and once this happens you have the microscope on you…..not a very nice situation to be in.
In a condo your fellow “condo-ites” are very close to you and that means RFI on your part but also on their part as well with all the unfiltered electronics on the market today. The positive outcome to this is you will become very knowledgeable on dealing with RFI. Oh and a word of advise…..I have read this in the past “go see your neighbor and suggest installing filters on their electronics” Up here in the land of snow and proverbial “thank you” we always say to apparently to everything……there is no thank you response from someone you are asking to tamper with their electronics. Rigs these days have excellent filtering and that are some accessories you can purchase to knock out the worst of offender.
Well that is enough for today….in posts to follow I am going to look at RFI, power output and no as a condo dweller you are not a QPRer for life………..nothing wrong with that either!! What antennas I have had that work, some of the better modes (not just digi either) to work and last but not least what happens if your in a situation were absolutely operating is possible, well I am here to say that you will still be able to get on the air in you condo on HF working DX!
Stay tuned.
ARRL DX CW 2019 in the books
 |
| The setup |
As for the contest I was running 60 watts (not sure of reason for the 60 watt number) and my antenna is the MFJ 1788 mag loop. I am in a condo so it’s a balcony antenna about 180 feet up facing south east. The software was N1MM+ and MRP40 CW decoder for the super fast fisted contesters. On Sunday the winds for some reason really picked up and my MFJ loop was moving around the balcony. I shut the radio down and took it in I would rather save the antenna from damage than taking a chance on getting more contacts.
I made only 25 contact and a score of 1575 BUT my intention was not to blow the doors off with a great score. Instead after I made contact with a station I would look them up on QRZ.COM and read about either the individual or the contest station. Over all the limited time I was in the contest I had a blast and was very please with the Icom 7610 and the ability of my balcony mounted Mag loop antenna.
VE3WDM's QRPower BLOG 2019-02-17 17:03:00
A screen shot of the ARRL DX CW contest
I will see if the propagation gods are smiling down on me today as I give the contest another go this afternoon.
FT8 on 20m this afternoon
I found this site that offers some great FT8 tips:
I did remove the tick from the "auto Seq" box as by doing this it did give me somewhat of a feeling of interaction with the QSO. This evening it's going to be a cup of Earl Grey tea and go over the WSJT-X 2.0 manual very closely and see what I can glean from it. Also search out some writeup's on the internet for more tips with this mode.
SDR Transceiver up for sale!
I have a 7 month old Expert Electronics Sun SDR2 pro transceiver and the E-coder for sale. It is in mint condition, non smoking environment and with about 10 hours max of operating time. The reason for selling the unit is I received an Icom 7610 for Christmas and I can't justify having both radios as the SDR2 pro is just sitting on the desk doing nothing.
New the radio and encoder sell for 2,500.00 Canadian for the 7 month old radio and encoder I am asking 1800.00 Canadian. Weil ship to U.S and Canada only.
Main capabilities
- Independent RX path based on DDC (Direct Down-Conversion) architecture
- Independent TX path based on DUC (Direct Up-Conversion) architecture
- 2 software RXs + SubRX for each of them (4 slices total) + independent wide-band Band-scope up to 80 MHz
- Remote control operation, using it, you connect PTT and CW-key to the E-Coder panel. Microphone and E-Coder are connected to the remotely set up PC
- TCI interface or seamless connection with third-party software like SDC (with its own Skimmer), LogHX, SWISSLOG and RUMlog, more are coming
- Professional TX processing module provides the most advanced tuning capability for voice operation
- ExtCTRL connector to control external devices with 8 powerful keys with open collector
- ALC connector for external power amplifiers*
- Supports use of VHF transverters**
- An opportunity to use the transceiver as a signal generator via DAC OUT connector (SMA connector)
- An opportunity to use external filters in the middle of the RF path, using ADC IN and RX OUT (SMA connector)
- Small delay in CW mode (about 10 ms)
- Input for external 10 MHz reference oscillator
- An opportunity to use the transceiver in SO2V mode
- Full duplex or half duplex modes***
- Antenna switch with 2 HF antenna connectors and separate VHF antenna connector (Mini UHF connectors)
- Internal power-meter for HF and VHF bands and SWR-meter for HF band
- Ethernet LAN interface provides fast and reliable connection to PC
- 20 watts on HF and 8 watts on VHF.
I am also selling with it the radio the E-Coder plus which has:
- 14 programable buttons with 60 possible programming options
- 3 programable encoder knobs with 13 possible programming options
- 1 optical encoder tuning knob
For an unbiased review of the radio go to Eham reviews and there you will find 11 reviews all giving the radio a 5.0.
 |
| 2 Receivers in action |
 |
| All cables |
 |
| Rear view |
 |
| E-coder |
