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I was finally able to get on the radio and give the RAC contest about 2 hours and I had a blast with the new rig. I made only 32 contacts as the  Christmas season is a busy time of the year for all of us but Julie and I both agreed that the weekend after Christmas it was going to be a relaxing weekend. As always Murphy very briefly showed up in the shack. I tuned my MFJ 1788 loop to a great SWR of 1.3 using my MFJ antenna analyser. I then flipped it over to the IC7610 and the perfect match went to 3.0!! After some trouble shooting it turned out to be a short coax jumper between my antenna switch and the 7610. I replaced it with one I had on hand and all was good. As I thought about it I do

Won't make that mistake agian.

remember at one time there was an issue with one of my patch coax cables.....guess I never fixed or tossed it out.
I was thrilled with the Icom 7610 I didn't as of yet get the time to set up N1MM+ contest software so during  the contest I was old school with a paper and pencil. The audio was crisp and clean, I stayed with the 250Hz filter and had not even one issue with very close adjacent stations bothering my contact station. The touch screen is very responsive and an absolute joy to use. I took advantage of the 2 independent receivers, I turned on dual watch and had one VFO on an RAC station such as VE7RAC who was very popular and the other VFO I search and pounced. With one simple button push I muted the VE7RAC station and could unmute to check on the pileup. Once things slowed down I was able to put VE7RAC in the log.

Dual Watch on

Another feature I found very handy was as you spin the VFO faster your tuning steps increase so you can move up and down the band quickly. One issue I found was that as the shack got a bit darker the bottoms on the Icom are not illuminated. This being a new rig resulted in some incorrect push button selections.

Well Christmas has past and now it's the New Year that is being pushed with the full force of the media.....join a gym, loose weight and change your career. I'm good with all three of the mentioned BUT lets get back to Christmas shall we........ or to be more precise about a month before Christmas. My wife has been listening to me "mutter" now and then about my ham radio adventure. My blog readers are well aware of my purchase of the Expert Electronics Sun SDR2 Pro SDR transceiver. I was thrilled with the rig and how it preformed was amazing. I did mention how I truly missed the knobs and dials of a "real" radio but at the same time it was somewhat worth giving up for the
waterfall, SDR funtionality and 2 independent receivers. Little did I know Julie was listening to my now and then comments about radios as I read QST. My wife who is not a ham and has made it very clear she has no interest in radio what so ever but she was able to hear my interest in SDR radio and my missing an actual rig put it together and get in touch with our local ham radio dealer. The pictures tell the story of what was under the tree on Christmas morning!!
There is going to be an Expert Electronics Sun SDR2 pro rig that is just over 6 month old up for sale very soon.

Original shape of coupling loop

My last couple of posts have been dealing with extending the bandwidth of my MFJ 1788 loop antenna. With the loop the lower the SWR the more bandwidth I  have before I have to retune the loop. Up to this point I have tried moving the antenna ALL over my balcony and the best SWR at that point was at best 1.6 with the loop in the horizontal position. I then gave the loop a go in the vertical position something I had never done before. I was surprised that the loop had a better SWR, I was able to get it down to 1.4 SWR. One last suggestion given to me was to adjust the internal 10 gauge coupling loop. Today I took the section of the cover off that exposed this coupling loop and moulded the loop from it's "0" shape to more like an egg shape. with doing this I was able to lower the SWR do 1.2 to 1.3 depending on the band I was on.

New and improved shape

The slow adjustment resistor

In my last post regarding the SWR on my MFJ 1788 mag loop I was suggesting that I wanted to get my SWR below 1.6 and I did get it too 1.4. The reason I want as low SWR as possible is I have better  band width before I have to retune the loop. One reader of my blog Paul VA3ZC also lives in a condo and has an MFJ mag loop as well. He gave me some great great suggestions, one being to go into the loop's control box
(the box used in the shack to tune the loop) and by adjust a certain resistor I could slow the  tuning down and maybe fine tune the loop to a lower SWR.  He also suggested reshaping the coupling loop that is inside the mag loop. I decided to give the resistor a go first. It's much easier for me to open the control box and adjust a variable resistor than to open the loop up and start adjusting the coupling loop and put the loop cover on and give it a go.

What was left of battery holders

I was able to adjust the resistor to the point were the tuning light was flashing about 3-4 times per second as Paul had informed me that his loop had been adjusted to. Once done I gave the tuning process a go and it turned out the lowest SWR I could get was 1.7! I tried moving the loop all over the balcony and it made no difference. I found at a slower speed the SWR would jump very fast from 2.0 to 1.7 and bang back up beyond 1.7. It's not that Pauls suggestion was incorrect but these loops are very funny bunnies. I did take a picture of where the variable resistor was before I began the adventure and I decided to put it back to that adjustment. Low and behold I was back to the 1. 4 SWR. If I want  my next adventure will be to adjust the coupling loop inside the antenna housing BUT I just don't want to get myself in a "I wish I just had let things well enough alone" situation. I did find when I opened up the mag loop control box the battery hold turned very brittle and was falling to peaces as I handled it. The control box can run off batteries if need be but not this one until I replace the holders. With the Christmas season on us I will once again have to ask my readers to hold on with regards to the Sun SDR2 Pro SDR radio update.

Homemade vertical mounting....."thing"

After doing some "playing" with the location of my 1788 mag loop on the balcony and getting really nowhere with lowering the SWR. The lowest I could get it was 1.6:1. I decided to go vertical with the loop to see what happened. Now those of you that have the MFJ 1788 loop know there is a bracket that comes with the loop for just this purpose. Well when I moved I know I put this bracket somewhere safe...........and it's still there as I can't remember where this "safe" place is!  I did try putting the loop vertical bout a month ago but at the time I was tired from all the fiddling around on the balcony and my vertical attempt was very hap-hazard. That approach did not seem to work for me either and I just left it at that. As time passed I decided to take a more serous approach at mounting the loop in a vertical position. I went to the hardware store and picked up some metal conduit and the finished product was a decent looking mount that allowed the loop to be vertical.  In a vertical position I knew the antenna would be directional but if the SWR was lower that was just fine with me. Low and behold on a certain place on the balcony the SWR is 1.4:1 which I am pleased with.The loop is still mounted inside a tripod on the balcony and you can see some holes in the tubing. When the new loop vertical bracket is placed inside the tripod tubing I slide a pin through. This stops the loop from spinning if a wind comes up. The next step will be to put some watts into it and see what
happens! It just really gets me how time just flies and all the non ham things pop up which make me very happy that in just over a  year I will be retired. I will have as much time as I need to get things done (not just ham things) I can't see myself getting board......well that is the plan anyway. Now I did mention in my last post about an update on the Sun SDRpro 2 rig that is going to have to wait for about 1 more week.

In the past I have found many Amateurs are also into photography as well as radio. We are selling some of our camera gear. Below is what is up for sale, prices are in Canadian dollars  and more photos can be sent to those who are interested. This gear has been very well cared for and is in excellent shape.