Listeners to the ICQ Podcast where I appear monthly as a Presenter probably heard me say that I was successfully treated for a highly aggressive prostate cancer (adenocarcinoma, Gleason 8) almost two years ago at the Mayo Clinic. While in Rochester for two weeks, I had a lot of time in bed recovering from the surgery before being released for home back in Mississippi. For me, I tried to keep my mind on things besides the cancer treatment as I had the top prostate cancer hospital in the U.S. treating me and the top robotic surgeon, Dr. Igor Frank, at the helm. So what does a ham think about in this circumstance? Let me tell you…

Antennas! I worked out plans for a half dozen portable antenna designs that had been smoldering in my brain before the unexpected diagnosis and biopsy. Don Field, Editor of Practical Wireless, expressed an interest in first dibs on each manuscript resulting from my experiments with portable HF antennas. Here are a few that are published or in-press as of this writing. And more to come.

Eiffeltenna

Based on the almost whimsical Youtube video by Jim Heath W6LG (now sk), I considered the photography lighting tripod, ubiquitous in the camera industry. Jim put together a quick-and-dirty (unusual for him) vertical antenna based on a type of tripod construction that electrically isolates the three legs from the telescoping vertical part. Brilliant! They are inexpensive so I bought a few from Amazon or eBay to experiment with. I paired the tripod with a 17′ telescoping whip and an inductor coil, finishing off the “fine French dining” concept with a tablecloth underneath of Faraday Cloth. Following my focus on making each section having a low resistance electrical connection when extended, it works very well. Very quick to set up, take down, and pack. It appeared in the October 2025 issue of PW. Bon appetit!

Delta Vee AutoLoop

Loop antennas of all designs have fascinated me since I was a teen building classic ones for AM BCB DXing. I have a sort-of horizontal loop around the edges of my roof due to HOA restrictions. )I have also written about that in PW-see March 2023 issue.) When Chameleon released their Tactical Delta Loop, I took a look at my friend, Steve KM9G’s take on it (see Temporarily Offline on Youtube). He found it was very flat across most HF bands. Hmm. Lawrence Cebik’s earlier models of loops, including the Delta geometry, showed that it has harmonics based on the design band and that height above ground places a significant part in the feedpoint impedance. What antenna magic have the Chameleon engineers come up with? Whatever it was, it priced out at over $400 USD.

From watching TO’s channel and the brief review of Michael KB9VBR, it appears that they use a fixed 5:1 balun to get the impedance down to the 50 ohm ballpark. I don’t understand TO’s flat SWR but antennas nearly on the ground can do funny things. So my take on the problem here was we can choose to optimize the balun wind for a certain band with some higher band harmonics working against a tuner for a reasonable match or just have a single band antenna. But wait. Why not use an ATU at the feedpoint to optimize the match across most HF bands? This only becomes practical with a light-weight battery-powered, RF-sensing ATU mounted directly at the “bare wires” from the loop’s geometry. That’s what I did here to create what I call the Delta Vee AutoLoop. I use a $40 used surveyor’s tripod without the head made by Manfrotto. It was purchased at a local electronic recycling center but I bought another on eBay for the same price. The head is what surveyors want so one without it is far cheaper. It has a standard bolt that I connect to an adaptor for the mount point as explained in the PW article.

Randy K7AGE says he’s building one to use on his parked truck when out doing POTA or other portable operations. This antenna appeared in the January 2026 issue of Practical Wireless.

Random Copper Stick

I had been puzzling over these carbon fiber masts since they came out. My friend George KJ6VU cautioned to me that they wouldn’t load up and they played havoc with his Packtenna wire antennas if they come in contact with them. So, bah humbug! Then I ran across Ben VE6SFX’s Youtube video on an experiment with on using Faraday tape on the outside of the carbon fiber mast. He said it worked as a random wire type of antenna! So, after working my brain for months on an angle for this, Ben’s experiment gave me a direction.

The Random Copper Stick was built by using a carbon fiber telescoping mast and copper tape—both 1 inch and 1/8″ widths—applied from the bottom to the top for each section of the disassembled mast. The very top section was removed as it was way too small to hold the tape. This gave me a reasonable length for a random wire antenna. My experimental measurements with a 17′ wire (20 meter measurement) showed a fairly clear phenomenon that Ben didn’t get into in his Youtube video. As shown below in a slide from a talk that I give to clubs on these experimental antennas, the carbon fibers disturb the relationship between the physical and electrical lengths of the wire as they are closely connected to the mast. (Score one for George KJ6VU’s observations!) Thus, using a 9:1 Unun with the mast works very well with an ATU at the transceiver. To quote my lawyer friend, Mike N5DU, I was shocked and amazed at how an antenna that I was convinced would not work turned out so well.

If you fancy taking a walking stick to operate portably, consider the RCS. It’s very easy to build, back and put up. I built one for my friend Scott K0MD to take with him on his trips to pair with his Icom 705. My article on the Random Copper Stick appears in the February 2026 issue of Practical Wireless.

Wave Caster Vertical

It is scheduled to appear in the April issue of PW but that should coincide with Spring Break weather at the beach. You can build the Wave Caster to Hang Ten while working some HF bands, lol. This one is also very easy to setup if you have anything in the portable site environment to clamp the mount. in the Wave Caster, I use an idea that Chuck KK6USY published on his Youtube channel in a coujple of videos. Particularly, he solved the problem of winding an antenna wire around a spool without it getting too much stress and eventually breaking. Chuck used a small resin reel with a ring terminal to solve this problem. Well, that solved a problem I wrestled with on ways to multiply antenna designs using these inexpensive carbon fiber masts with wire that wouldn’t take much time for the portable operators. (Not all have a half day to go to a POTA site that can be far, far away with a lengthy setup.)

With a Super-C photography clamp, almost any sturdy surface can be used to “brace” the vertical so it stays up while the temporary operation plays out. Just don’t forget it when you leave because I can tell you it is easy to do! This one is scheduled as of this writing to appear in the April issue of Practical Wireless magazine.

I have a couple of other designs that I am finalizing as the wild weather in the South permits. They may appear in PW but I’ll post a notice here if they do.

My time at Mayo Clinic was well spent. I cannot overstate how positive the medical treatment there was. Mayo treats 26,000 prostate cancer patients per year and have been rated #1 for many years. There was never a moment where I felt like I was a number on a lengthy list. I was fortunate to get connected with Dr. Igor Frank there as the “top gun” on robotic prostate cancer removal. I gave him a small momento as an expression of my appreciation as I was discharged. I understand that it may have made an appearance at the Department Christmas Party.

 While taking part of my morning brew I noticed an issue with my blog. I have a list of the blogs that I follow and blogger calls it a blog list gadget. The little squares beside each of the blogs I follow is supposed to be a solid color and it is not. That is not a big deal but at the bottom of the blog list is a link that says "Show all". Now when I click on it the remainder of the followed blogs do not appear, nothing happens. I tried it both on my Windows and Mac pc with the same results. The max blogs you can show it 10 that you follow. When the Show all link is clicked the rest of the followed blogs should appear. I went to the gadget and played around with different settings and nothing was successful. I then went to AE5X blog  who has the same setup for followers as mine. His too the squares were not a solid color and the link at the bottom of the blog list did not work either. Now I am not sure if it is just an issue here or if it is wide spread across all blogger blogs? If you have a blogger blog with this gadget give it a try, give the link on my blog a try at your end and if this is a wide spread issue does anyone have a fix. 

Next up is my Python script for shutting down my contest station. That probably makes it sound like I’m running some massive, high-end operation—but in reality, I just really like things to work smoothly. I find it incredibly handy to simply double-click a Python shutdown icon on my desktop and have everything taken care of automatically. Some might call that lazy, overly dependent on a PC, or a bit geeky. I prefer the last option, and I’m fairly certain my dear wife would agree.

The reason I use a Python script for shutting the station down is the same reason I use one for startup: everything shuts down in the proper order. The shutdown process is essentially the reverse of the startup sequence, with a few hiccups that required some creative workarounds.

One issue was that certain applications—Win4Icom in particular—take noticeably longer to shut down than they do to start up, so I had to extend some of the timing in the script to allow for a clean exit. Another problem was that Win4Icom was not shutting down my Icom 7610 as it’s supposed to. As a result, the radio was staying powered on until the Wi-Fi plug turned off, cutting power to the supply and abruptly killing the radio. That obviously doesn’t allow for a proper shutdown sequence.

In the video, you’ll see that the Icom 7610 now shuts down cleanly at the very end of the shutdown process. I accomplished this by adding Python code that sends the appropriate Icom HEX command to power down the radio correctly.

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 213 is now available for download.

In another Tales From The Transmitter, George presents RF Burns. Emile is getting back on the air in the new shack. Mike asks Hey What’s That, WISP?

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Ham College episode 132 is now available for download.

Technician Exam Questions Part 19
T6A – Fixed and variable resistors, Capacitors, Inductors, Fuses, Switches, Batteries.
T6B – Semiconductors: basic principles and applications of solid state devices, diodes and transistors.

Ham College 132, titled “Technician Exam Questions Part 19,” focuses on topics T6A (Fixed and variable resistors, Capacitors, Inductors, Fuses, Switches, Batteries) and T6B (Semiconductors: basic principles and applications of solid-state devices, diodes, and transistors) as part of their technician exam pool. The hosts announce a double dose of questions in this episode and will be doubling up on episodes and questions in the coming months until the current technician study guide expires on June 30th, 2026 (0:40-0:52, 47:13-49:15).

Key topics and questions covered include:

Resistors
The electrical component that opposes the flow of current in a DC circuit is a resistor (2:32-3:57).
A potentiometer is often used as an adjustable volume control (5:24-6:20).
The electrical parameter controlled by a potentiometer is resistance (8:28-9:12).
Capacitors
A capacitor stores energy in an electric field (9:37-10:20).
A capacitor consists of conductive surfaces separated by an insulator (10:48-11:36).
Inductors
An inductor stores energy in a magnetic field (11:51-12:24).
An inductor is typically constructed as a coil of wire (13:06-13:42).
Switches
The function of a single pole double throw (SPDT) switch is that a single circuit is switched between one of two other circuits (13:59-15:01).
Component three in Figure T2 represents a single pole single throw switch (21:26-22:00).
Fuses
A fuse is used to protect other circuit components from current overloads (16:49-17:42).
Batteries
Nickel metal hydride, lithium-ion, and lead acid battery chemistries are all rechargeable (17:55-18:56).
Carbon zinc battery chemistry is not rechargeable (19:00-20:52).
Diodes
It is true that forward voltage drop in a diode is lower in some diode types than in others (28:09-29:30).
A diode allows current to flow in only one direction (30:06-30:52).
The cathode lead of a semiconductor diode is often marked on the package with a stripe (37:26-38:07).
Forward current causes a light-emitting diode (LED) to emit light (38:32-39:37).
The names for the electrodes of a diode are anode and cathode (41:15-42:18).
Transistors
A transistor can be used as an electronic switch (32:40-33:50).
A transistor can consist of three regions of semiconductor material (34:16-35:02).
An FET (Field Effect Transistor) has a gate, drain, and a source (35:26-36:24, 40:29-41:00).
A transistor can provide power gain (42:27-43:02).
The term that describes a device’s ability to amplify a signal is gain (43:11-43:53).
The names of the electrodes of a bipolar junction transistor are emitter, base, and collector (43:58-44:46).

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I have been working on some Python scripts to automate tasks that I would rather not do manually. The video above shows my contest station powering up from start to finish.

Why do this, you ask? The part of the amateur radio hobby that really interests me is CW contesting. Now that I am retired, I take part in four weekly one-hour “mini” contests and, in an average month, I spend two or three weekends CW contesting as well.

The programs I use need to be started in a specific order. For example, I must start my virtual port program (VSPE) first, and then start the radio and contest programs in a certain sequence. If this order is not followed, I get flooded with error messages.

Some say I over complicate things, but I am somewhat of a perfectionist and like everything set up just so. Python lets me achieve that with a single mouse click. There has been some fine-tuning of the Python code along the way. For example, my radio control program Win4Icom is delivered as a complete new program with each update, rather than as an add-on to the original, as the N1MM+ contesting program does. Because of this, I wrote the script for Win4Icom so that it always checks for and runs the highest revision number of the program; otherwise, it would just continue to load the same old version.

I also had to introduce delays between the startup of some programs. After VSPE starts, I delay Win4Icom by five seconds, because VSPE is still initializing in the background and Win4Icom would otherwise throw errors. I also added a step to minimize VSPE to the taskbar once it starts, so it does not sit on the screen. As Win4Icom starts, I added a 10-second delay while it powers up my Icom 7610 and sets up the COM port configurations for N1MM+. I found N1MM+ needs to wait for those steps to complete before it begins its own startup. Finally Reverse Beacon Network web page is setup to open with my call sign showing spots where it is heard. 

 Here's the sequence shown in the YouTube video:

• WiFi smart plug powers on.

• Astron power supply powers on seen in the lower left corner .

• Raspberry Pi 4B boots (red power LED visible on desk), launching HamClock.

• VSPE starts and minimizes to taskbar.

• Win4Icom launches, powering on the Icom 7610.

• Reverse Beacon Network loads/refreshes as HamClock continues to load.

• N1MM+ Logger starts.

Next up: Python shutdown scripting (with its own challenges). I'm also 3/4 through a script to generate ADIF file of contest contacts that exports and auto-upload to N3FJP, Club Log, LoTW, CWops, and QRZ.com. Stay tuned!