AmateurRadio.com

For some time now I have been trouble shooting my MFJ 1788 loop off and on. I have had a problem with getting 20m to tune. The best I could do was an SWR in and around 12 to 1 and really that is not good at all. Even with that SWR the K3 tuner was able to drop it too a flat match but odd things were still happening....for example
1. Tuning the loop for max noise (as low SWR was not happening) did happen but as soon as the rig was tuned in any way the noise dropped to nil.
2. Once max noise was achieved and I transmitted the max noise was gone again.
3. There was no spots on the Reverse Beacon Network while giving the tuned match a go.
4. When transmitting power levels were all over the place from 1 watt to 5 watts.

I had posted my 20m tuning problem on 2 loop user groups and had some great advice but nothing seemed to even come close to solving the problem. I then emailed MFJ  who very promptly emailed me back and advised me to change the shape of a 12 gauge copper loop that was located inside the loop. Easier said than done this involved removing half the plastic cover on the loop and changing the shape of this loop then

Adjusting the loop

checking the SWR. The hard part was trying to figure out where the sweet spot for 20m was on the loop  was. The loop would read an SWR of 12 to 1 no matter what adjustment I gave the loop. I ended up tuning the loop for the highest noise level I could hear. I figured this was as close as I could get to the sweet spot for 20m. Adjusting this small loop did not really change anything and I was getting frustrated! The best thing I find when this happens is to put the project aside and do some thinking. I did just that over the past few weeks I enjoyed the bands the loop would tune and thought about my next move. The loop consists of a rotating capacitor that tunes the loop via a motor. I had been reading on the loop reflector sites and a reoccurring conversation was how quality control at MFJ was very low. For some reason I wanted to check the spacing of the capacitor plates on the loop antenna . It turned out the plates had a warp to them and at the low end spacing was good but in and around

Some plates to close

20m's  some of the plates were very close and maybe touching each other. After some time of tweaking the plate spacing I was able to have equal spacing for the full rotation of the capacitor. The SWR on 20m is now down to 1.4 to 1 and that was the problem as I put the loop back together I kept an eye on the SWR to see if it changed at all. The piece of  equipment that really helped me out with this process was the MFJ 259B analyzer. This unit made tracking my SWR very easy, bottom line is the antenna is now working great and now it's time to get on the air and see how 20m is preforming from the condo.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

I’m always a bit apprehensive when I hear there’s going to be a new amateur radio podcast. There have been some very good ones and some very bad ones! Just because someone is a keen radio amateur, doesn’t necessarily make them a good broadcaster on the subject!

The ‘TX Factor’ (corny name, but hey…) boded well. The presenters are all professional broadcasters. Bob, G0FGX is someone that I have come across on air a couple of times recently and he’s an engaging and interesting guy with plenty of broadcast experience. Mike G1IAR and Nick 2E0FGQ both have impressive CVs. Mike looks to have a particularly interesting job, mastering recording sessions for some big names.

I had a chance to catch up with the first TX Factor show yesterday. It’s well produced, engaging and inspires you to want to have a go. I really recommend you take a look.

I love Cornwall and it was interesting to see the Poldhu segment. I was glad to see that Bob addressed the question of whether Marconi’s ‘S’ signal really did get heard in Newfoundland! The SOTA activation was very nicely demonstrated by Tom M1EYP and  it was good to see Mike G1IAR visit the Norman Lockyer Observatory in Devon. Great stuff.

Well done and I’m looking forward to seeing more shows. They must take quite a bit of production – well done to the team.

Find the TX Factor’s website here

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Series Seven Episode Four of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast has been released. The latest news, Martin (M1MRB) and Colin (M6BOY) discuss the an emergency box for local weather disasters and Frank Howell (K4FMH) reviews US Ham Survey.

• Outernet - Shortwave radio from space
• New Amateur Radio bands in Europe
• RaDAR Contest
• New Worcester UHF repeater goes on-air
• EURAO Party - Winter 2014 Promoting HF Digital Voice
• Second Amateur Radio Skills Workshop in Chelmsford (February 2014)
• Fully licensed in 57 days
• VK5 SOTA & Parks Symposium
• New Medium Wave Beacon
• Bristol's Cabot Tower sends out Morse code

Many thanks to this episodes donor, Andreas Genemans, KB3WGO and our monthly donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

Series Seven Episode Four of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast has been released. The latest news, Martin (M1MRB) and Colin (M6BOY) discuss the an emergency box for local weather disasters and Frank Howell (K4FMH) reviews US Ham Survey.

• Outernet - Shortwave radio from space
• New Amateur Radio bands in Europe
• RaDAR Contest
• New Worcester UHF repeater goes on-air
• EURAO Party - Winter 2014 Promoting HF Digital Voice
• Second Amateur Radio Skills Workshop in Chelmsford (February 2014)
• Fully licensed in 57 days
• VK5 SOTA & Parks Symposium
• New Medium Wave Beacon
• Bristol's Cabot Tower sends out Morse code

Many thanks to this episodes donor, Andreas Genemans, KB3WGO and our monthly donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrtHzsZMfm8

Aaron Crawford, N3MBH, is in the process of designing a repeater controller using his Raspberry Pi. He’s moved into testing on the RPi and toward designing and refining the circuitry for the radio interface.

What makes this different than other projects I’ve seen is the polish of his web interface. You can tell he’s a web developer — it’s definitely slick!

Aaron describes the project here:

In setting out to develop this project my primary goals and features are to develop a low-cost, low-power, but feature rich duplex repeater controller suitable for setting up a temporary / emergency repeater systems with radios that can be run on portable power. However with a more complete feature set and a modular design, it could also be used as a primary or a backup controller for a permanent installation repeater. With the low cost, modular design, it would make it easy to keep backup hardware (Raspberry Pi, repeater control board, and a cloned SD card) on site for easy service swap-outs.

This is definitely a project to keep an eye on. Kickstarter, anyone?

Matt Thomas, W1MST, is the managing editor of AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].

I have SOTA fever really bad. Activating summits seems to continually occupy my thinking these days. My goal, 1,000 activator points at which time I will buy piece of glass with my call and a picture of a goat on it. Doesn't everyone think about that?

To feed my addiction I made a trip to my QTH in Santa Fe, NM. I arrived there on my birthday February 13th. I had been planning this trip for more than a month and was worried about how the weather would be since the long weekend in Santa Fe would be my only chance to activate summits for a while. The weather forecast was for highs in '60's. Perfect.

. I had a different strategy for this trip, since none of the hikes would be more than a mile one way, I carried my FT-817 and an Elecraft T-1 tuner with plans to get on the WARC bands since the ARRL DX-CW contest would be going on the weekend. The FT-817 is fresh from getting modified with the W4RT on-board filter for both SSB and CW and the DSP as well.

DAY 1

So on Friday the 14th, I met up with Fred, KT5X aka WS0TA. We had two summits on the agenda, Peak 7119, W5N/PW-037 and Glorieta Mesa, W5N/PW-032. The day was windy, but the temps were comfortable. While the climbs were short, they were very steep to both summits. There were probably easier ways up, but what the heck, we were looking for adventure.

Propagation was good on the first summit, Peak 7119,  I worked 5 EU stations, OH9XX, DJ5AV, EA2LU, ON4LI and G4OBK. My antenna was an LNR Trail Friendly 40-20-10 EFHW strung over as high a limb as my pole could reach and then to my carbon fiber fishing pole and down to the rig, an inverted L configuration. the antenna tuned great on the WARC bands. Fred and I employed a strategy that maximized available bands. I started on 12m and worked my way down to 20m while Fred started on 20m and move down to 30m and 40m. So as a team we made the summit available in several bands. I made 20 QSO's; 11 on 12m, 3 on 17m, 5 on 20m and 1 on 30m. I did have a couple of S2S's, one with N6JZT and another with N7CW, both with huge signals. Thanks guys.

The Glorieta Mesa expedition was executed in a very similar manner, same radio, same antenna configuration, except this time I made 25 QSO's on the following bands; 10 on 12m, 5 on 15m, 2 on 17m and 8 on 20m. The only DX was DJ5AV on 15m.

It was a good day, 45 QSO's, two nice hikes and 20 SOTA points.

DAY 2

Fred was unable to go on Saturday, so my buddy Jeff from Red River, NM was visiting, so he set out with me for the days activities. Again, there were two summits on the agenda, Peak 8409, W5N/PW-027 and Peak 9420, W5N/PW-020.

Peak 8409 is a relatively easy summit, with only about a 75 vertical feet ascent required to get into the activation zone. I used an AlexLoop on this summit as I wanted to get set up quickly. Propagation must have been in the process of warming up. I only made 9 QSO's 8 on 12 meters and 1 on 30 meters. The stations I heard were loud, but there weren't many of them. I never was spotted on RBN. I tried to self spot on SMS but put a slant bar in the summit reference which is the incorrect format. I didn't figure this out until later. So,  I had to pack up to make the scheduled time on Peak 9420, so Jeff and I made our way down the hill to the car and were on the way to the next summit.

Peak 9420 is an excellent SOTA Summit. It climbs 800 feet over a distance of about one mile, which is relatively steep, but the hike is only a mile  to the summit and it has a nice trail with lots of switchbacks to take some of the sting out of the hill. I'm in relatively good shape and it took me 23 minutes to get to the top. The weather was cooler and the wind was blowing at a stiff clip. There was some snow on the ground at the top, but not too much. It was too windy right on top, so I moved down a little to get out of the wind. I used my FT-817 with the Elecraft T1 tuner and the EFHW. I netted 31 QSO's , 11 on 12m,  9 on 20m and 11 30m. During my run on 30m, I heard a faint but copiable signal and a slow but sure fist calling. It is K7NIT, Rachel, calling for an S2S, followed soon thereafter by K7ATN. Thanks guys. Another fun thing happened, after my first run on 12 meters I didn't work either W4DOW or AE4FZ both of which are well up the standings on the 12 meter challenge. I worked AE4FZ on 20m so I knew he was out there. So after the pile-ups died down I went back to 12m and threw out the bait. Like two big trout after a fly, very quickly after calling CQ I worked both W4DOW and AE4FZ. I knew then it was okay to QRT.


For the day, 40 QSO's and 22 SOTA points (including bonus points)

DAY 3

Day 3 would require a little driving. I was headed to Sandia Crest, W5N/SI-001. Sandi Crest is dominant peak in Albuquerque, NM. My XYL accompanied me on this trip. It is a drive up to the summit which sits at ~10,600 feet. We also wanted make the drive on HWY 14 out of Santa Fe which is a beautiful drive. In addition to the views it goes through Madrid which is where much of the Tim Allen film, "Wild Hogs" was filmed. Its a very cool little town. We didn't have time to stop, but will make a special trip next time.

At the summit it was cold. In the 30's and very windy. I would have to find a spot out of the wind. Because of the cold my wife decided to sit this one out, in the gift shop. Now this was probably a mistake on my part, because when I was done with the activation she had found several nice things to put in our house. Another way of looking at this is that it's a small price to pay for a SOTA pass:-).

I hiked about a quarter of a mile south of the summit structures and found a place where I could sit on a log, out of the snow, be sheltered from the wind but yet give my antenna a good look at the world. The picture below is what I found. The log in the foreground was where I sat and the Alexloop, with the tripod anchored in the snow, has a nice look over the snow bank. I again used the 817.



Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

There are dozens of QRP rig designs and new kits that pop up each year, the majority of which are reiterations of previous designs.  For the past ten years it seems we’ve been in a bit of a rut building NE602 based direct conversion and superhet rigs.  But once in awhile a groundbreaking design is released, and everyone follows.  Rigs like this are truly memorable, like the W7ZOI Ugly Weekender, the NEophyte, the Norcal 40, the 2N2/40, and the K2.  I think the Minima, a new transceiver designed by Ashhar Farhan is one such design.  The design has really impressive and innovative features:

• 1 to 30 Mhz coverage
• CW and SSB operation
• Si570 DDS local oscillator
• 20 Mhz IF
• KISS Mixer
• Arduino controlled, with open source software
• Other than a few ICs, most of the active components are general purpose NPN and PNP transistors
• A relatively simple and reproducible design

Looking at the schematic, you can see immediately how unique it is starting at the front end.  From the antenna jack, you go into a high pass or low pass filter and then hit a mixer with two FETs.  After that is an IF amplifier constructed from bipolar transistors, a BFO mixer and then the audio chain, again built from bipolar transistors.  The transmitter chain works essentially the same, in reverse, with the mixer as the final active stage and providing a one watt output.

I’ve been eager to build something ugly style on a sheet of copper clad PC board, and this is just the ticket.  And it’s Arduino controlled which is icing on the cake!

Anthony, K3NG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com.