AmateurRadio.com

If there were no limits (job, family, taxes, spouse, etc.) on where you could set up your ideal ham shack here in the USA, where would you go?

Think for a minute where the propagation, weather and other conditions create the ideal spot to operate.   Then leave your vote in the poll on my blog and write a comment if you’d like to let us know why…

Nice to dream a bit,  isn’t it?

p.s. Sorry and deepest apologies to the great state of Arizona… must be AZ Brain Freeze at work, it is on the bottom of the list until I figure out how to move it up higher in the software.

72,

Kelly K4UPG PB #173

Orlando, FL btw

Labor Day here in the USA! So a day to play for most of us. Depending on the weather I may get a bit more on air time, but I have a project lined up too.

Some time ago I purchased a Deluxe Tuner kit from Dan’s Small Parts and Kits aka a QRP Mini Tuner by Mark L. Meyer as described in a 73 magazine article. It is a nice little set of parts and a schematic for the price.

QRP Mini Tuner Kit

So I’m thinking this holiday might be the time to build that little T tuner out and see if I can load up the downspout that runs down the side of my back porch. I’ll let you know how it works!

Hope the bands hold up. Tonight’s QRP-L has a message from N4QA about how nice 40m is sounding right now! Sure would be fun to have our bands back from the QRN and low sunspot streak of late!

Sunday I got the itch to get online. That means backyard portable when you live in an antenna restricted condo. So I put a card table up in the back porch and my 20 ft Jackite and 20m End Fed Half Wave in between the buildings.

Doggone noise and weak band conditions ruined the day so I decided to experiment with the new C Pole antenna that  Neil W0VLZ had suggested. To get rid of a hunk of fiberglass gel inside the barrel of one of the Black Widow Crappie poles I used my cheapo Harbor Freight rotary tool which is a lame imitation of a Dremel tool but gets the job done. A few minutes of fitting and I was good to go.

I’m pretty impressed with it though conditions did not allow for any QSO’s yet. I cut the wire a bit longer than Niel’s directions but it tuned up 1:1 at 13.889 on my MFJ 207 Analyzer. At 14.060 it was a bit over 1.4:1 which is plenty usable. Next time out I’ll do a bit of trimming and be right on the money! Compared to the EFHW in a 20 ft L configuration, it did seem a bit noisier but with condx so difficult it would be hard to tell without some instrumentation.

LESSON: The C Pole is a pretty fine design. I need to work on the physical setup to improve the way the antenna hangs. The crappie poles I used were a bit too flimsy on the top section and leaned inward from the weight of the wire. A better tippy top support system is needed.

LESSON: Niel’s C Pole base design and specs worked very well.  Lacking an empty plastic coffee can, I used a quart diet soda bottle of the same dimension and it worked very well for the balun section. With winds of approximately 15 mph and gusts to 20+ the antenna was stable and I did not use the spikes for the outriggers that I had prepared. Great work Niel. The weight of the base makes it a good choice for backyard or campground use.

LESSON: The C Pole would be a fantastic portable antenna sans the earth side supports. Chuck Carpenter W5USJ has posted a picture of this configuration. Take a look. One point hanger  and spreaders at the top and bottom and simple stake to the ground for anchoring it and you are good to go. I will be testing this next time out by the lake. Winner!

LESSON: The off center fed dipole folded like this and deployed vertically is a good compact option for antenna restricted hams. I bit more work on the frame and support system may pay good dividends in stability and efficiency.

Hope to fly this new antenna in its tree configuration this weekend. I’ll update my results then.

72,

Kelly K4UPG PB #173

Back in 1964 as a novice, it seemed like the strongest signals I heard in Central Indiana were the Florida stations. Man, seemed like they were always there, louder than anything else. As a new ham and teenager, I always thought how cool it would be to live in Florida, the land of fantastic propagation.

Memory Lane…The First Rig

Sure been disappointing lately… the bands are noisy, the thunderstorms consistent and sometimes it seems like no one else is on the air. What happened to my Florida ham radio paradise dream?

Are the bands working elsewhere? Boy, we have had some poor conditions lately. How about you?

On  a high note (pun intended) it was pretty cool to watch QRPSPOTS.COM yesterday as lots of hams helped give signal reports to the Iowa High Altitude Balloon launched by W0OTM team! Congrats on creating some excitement and interesting reports. Now, if I can just get my antenna up to 30,000 feet or more, maybe my FL QTH will be ham radio paradise after all.

72,

Kelly K4UPG PB #173

Fred and Yimin of Youkits

When I attended Maplecon I recorded at conversation I had with Yimin and Fred, VE3FAL, of Youkits.  I have turned that recording into the first VA3STL podcast.  I am making it only available here for the time being.  If I make any more audio podcasts I will think about putting them on iTunes. Please click on the link that follows.

VA3STL Podcast#1 Conversation with Youkits

As the podcast is something new to me and an experiment, I would appreciate any feedback via a comment, or direct e-mail.

Youkits TJ6A transceiver

The Youkits' demonstration shelter

I attended the first Maplecon last weekend, which was a gathering of Canadian QRPers. The venue was Emily Provincial Park campground. Gerry, VA3GLT, and myself headed down on Saturday morning, despite the convention’s start on the Friday, as both of us had commitments in the afternoon and evening of Friday 20th Aug. We had an early start and drove down the 401 highway to Port Hope then turned off and travelled North to the park. By noon we arrived and had put up the tent and an antenna.

The campsite. Notice that vertical antennas on poles were popular

The antenna for this event was a freshly homebrewed doublet made from some TV twin-feed I bought a few years ago and now decided to use.  It was split 16′ 7″ down to form two arms of the doublet, and the remaining 23′ or so of twin feed was the feedline.  At the end of the twin feed we installed a homebrew 4:1 current balun, which I had built a few years ago.  The antenna was raised between two trees high enough that the feedline dropped vertically down and just reached into the tent.  A short run of coax was used from the balun to my Elecraft K2.  It tuned on 40m, 20m, 17m, 15m and surprisingly 80m (given the length of the antenna is would be a pretty inefficient).  I could not get a tune on 10m. Possibly if I took out the 4:1 balun I may have made it.

There was a just short of thirty attendees at the convention and we chatted with quite a few.  There were three tables set out as stalls, one with QRP rigs, one with QRP-ARCI information and one with Youkits radios.  I would have like to have spent more time looking at the QRP equipment table, but things felt a little rushed as we had arrived late.  We had a lovely barbecue lunch prepared by Jeff, VE3JFF, and his family after which I had a chat with Yimin and Fred, VE3FAL from Youkits about their new line of QRP radios. That will be covered in a future post as I made a recording of that conversation.

Youkits' HB1A

There was an antenna competition on so I spent a little time in the tent in the afternoon trying to make contacts on PSK31.  Beside the antenna and the K2 I was using a little Asus notebook, a homebrew interface for digimodes and a large battery pack.  It is so large that Martin, VA3SIE accused me of being a secret QRO operator!  (That hurt Martin).

I had little success with contacting stations on 20m PSK until finally just before dinner when we made a contact with a weak station that was calling CQ.  I replied and was acknowledged by Mirek, SP9ONC in Kozy, Poland.  He was running QRP from a TS-2000 and and we exchanged details. I was really pleased that my first contact was DX and a QRP-QRP contact too. Soon after came my second contact Fred, KD8AQ in Mt Pleasant, TX and we had a nice chat.  As the call for the chilli dinner had gone up earlier I had to break off that conversation.

Dinner was provided by the Ottawa Valley QRP Club and that was the second good meal.  The chilli was tasty and Martin, VA3SIE,  had brought some British delicacies for dessert, including Battenberg cake, which I had not eaten in many years as  it does not often appear on shelves in Canadian stores.

After dinner there was the antenna competition, door prizes and a raffle for a ‘shack in a box’.  For the antenna competition Michael, VE3WMB, won the prize for the best technical design with a folded over vertical antenna, and I won for the best performing antenna with the DX contact with SP9ONC.  I was extremely pleased to find my prize was a Norcal BLT tuner which will very likely become the tuner for that doublet in future.

There were plenty of door prizes including several transceivers.  Gerry, VA3GLT, was lucky to get the first of two HB1A transceivers that had been generously donated by Youkits.  There were so many door prizes that I think all attendees went away with something.  I won a set of pliers and a year’s subscription to QRP Quarterly, the QRP ARCI’s excellent magazine.  So when my current subscription is up I can use that.

The 'shack in the box' prize is presented. The prize was a transceiver, battery pack and case.

After all the prizes had been given out there was chatting into the evening and then Gerry, Martin and myself went back to the tent and made two more contacts on 20m. These were Tom, KJ4QDZ , in Lillian, AL and Virgil, WA5TLP, in Willston, ND. Not too many contacts but enough to make me happy with the performance of the antenna.

Yimin of Youkits chatting with Gerry, VA3GLT after the prizes were awarded

Over Saturday night and Sunday morning there was a lot of rain.  So after breakfast next morning there were a lot of people leaving.  Gerry and I thought it was prudent to take the tent down during a brief lull in the rain so there was no making contacts, just collapsing and packing a wet tent.  We thanked Jeff, VE3JFF, for all his hard work that had resulted in a successful first Maplecon 2010, said goodbye to those that remained and we headed home before noon on Sunday.

Will there be another Maplecon next year?  Well after the prize giving it was discussed by all and it was unanimous to have another.  So here is looking forward to Maplecon 2011.

This is the first of a weekly (Lord willin’) post of some of the lessons learned in the last week of playing radio in the field and on the workbench. I will be sharing my good and some of the not so good lessons with ya so ya don’t fall into the same holes that I have.

Our monthly Polar Bear QRP Club outing was last weekend, and I hustled to put together a new C Pole antenna using Niel W0VLZ’s description. After gathering all the parts I set about preparing them. With the 100F temperatures and high humidity, that was a chore since I don’t have a garage with my condo and use my back porch as the workshop. I also have a less than full set of tools and to trim the 3/4 inch PVC pipe to fit the bases of the 16.5 ft Black Widow Crappie poles I had to resort to my Buck knife.

LESSON: Plan ahead and borrow the tools I need!!! YIKES.

I was a bit surprised how heavy the treated 1×4 lumber was. It certainly is not an antenna that is well suited to portable ops where it has to be carried very far.

LESSON: Think about how something is to be used BEFORE using it!

Got the C pole components loaded into the car and transported to the nearby lakeside park in our development. It is a nice quiet spot with towering pine trees and without too many curious visitors, so its a nice QRP portable site. Got my new Coleman shelter set up and went to work on the C Pole. Oops… another lesson. In preparing the PVC to fit into the crappie poles, I only tested the two pvc poles fit into ONE of the two crappie poles. After lugging the framework, antenna wire, coax, balun,  and poles about 100 yds to my site, I discovered crappie pole #2 had a big drop of fiberglass inside the open end of the pole and the PVC would not fit at all.

K4UPG Polar Bear Site Aug 2010

C Pole Aborted Setup by Ninja wannabe K4UPG

LESSON: Check ALL the parts and do a trial setup BEFORE lugging the stuff across the wet grass and wasting time attempting to set it up.

LESSON: Don’t use a new antenna for the first time when the goal is get on the air and have fun!

For the Polar Bears, it was a frustrating weekend for most of us. Propagation was spotty and noise level was as high as the heat. At least I did reconnect with my antenna lovin’ PB friend Aaron, N9SKN/2 working from his hotel parking lot in NJ and had a couple nice ragchews including Julio NP3CW who was 599 and despite two guys calling CQ on top of us was able to be copied well. Great QRP signal Julio.

As you can see, I went ninja and tied a piece of old tee shirt around my head as a sweatband. Actually I was emulating our Alpha Bear, Ron WB3AAL after I read of his early Appalachian Trail exploits and saw a photo of him in his youth and ninja radio mode. Well I tied it TOO TIGHT and left it on TOO LONG and came home with a painful big red stripe on my forehead that lasted for several hours and hurt like all git out.

Ouch Head for the Web… Don't try this at home! Grrrrrrr!

LESSON: Baby Polar Bears should not try to be like the Alpha Bear and wear an unapproved homebrew sweatband. These can be hazardous to one’s health and well being. Don’t try this at home kids!

Beef n Pepper Jack Cheese Wrap K4UPG style

p. s. For our Summer Picnic Events, we are supposed to send a picture of our sammich that we have for lunch. So here is mine!

Until next time…

72,

Kelly K4UPG Polar Bear #173