K7ALA

I was asked to go up 2 towers, and this is my only free day so they both had to be today. The first one was at the churchs warehouse which the building is 30' tall and the tower is 80' tall. It has a greate view, but the primary reason was to look into fixing a boom support for a 20m beam which is 60 feet long. So that boom support is very important, but it's completely sheared off and just holding on by the edge, I didn't want to touch it for fear it would release any tenstion in it and crack my skull open. Not good at 80' up.


The next tower climb was for Ted, he had some wind damage from the last big storm and I had to bring down half of an element so he could get a new insulator made for it. He had a house bracket but 35' up from there was pretty wiggly. I attached a rope to a pine tree right next to it for support hoping the tower would hold while I hung out from it to this element. It seemed to since I'm here writting about it.






I also bought something special (a K3) that arrived on Fri, which I wasn't able to get to it until Sat night, I was not going to say what it was until I had it built, but the darn thing didn't come with all of the parts and thats just madening. I got up at 8am Saturday to do a bunch of things, and then in the afternoon started building it and went to bed at 3pm Sunday. I started the build around 5pm Saturday and by 10am Sunday I started realizing I didn't have the 100 watt component that was obviously on the order since I ordered a K3/100. So I emailed the Elecraft on Sunday and surprisingly I got a resonse from Dale. He wasn't in the office on Sunday and I had to then call them on Monday. So finally late afternoon they've sent out my 100w amp for the thing and it probably won't be here for at least 2 days since they sent it by USPS. Everything about this has me mad. I wasted a lot of time on Sat/Sun to get this built, because I didn't have any other time, then the darn thing didn't have everything I ordered, then they sent the rest via what I consider to be the slowest method available. I'm none to happy with my experience with Elecraft, and I'm letting everyone know. It isn't the end of the world, but when you pay $3000 for something it should be complete. So now when it gets here I'll probably have to undo parts of it to get the 100w amp back in, and that sucks !!! because there are so many little parts that have already been put in place, and of course they are all different shapes and sizes, and are just plain hard to keep track of, that it makes it a challenge to keep straight, and the more I think about it, the more upset I get.

And what do I get for my headache? Nothing!

Thanks a lot Elecraft, I hope the thing works better than your company does or it'll be coming back in a garbage bag!

I guess I haven't posted here for a while. Changed jobs, and worked lots of DX. I currently have 120 worked, 54 confirmed, so the tower/antenna have made a big difference as to the amount of entities I can work.

I am so very close to having this project usable. I have my tower up, I purchased a Force 12 XR-5 from Dan (WV7V) he no longer needed since he purchased that log periodic I mentioned in a previous post. I have my rotor up, I also have grounding rods and an electrial box with lightning suppression stuff inside to help save any gear and equipment, Jack (W7YUM) was a big help in getting lightning protection for the rotor cable. I am now in need of getting some coax up to the antenna that is long enough to allow me to raise the tower full height (pics shown are only about 30' of 55').

I'm also going to make some coax standoff's, and I need to make a cable enterance for the coax on the tower into my electrical box. So I guess I'd better stop here and get to ordering some stuff.

 

Additonal Note: I also found out my swr was 11-12, which is aweful. But because I didn't have any cable long enough - I connected several together. I found that the coax which came with the antenna and is connected to the antenna to the ground is not long enough to let me go full height, but it is giving swr readings between 2 and 3. That's not great and Force 12 says I should expect the whole range to be below 2, but it's not 11 or 12.

So I've been testing, and it seems that I have something wrong with the cable from the house to the lightning protector. I have disconnected the lightning connector and joined both cables together and I still have the high swr, so it has to be the cable from the house. It's raining and the forecast says snow tonight, so I can't do much outside right now, but I did replace the connector here in the house to an Amphenol (sp?) PL-259 solder on type and it's still 11-12. I'm getting more connectors so I'll replace the one outside as well, and then if it's still bad, I might have to replace the cable - and that sucks because it's not cheap.

Oh, and I bought a new ID-O-Matic II and put it together. Dale the seller has been great with customer service. I want to use it for both fox hunting and more importantly to be able to use my FTM-350 in cross band and have it ID properly and follow the rules. I'm in the testing phase right now, but the kit seems to be working as it should.

Oh, I just noticed that I didn't update things, that I have the tower hole done. 3' x 3' x 6' deep. Then 6" above grade with a form. Next I need good weather so I can pour the cement. Of course the city wants to do an inspection before I pour to make sure the rebar is all good and up to the engineering drawings they required. But all the steps are coming together.

I meantioned in a previous entry that the speakers which are embedded in the control head point away from the driver. And while at highway speeds and/or if the heat/air conditioning is on, the volume has to be up almost all of the way (past 3/4 high). And I don't think that's good on the speakers. I knew that the rig had an audio out plug on the back and I took the time today to figure out a way to hook up an MFJ speaker I have (none powered) external speaker, and what a big difference. I can turn the volume down to 1/4 to 1/2 and it's so easy to hear. Of course the big deal is that I attached the external speaker onto the headrest, so the MFJ is right at my ear level. Man that was necessary. I'll post a picture on here of what it looks like. I bought 2 pieces of 15" flat, thin, flexible metal at Home Depot and some 3/4" #8 screws. I put a screw on each side of both headrest stands and the MFJ on the end. One note, the FTM-350 has a stereo output, but each side of the radio is it's own channel in the stereo mix. So you can either place 1 external for one side and be happy if that's your primary operating side. Or you can place 2 external speakers, one for each side of the display face. Or you can actually wire both outputs into 1 external speaker by making sure you wire up 1 side to tip and 1 side to ring, and nothing to ground, which will mix the two. I'm going to go with 1 external for each side which means I need to buy another external speaker. But that really makes a difference!

Well, I've gotten down a bit more. I was told the last 2 feet are harder than the first 4, and that's been true for me. But not just because it's harder to get the dirt out of the hole, but because where I live, at the 5 foot level it once again is some weird earth. It's very tightly packed rocks mixed with what appears to be light greenish clay. The rocks are so tightly packed that you cannot get a shovel down in between them and just dig, it's incredibly difficult. I've gotten down to the 5 1/2' level all around, but two corners are at 6'. It took me 5 hours to get from 5' to 5 1/2'. I've never seen this kind of digging before - it has to be scrapped while giving down preasure, which scraps off some of the rocks and then you just keep scrapping. Someone said it was called "hardpan", but I did some research and hardpan usually is compressed soil with some elements in the soil mixing and making a hard layer, but this layer of mine is difficult because of all of the rocks, and how tight they are together.

Anyway it's coming along and I hope to have the last of it dug out on Monday.

The last 2 days here have been pretty nice, and so I decided to start digging my tower hole. I don't think I mentioned it before, but I wanted to get the concrete poured before the winter started and it looked like I was going to make it. I was trying to get engineering plans, and the rebar base from Tashjian towers. It took a lot longer than they said it would. I was expecting the plans and the rebar base to arrive before the snow did, but because of their own internal issues, it put me behind the 8 ball and the snow came before I could get my building permit. That really upset me since they promised it would be here before it was. It was approx 5 weeks placing it and getting it. Part of the problem was that they told me the base was in stock, and that I would have the engineering plans before Thanksgiving. AGGGGG! Not one darn thing I could do about it.

So finally here in mid Jan 2011 I've begun the process because we've had a few warm days (45+), and all of the snow melted, so I took the oportunity to start digging. I was able to make it 4' before I was worn out and it was getting cold again. Plus my truck is now full and I need to dump the dirt in it, before I can continue. It's nice to finally get some progress on it - although I'm still mad at having to wait. If Tashjian had followed through with what they said, I could have had the tower concrete poured and the tower upright by now.

The soil seems kind of weird though. The first 2 feet were normal top soil and clay, the next 6-12" started out with a large stone layer, and then 6" of gravel under that. The gravel was pea sized and seemed to have a mix of sand in it. Once I got below the gravel part, it was just pure sand, and that's where I've stopped. It almost has to be man made, but at 3'-4' down, it seems like a lot of build up on top (3' is a lot of extra crap to have built up over just a hundred years or so). But that's what's there, and I don't know how it got like that. But as I told a friend, maybe I've found the bottom of the prehistoric Lake Bonneville? Nothing to do but dig through it, but it got me wondering how that kind of layering came into being.

Well, there were several reasons for wanting to get this unit. And I must say that over all I am very pleased. This review might be a work in progress as I become more accustomed to the options. But over the last week I've played with as much as I can, and it was only yesterday that I noticed something I was pretty shocked about, which is that this radio does not have "memory groups". I didn't buy the programming software with the radio (it was just that extra amount that caused me to choke), and so I bought the software and usb cable later. And it was when I was adding all of the repeaters in Utah, into the program that I realized there is no way to organize all of these. I have since read that Yaesu Japan would have to make the descission to make a new firmware or such if we are to get this ability.

To note, in the past I've never tried to program any of my radios with a complete list of all of the repeaters in Utah, because it's just too darn big. But this time I decided to go for it. But.... now that I've found out there isn't a way to groups them, it might be too much. Not because there are still to many, but this will make scanning impossible. For instance I have already entered over 175 (VHF, 220 and just starting on UHF) repeaters. Out of those, I would say that approx 2/3rds are duplicate frequencies. See here in the state of Utah, we have such a big area, that the same frequency can be used in roughly 3 different geographical areas (North, SLC Valley, Southern Utah). And in most cases they have different PL tones. And memory groups are the way to handle these. If you are traveling, you can just select a different group, and know that you have the pl tones and such all setup for the area you are in. But with the "skip" feature, all you get is the knowledge that you have to turn on one and turn off another while traveling and this sucks. Besides, how do you know which one of the multiple frequencies you need? Which one has the correct PL tone for the area?

While I'm complaining, I also want to complain about the lack of memory "notes". In the RTS software there is a field for Notes, and that helps quite a bit to be able to say "This repeater is in xyz area", but those notes never get saved onto the radio. So without memory groups, it's completely impossible to deal with 200-300 repeaters. And since computer memory is so cheap now days, I imagine Yaesu could easily add a way to store the "notes" along with the rest of the data. Allowing easy decission making about frequencies one might need or want, by showing those notes while out driving. This is a mobile by the way.


Now that's done, this is my first APRS radio of any kind. I've never owned an APRS TNC, and so it was fun and a learning experience to setup APRS and to understand some of what it's features were. I like the popup to tell me when I'm receiving an APRS message or beacon. And I like very much that I can mute the modem sounds. I understand that these features built into the radio are not common. I believe it really makes for a better APRS experience to have it all in one place.

I also like the ability to turn "off" my APRS modem when I decide that I don't want to be tracked at that moment. And I think that the Smart beaconing makes for better tracking than that does the fixed 5min beacon. But it's all so new that I'm sure there are a lot more features to explore. One that I have not used is sending a message. I don't have anyone to whom I know uses APRS and so I haven't sent any. I certainly don't want to do that while I'm driving, so I'll play with that another time.

The display on the radio is big and easy to read and has so many different screen views that it's amazing. However, the background color is in my opinion, rather cheap. Different color backlighting is not state of the art. A friend has an Icom 7000 in his truck and IMHO it's display is outstanding! And I'm not sure why Yaesu decided that the default backlight intensity should be "HIGH". That'll blind you at night, even if you do make the background color red. It's seriously bright. You won't have a hard time reading the display in direct sunlight. But the display is so big, the whole display is about as big as the whole front of my FT-897. So it's a big step in the right direction. And being able to see multiple things on the screen at once is very nice. If you show the date/time/clock page, you can still see both frequences (for each side (R and L)), above the date. And if you are watching your GPS data, you can still see the frequences there too.

But I'm confused about their date settings. In the menu it shows the ability to show the date in different formats. I do a bit of database programming and I like to have the YYYY/MM/DD format, and that is an option - which I was so surprised by, because it's usually not. Anyway, when you look at the display it shows "2010/DEC/2", now how does that match? According to YYYY/MM/DD it should show 2010/12/02, but what they are showing is "YYYY/MMM/D". Who's bright idea was this to change the month to the MMM format, and instead of DD, to just 'D'. It's annoying but not critical. If they told you on the setting that it would be YYYY/MMM/D, that would at least let you know what to expect.

Another nice feature is the ability to have GPS built into (as an optional component) the unit. Right on the display you can see which direction you are heading, what the altitude is, and the actual GPS coords. And I haven't learned how to use this part yet, but you can use this to show you which direction to travel in order to find a gps location (or aprs beacon/message location). It can't be as nice as using the many little street gps's that lots of people have in their cars. The display only shows you a representation of your car, and then which direction the signal is coming from, but it does make it possible to do some searching and/or direction finding type of activities.

It also has a display screen for the Barometer, but I haven't seen a use for that yet.

Another item that seems kind of weird to me is that while the unit is scanning, I cannot access the "Set" button. If pressed it just gives a sound that it's denied. If you stop scanning, it lets you into the settings. The funny part of this is that when you are scanning, if you select the alternate side, you can enter the settings menu. So it's not like you can't get into it, but you can't do it from the same side you are scanning.

They actually built into the face unit, 2 speakers, one for each side, with their own volume control. I think that's a nice feature, but the speakers are on the back of the unit, facing away from the driver. So while driving, if you hear a lot of road noise (like I seem to have), I have to have the volume up quite high. Perhaps having the speakers pointing forward would help. But maybe not possible with the big screen display. I've decided that I'm going to enable in the setup, both the front and rear speakers (Front meaning the face place speakers, and Rear meaning the speaker on the radio body). And then attach an external speaker to the back of the body and put it up by the headrest. That should allow me to lower the volume and still hear real well (and as far as I know, I don't have hearing problems).

Perhaps a nice feature of the memories is that you have 500 on both sides. It might be nice to be able to share these, rather than have to program the same frequencies on each side, but I'll see how that pans out without the memory groups.

Well, that's it for now. But for a final comment, the dual receivers, the big screen display, the cross band (which I've never used), the GPS and APRS, all seem to make this unit a good choice for me. But the drawbacks are no Memory Banks/Groups, and no color display (just different color backlighting), and some silly menu settings. I've also just upgraded to the 1.2 firmware, but I haven't noticed anything different yet.


Here is a link to my FTM-350 master list of all of the repeater, and some simplex frequencies here in Utah.

FTM-350 Master Freq List

Yup, that's right - WORK. Yesterday I went with Dan Bishop WV7V, John Long KW7A and Jed Petrovich AD7KG to Idaho to pickup/teardown a tower and antenna which Dan purchased from Jack N7ID. We spent the night in Blackfoot and began the work today (Fri). I was the climber and helped get the mast unbolted from the rotor and removed from the tower with a hired crane and got the tower removed with the crane also. It wasn't a lot of work, but I had only had 4 hours of sleep which made it a long day. We got back to SLC around 6pm and I'm ready for bed. But I'm glad that Dan now has a real nice tower and log periodic antenna. Hopefully in a few weeks/months we'll have it up and running at his place.

Good luck DX'ing Dan.

Today was fun, I was willing and able to help replace a damaged coax on an 80' tower ontop of a 2 story building. The wind must have been around 30-50mph. I've been on a 120' tower but it was a commercial type tower with a leg span of 15' and 4 legs. Today was what looked like a Rohn 45 (maybe 55) and the 60' boom for a 20m mono bander was a sight to see from the ground, but up right next to it, was amazingly big!

Injustice Anywhere is a threat to Justice Everywhere...

Martin Luther King Jr.

Life is an uncertain path - at best. Maybe we should appreciate what we have today, because even these riches may be lost along the way.

The Outer Limits

This month I also decided to make a 'AAA Floatie' like my 'AA Floatie'. Essentiallyl it's a float charger for my rechargable batteries. After making the 'AA Floatie', I realized that instead of using 4 place AA holders, that I needed some individual ones too. It seems like no mater what I do, there is often a battery in a device, while the other 2 or 3 discharge because the 4 place holders won't work unless the circuit is complete with all 4 batteries in place. So by adding the individual holders I can keep each of those extra's charged until I need to swap the used one out.

Plus I made the 'AAA' quite a bit nicer. The 'AAA' battery holders come as a 2 place holder, so that meant I only need to have 1 single place holder for a left over from a set. But that gave me room for 44 batteries, and I don't have that many, which is nice because I like to have room to expand. But I decided to use some terminal blocks to connect the wiring underneath the mounting board, and this trippled the effort. But it's a lot nicer.

I was also pretty surprised to realize that the wall wart that I purchased to charge it (by the way, I can use a cigarete lighter or solar panel or really any 12v charging source to keep them charged), had the polarity opposite what the 'AA' wall wart was. I guess I've never had to consider that before, because I thought there was a standard or something. But sure enough, on the first, the center is Negative and the outside is Positive. And on the second, the center is Positive and the outside is Negative (and yes both are 12vdc output). I guess in my naivety I just presumed it was always the same. Since that discovery I purchased a DC Y-splitter so I can charge them both from the same source, which means I have to decide which charger to use, or maybe buy a different one if their Current output isn't large enough, and rewire one of them to get the polarity the same.

    

I forgot to make a note that this fall I passed my Amateur Extra Class exam.

That was a bit of work. I went to a class put on by a local ham (Ron K7RLS) and I read the manual, and I took the qrz practice exams, and I bought and listened to the Gordon West audio CD's. And still it took months. I failed the first 2 attempts, which is what inspired me to take the local class and buy the Audio CD's.

I know I have a lot of 'comprehension' still left to work on - but I finally made it to Extra. And I've found that using the knowledge I have and increasing that, makes some of these things much more clear than just reading the book or such. So for me it's been a big help to try and use what I have and move forward.