Amateur Radio

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!

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.

During the summer this year I was given a tower (Rohn 25G) and antenna (A3S w/40) but the catch was that I had to take it all down. One might think this was pretty easy, but it turned out different, and a very big learning experience. This June was nothing but rain and I wasn't too happy to be climbing in the rain, so I put it off. Additionally we had the club field day and steak fry and my own projects and bad weather days. But over the course of weeks and months I finally got the whole thing down. All it took was muscle, full body harness, 2 positioning lanyards, 1 fall arrest, many extra pullies, gloves, boots with steel shanks, tool belt, tools, lanyards for the tools since they fall hard, ropes (darcon), climbing clips, gin pole, gin pole pully, gin pole clamps, gin pole lower pulley, electric 4 1/2" grinder (rusted bolts), nerves of steel, and a friend to bounce ideas off. But that's all.

I didn't have much if any of the above and it was a long process procuring these things. I could have purchased a new tower for the money and time invested in getting this whole thing down. But it was very interresting to see what it takes, and I can always use these tools and equipment to put this tower back up at some time in the future (and help friends like the KW7A entry). So by no means was it a waste. But sometimes "FREE" is just a lot more expensive than I anticipated.

A few weekends ago I helped KW7A get his tower up and then the following weekend we got his antenna mounted. It wasn't the easiest thing, but we did finally get it all put together. There were several of us there on each occation which made the process easier.

After the antenna was up it appeared the rotor doesn't work. So he'll have to work on that another time. But we were very happy that it was up before the snow comes. We did manage to point it eastwardly and I setup my radio and picked up Texas for the texas qso party and also Sweden, and to my surprise also Argentina. So it was working and in several directions.

    

This weekend was my first 7QP and I was determined to do the best I could. So I built a 40' tower made of punched angle iron and #8 grade bolts. It is a sturdy tower, but under what conditions? I didn't build it to be permanent, but more of an optional temporary structure. I also decided to do a dual county setup, and with the counties I picked, required that I get on some back country roads up at about 9000'.

It took me 5 hours to drive the 200 miles on Thursday and get to the spot, which had snow on the roads and I was lucky to get there. A bit of 4wheel drive and plenty of speed helped get through the snow. And it took another 8 hours on Friday to assemble the tower and mount the antenna's and get my radio hooked up to the cables and grounding, etc. I had decided on 3 antenna (20M, 40M and 80M). Since a 40' guyed tower is unwise to climb I didn't think I would want to be adjusting any antenna's once they were in the air. So I took my 20M 2element beam that I made last year, and used my buddipole on 40M and a simple homeaide wire Inverted V for 80M. I figured having 3 bands gave me a lot of options if the band conditions weren't so good on some. After it was all setup on Friday I went to bed at 11pm local. I woke up at 7am MDT right in time for the contest. I don't think I did real wonderful, I know I won't get the most contacts award. But it was an experience I won't soon forget. Anyway the contest was fun and I was enjoying the ability to switch between bands - easily, as I don't have any permanent HF antenna's up where I live. So it was kind of fun having these to work with. The wind started up and it lasted only an hour or so, and then it started to snow. I wondered if I would be stuck there for any length of time, based on how much snow might come down. But I was lucky that it stopped in about an hour and wasn't a problem.

Later on in the day, the wind kicked up again and this time it was terrible. At about 6pm I was making a contact when all of a sudden the band went dead. Not the power (I was running on solar mounted on my camper), but it was the actual radio sounds that stopped. I couldn't figure it out until I looked outside and saw that my 20M antenna was broken by the wind. I didn't have anything to measure the wind speed, but it was strong enough to push me around when I went outside, and that just didn't seem like a good thing. So finally about 8pm when the wind still had not subsided, I decided the tower must come down on my terms than on it's own. Luckily the tower was being pushed from what I call the back. The winch was attached to the front, and I could/did remove the guy's from the front, and laid the tower down on it's back. It actually took me pressing/pushing on the tower to lay it over against the wind. But because of the wind the tower wouldn't come down straight and was pushed off to the side causing the 20M elements to break even more. Oh well, at least the tower didn't kill me or damage my trailer or camper - those things would have been a lot worse so I'll count my blessings. It appears that I only used about 1/2 of the time available for 7QP, but it was an experience I'll remember the rest of my life.

Once the tower was down, and the wind was still blowing very hard, I was concerned that I might get stuck up there. My thinking was if the wind was this bad, what terrible storm must be coming? So I spent another 4 hours tearing it all apart, shoving everything into my trailer and getting off that mountain about 12am local. Once I reached Vernal (the nearest town), it was calm and no wind and I felt kind of silly. But with the information I had up on the mountain, I wasn't sure what was coming so I think I made the best choice (better safe than sorry). I continued home and once arrived, I had been up for 22 hours.

And so that was my experience with 2009 7QP. It was short lived, and it took way too long to setup. So I'm betting I won't be doing that same thing again. If I had a tower that was a crank up/telescoping, and if I had a better setup for the antenna's, and, and, and, I might be tempted to do it again. The only real problem was the wind, and my tower of unknown durability. A tower from a commercial entity rated for some wind load might have made a difference to the effort involved. It was pretty cold up there, but I did have several heaters (propane) and stove and food and I was inside of a camper so I wasn't uncomfortable. But going outside wasn't fun. So if I had all of the comforts of a telescoping tower and a rotor, etc, it might have made it easier. But even telescoping have wind limits, so it might have had to come down. But since mine didn't have any real foundational support (other than gravity and guy ropes), I wasn't sure how much I should count on it. One other thing I haven't mentioned is that the ground was both soft soil and it was upon a rocky foundation. So I couldn't get my plastic stakes (next time I need stakes that don't bend and break) to go in very far (due to the rocks), and when I did get them in all the way, they were in soft soil. I did have every guy in it's own stake, thus if one came loose, perhaps the others would hold until I got the one back in. But luckily I didn't have to find that out.

Well anyway it was fun and I won't comment on how many contacts as I don't think I did very well. But I did make a DX contact to ZF2ZB (a dxpedition) to the Cayman Islands. And that alone was worth the trip.

At least I came home, and at least I didn't loose anything serious. It did cost me to make the tower and pay for gas to an from. And according to the 7QP website, this certainly counts for a "County Expedition". And we'll see what I do next year. Maybe I'll have a new perspective, or just maybe some new gear. But as it sits today, with achy muscles, next year I won't be leaving home.



Truck/Camper/Trailer and Tower

I've found an image on the web for an 80M Dipole which is approx 30' end to end. It uses a coil in the middle of the elements on both ends and looks to me like the 20M yagi I built. So I'm wondering if I could use the same logic of the 20M 2 element and make this an 80M 2 element? Of course the boom would have to be a lot longer inbetween the elements, but if I can figure that out (material wise), I bet this could be turned into an 80M 2 element yagi.

I have purchased Logic8 and already have my LoTW cert, and I'm learning how to use Logic8, but I think I now have all of my "few" contacts in there. I am still learning how to do all of the fuctions, but it's a very nice tool. I would prefer it to be upgrade to Vista style programming - one window in particular when you try and click on the "x" to close, the 'pretty' vista 'X' disapears and an ugly w98 'X' appears in the same spot, thus indicating that not all of the Logic8 has been rewritten to the newest standards - BUT - it does work and works well, so it's a minor thing really.

You know, I haven't been very faithful about entering stuff here. But I did want to write down that when guying the 20M make sure the ground is not soft. During the K5D escapades, I tried to use my 20M beam on soft soil (warmed by the sun after being wet all winter), and the ground gave way and my 20M fell over breaking 3 of the dowels. Of course having made this myself it was a pretty easy fix. But I also added another change which was to put wire connectors at each location the dowels attach to the boom/element supports. This makes it a lot easier to disconnect the elements for transportation and since the wire lengths are still the same (I made sure to cut everything just right so they would remain the same length), they have the same SWR. I might add photo's later, but this is probably enough.

Well, unless I can figure out a way to get permission for a tower, it looks to be a dry winter for any HF work. I might get a dipole in the attic, but I hate that I can't turn it to get different entities. We'll see, but I'm not holding my breath.

Via the help from AF6AV, it was him I made contact with on the 29th. I should have been more careful that day. Thanks for the help AF6AV.

Well, since I made the 20M yagi I'm sure getting my taste of pileups. I heard someone in the Caribean(sp?) and it was a hot item for sure. I heard lots of folks and I couldn't get through. Todays bands were supposed to be pretty good, and I can hear and talk to Japan, but I couldn't get this island. Anyway the call I was trying to get (but couldn't get through to) was PJ2/PK8ND, on the Island of Qurisel? I couldn't make out the island name.

I was showing a friend HF today on my homeaid 20M yagi and made a contact with either (AF6AV or AF6AZ). He was in San Diego County mobile so I think it must be AF6AV, but I'm leaving this one open until I get it figured out for sure - qsl card would solve it. I was on 40M (20M yagi tuned to 40M) I believe, I had been on 20M so I didn't write down all of the details I would have normally, so I'm feeling a bit slugish for not tracking the contact better.

It's always nice to get a project done and then get to test it out. Today I was able to get my 20M mini yagi finished. And I was able to test it out. My first contact was in Alberta Canada. And my 2nd contact was NE of Tokyo Japan. Wow - that was awesome. Of course I had to turn the antenna to hit these different places, but I had taken my gear out side and setup right under the antenna so it was no problem. It's Nov 17th and there is no snow and the weather was approx 45-50 deg F. I think. So sitting outside was ok with a jacket.

They were my first HF DX contacts (if Canada is not DX, then Japan was my first HF DX). And my 3rd and 4th overall HF contacts. It's sure nice when plans come together.

The bands were not too good today, and so that makes it even more amazing. I was only hoping for Hawaii, but when I heard the J callsign I wasn't sure he would be able to hear me, like maybe he was using an amp. But when I called out he heard me and gave a 5-7 signal report, and I was getting a 5-7 from him. I was using 100W, my 20M mini yagi up about 15'-18' on a buddipole tripod - I could have gone higher but that's where my guying was set for and I hate re-guying.

Yagi's really do cut down on the noise from other directions. And that was nice. But I was really surprised to get Japan. Like I said these were my 3rd&4th contacts and my 1st&2nd were using the buddipole dipole. Which works well, I contacted an Oklahoma person who gave me a 59 the other day with the buddipole, and heard NY state and Michigan, etc.

The next project is probably to figure out how to get something up more permanetly (family willing).

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Final yagi notes...
-The first driven element SWR readings are on another post.
-After figuring out I had a bad UHF crimp the other night, today's reflector element SWR are as follows...
--To start, the original length of 10" beyond the dowels was at 12.986 = 1.2
--I had calculated that my best resonant freq should be at 13.573 for the reflector in order to be 5% lower than the driven - presuming I could get the driven close to where I wanted. The driven set the other day could be better, but it was close.
--So I needed to go up 0.587K, again the trimming for this yagi seemed to be 1"=1Khz - I'm not sure if that's always true on all yagi's, but it seems to hold pretty true for this project. So I needed to cut off approx 5-1/2" or so. I started by measuring 6" from the end of the dowel and cut off the remainder (mostly to make sure they were exactly the same on both sides). And when I was done, I found out both cut pieces were 5".
--The antenna went up and swr was checked. The best resonance was 13.490->13.525 = 1.2
--Down again
--I was afraid to cut off anymore, but I decided to take off 1/8" to see what that would do, because it was already so close.
--Up again
--Best resonance, 13.505->13.535 = 1.2
--But I wanted something nearer to 13.573, not at the end of my 1.2 range.
--Down again
--I got brave and cut off 3/8" after doing some validations that seemed like the 1"=1K was still true.
--Up again
--Best SWR, 13.515->13.560 = 1.2 And that is close enough. I'm leaving it there.

-So I removed the UHF temporary wiring and connected the permanent long wire from coil to coil on the reflector. Then I took the coax and connected it to the driven and decided to cut off some more. I wanted the best resonance to be around 14.287 (middle of General SSB). So some more calcs and off came some more, leaving 7/16" off both ends.

- Best resonance was 14.210->14.234 = 1.1 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YIPPIEEEEEEEEEEE
Close enough! And to check the higher end 14.350 = 1.8 - not to bad, it would be nice if it was better, but I'm not taking any more chances with cutting the wires to short.

I think the picts I've uploaded so far are enough for anyone to duplicate the steps. Hopefully so.

And thanks be to KJ5VW for the initial project. I know he copied someone else from a while back - but even though I complained about not having some real explicit instructions, without him and those he gave (which were good enough), I would never have been able to build this.
Thanks