putting all my RG213 to use and repairing the T2LT

With the crimp-on plugs having arrived earlier this week I set to work fitting them to the cables, starting off with the RG213, which is all now terminated and can be put to use, all of it tested into a dummy load showing no mismatch, these cables should see me through for a while, and will be used to feed antennas over the longer RG58 that came from the cut off piece of the groundplane antenna, which will receive a plug hopefully tomorrow.

The T2LT had a cut in the feedline outer jacket, I have cut this out and crimped on a new PL259 at that point, it will be tested tomorrow provided the wind dies down sufficiently, if not Wednesday, I noticed this cut during the Activate All Counties event last summer but the antenna was still working as the braid had not been compromised, just the outer jacket.

Another antenna I hope to test tomorrow if it gets completed and the wind dies down is the second dipole for 2-meters made from the metal strips found inside the rubber part of car windscreen wiper blades, the antenna is deliberately too long for 2-meters so will be cut to length in the field, it will be fed with the RG213 I have and the QYT KT8900D will be taken with me as it is less prone to pager noise than the Leixen VV-898 and once the SWR meter is removed the HTs may be damaged having a heavy coax connected to them, and should this antenna work it will be my go-to portable ops antenna, for campsite use I'll use my copper-wire dipole as this does work fine as I have had it on the air before.

I will post results of the new dipole on YouTube and on here, the T2LT, however, I will just post on here as I know the antenna does work OK

73 de 2E0EIJ/26CT730

homebrew dipole working

Last night I got my homebrew 2-meter dipole antenna tuned and working while the rain held off, to use it I clamped the upright to an open window and the boom with the antenna on the end was outside the window, GB3CD was able to be accessed but it seemed to be below my squelch and a little in the noise, as were a couple of the stations on the S12 net I discovered, one in Darlington could hear me as I could hear him just fine, from the location given the station in Darlington was on the other side of Darlington to myself up near the retail park and car dealers, this was enough confirmation the antenna was in fact doing its job satisfactory, GB3HG and GB3IR obviously were not going to prove a challenge for the antenna given their locations.

Tomorrow if the rain holds off and the weather is good I may set up a portable station on Richmond's old racecourse with this antenna, the radio I will take I have yet to decide, also undecided is if I will go QRP or not, my VV898 can go as low as 5 watts (QRP levels) however the KT-8900D can only go to 10 watts at its lowest settings, after all this antenna is meant to be a portable design requiring nothing more than a screwdriver to disassemble the support from the boom, the VV898 may of course need reprogramming depending on how it is currently configured.

The next antenna I'd like to make is an antenna to work the FM satellites as I have still yet to do that, this dipole is my third successful antenna, the first being the T2LT for CB work and the groundplane antenna for 2-meters that was my original homebase antenna.

The coax on the antenna itself is a short run of RG58 to a BNC, this meant I have had to use a BNC-PL259 adaptor and a SO239 coupler to connect the feedline, which is the repaired feeder that was from the groundplane antenna after it was cut and it works great and is fitted with a crimp on PL259.

I shall see what happens tomorrow and see what stations I can work simplex if I go portable.

73 de 2E0EIJ

Rebuild of my homebrew 2-meter dipole near completion

I have spent today rebuilding my homebrew 2-meter dipole, previously it was just a dipole centre made with the neutral conductor of twin and earth cable, and it did fail at some point before the QTH move, yesterday I went out and got some parts and today I have got it assembled to somewhat functional, or at least receive anyway as I’ve not had opportunity to tune it

As should be known with me I prefer to build my own antennas rather than buy them, though I make exception for mobile use, and I feel building antennas is in the true spirit of Amateur radio, and my eagerness to build rather than buy antennas would make Marconi very proud indeed

I hope to finish and tune the antenna tomorrow, it will have a pair of clamps fitted to the support to allow it to be attached to anything that can support it, though it is lightweight in general, and I plan to give the support structure a little more rigidity as at present it is a little more flexible than one would like.

The antenna will spend its time connected to my QYT KT8900D and will be used with at most 25 watts, and spend most of its time being used on FM, the inspiration to build this antenna was down to me discovering a net on S12 at about 9pm or so every night, as I have the FTM-400 in the car I tend to listen while I work and am in the car, I don’t transmit usually while working, except in exceptional circumstances, and once this antenna is working I would like to maybe join in on this net on S12, assuming from my home QTH the other stations in the net can actually hear me.

I rarely work simplex given my current antenna situation but this should be set to change, especially with an antenna I can install and remove very quickly indeed.

I will post more as progress is made

 

73 de 2E0EIJ

2-meter dipole revisited

Yesterday I dug out my homebrew dipole for 2-meters, and the dipole centre I bought from the Blackpool Rally and reassembled the dipole onto it, this was then hung up but the SWR was reading high, between 2 and 3 on the meter with the radio (the Leixen VV-898) at 10 watts, not good, moving it seems to have brought the SWR back down to the 1.7 it was at, still not brilliant but at least it's below dangerous levels for now, I suspect it's being affected by objects indoors and is best placed outdoors however the centre is not waterproofed and I have no means to hang it outdoors yet, my plan is to waterproof the centre with self amalgamating tape (another yet used Blackpool purchase) and put it onto my fibreglass mast and see what it can really do, the mast won't be extended to full-height as it is in need of TLC but it still has sufficient height to get out, this will give me a much more reliable SWR reading.

For the fibreglass mast to work as intended it needs to be fitted into a base, a parasol base from a DIY store should suffice here, I do need to make sure this tuning is done before I tape up the centre in case I need to do any more work so a dry day for the first run, if we even have a summer this year, would be good, and I could potentially put a Slim Jim on here later and save the dipole for other work, I could also put a lightweight Yagi on here, as I still wish to operate CB (my Grant II is in the shack for this very reason) I can put my T2LT on here, assuming it still works which it should do, on 2-meters I should be able to get out much further on the dipole so more simplex calls should be possible, I have no antenna for 10 meters despite having the rig for the job which may be the next antenna I work on, and with the mast on a parasol base it makes it temporary therefore should get around planning permissions, so let's see what I can get away with antenna wise.

73 de M6RSQ

The previous Sunday local net on GB3IR

I don't often post about the regular local net on GB3IR unless there is something of note, and, although this is a couple of days late coming, there was something noteworthy the previous Sunday.

First off, the Sunday evening net on GB3IR is open to anyone who can access the repeater either direct on RF or over Echolink, it's not strictly local and it's nice to hear new voices on the air.

So, how is it noteworthy, by use of the Leixen VV-898 and my homebrew yet unfinished dipole of course, it was still hung up and I thought to save the batteries on my handhelds (of which I have reprogrammed to include all 2-meter analogue and System Fusion voice repeaters in the UK), performance wise the antenna was getting into the repeater fine (though I could just as easily use a very leaky dummy load or a piece of wet string though of course I'd not recommend that given that I am very close to the repeater).

This has been the first time the VV-898 has been used for a Sunday net on IR since removal from my previous car, it has not been fitted to the new car as it would be much easier for me to fit a radio with a detachable front, hence my interest in the Yaesu FTM-100DE (which I think is an after-Christmas purchase though I am seeing this rig in the flesh soon to see what it is like), though I am also interested in this rig for the benefit of System Fusion, the ability to turn up the TX power once I have my intermediate, and the APRS side of things as well as I'd like to get a bit more into that, all of these things are beyond the VV-898 (except the APRS with a little bit of extra hardware), hence why it has been now demoted to home radio, and it only puts out 10-watts anyway

The VV-898 seems to be performing well as a home rig on the homebrew dipole, the next thing to do is put the antenna outside and see what it can really do, but first there is waterproofing to do, as for the VV-898, it will be taking place in most Sunday nets on GB3IR and perhaps any simplex nets once I get the antenna outside the window, I just need to waterproof the coax join, I was initially going to use black Sugru but I may use blue Sugru instead as it matches the blue on the dipole elements..

As for the Sunday net itself, nothing of note to mention really apart from the antenna and rig I used, just leaves me to finish it off, roll on payday and a trip to somewhere I can get blue Sugru from

73 de M6RSQ

A bit more time dedicated to radio

Firstly with my Leixen VV-898 on the bench rather than in the car (I had replaced the fuse holder for a mini-blade type after the regular one fell apart) and connected to the power supply I thought maybe it is a good idea to play with antennas so I dug out my 2-meter slim-Jim that I had built at the club some time ago, only to find it was not working as it should (the SWR was a bit high so I figured it was kaput as it had been on the floor in the hallway for some time), a T2LT cut to the right length was my next attempt, again this did not work, then finally I relented and assembled a dipole, this too, despite being cut to about the right length, was not working with a high VSWR, though it was lower on 70cm, what gave? Turns out the choke I had wound was too far from the feedpoint, so I cut the excess coax between the choke and antenna out (I did this so I did not have to redo the choke), after resoldering the antenna elements (two pieces of the neutral conductor from high-current twin and earth cable) to the coax at their new position and rehanging the antenna from my winter washing line in the living room and reconnecting it to the rig, the SWR had dropped though still read between 1.5 and 1.7 on the meter, better than it was but could still be better however it handles the 10 watts the radio gives it fine, all I now have to do is finish it off and hang it up outside the window.

I have also had a look into APRS, as there appears to be transmissions on the APRS frequency in the locality, which I believe is coming from MB7USD as aprs,fi isn't really showing a lot otherwise, I have been working to get the VV-898 to be able to TX on APRS but thus far have only got it to receive into my shack computer, and I don't yet have a passcode to do Internet-only operations as yet, as I have decided to decommission both my FRN gateways indefinitely some time ago as I want to focus a bit more on the Amateur side of things I plan to modify the auto-key circuit I built for the CB gateway to use it with the VV-898 for APRS as it sounds like something that might be worth playing with and the Yaesu FTM-100DE has this onboard as well and as I plan to get one of these for the car (as the box can live under the seat or in the boot out of the way) I may as well use the APRS feature on it, I'll hopefully be looking at one of these up close and personal at the next club meeting intermediate training pending.

I also have the APRS software installed on my laptop computer, of course not having a passcode as yet means I cannot transmit onto the APRS system but that should change soon, with a crude but working antenna up I should have no problems transmitting all being well, so let's see what APRS is all about

73 de M6RSQ