An antenna that could solve my HF problems?

As you are probably well aware, HF is pretty much something I cannot do due to size of the antennas that are used at these frequencies, however during the course of my amateur radio related web browsing I came across an antenna from America that might just be the ticket, the TAK-tenna, an antenna that, in it's simplest description, is essentially 2 spirals of wire, a boom separating them, and not a lot more, weighing very little and not being huge.

As this antenna is not large like the majority of HF antennas performance would probably be down, though it would make for an excellent stealth antenna, it doesn't really look like one, and one of these should handle 50 watts no bother once I have my intermediate licence, as they are rated for about 1kW CW though that power level is not really legal here on any licence, my HF setup is mostly limited to 10-metres and CB, both of which aren't generally active and CB has it's own legal limit of 4 watts ERP AM/FM and 12 watts PEP SSB.

The drawback of this antenna appears that you'd have to order it from the US, shipping will probably take a few weeks unless it is shipped air mail and it may hold a customs charge, the antenna appears to be available for a few bands, 40 up to 10, so us in rented accommodation and especially us flat dwellers can in fact get on HF, I think this antenna may be worth a look.

73 de M6RSQ

follow up to my temporary mast base rescue mission

As you may recall from March, I wrote about how the local authority sent out a letter to all tenants of the block of flats I live in regarding the external sheds on the building, that is that no tenants were permitted to store anything in them, and that all contents was to be removed otherwise they'd remove it and dispose of it, one of the other things they said they would do is fit locks to the sheds, this did not happen until today, despite the deadline being the 31st March.

The locks are padlocks and no keys have been issued to tenants, this is what I thought may happen and as such can use the space in between the two sheds to erect an antenna in a plant pot, this gets around planning constraints, and it shouldn't stick out like a sore thumb either, my groundplane dipole uses stiff copper wire and as such from a distance should be invisible, though the coax won't but that is the least of my worries right now.

This comes as welcome news so hopefully I can get my 2-metre groundplane antenna up and working, how much power I will put through it (10 or 25 as that is what my shack rig can do) will depend on what I tell you on Thurday night.

73 de M6RSQ

Intermediate exam - post exam

I have completed my intermediate exam about an hour ago or so, however I am not going to reveal the indicative results, except to a certain few, until after 9:30pm BST on Thursday night, this is to give chance for other club members at my local club to find out how I got on.

Naturally we all want me to pass as I have put in so much work and revised where I can, and passing will be a good thing as explained above.

For now however I shall let only those that need to know at this stage know, except for the invigilators on the day who already know if I have passed or failed.

73 de M6RSQ

intermediate exam today

I take my intermediate exam today at about 4pm BST, I am looking forward to this as I know what it means if I pass the exam, a few extra bands and allowed to use up to 50 watts, I set up some programming for my FTM-400XDE ready for when I get a 2E0 callsign, that is set the default power output to high (the radio outputs at 50 watts at full power, 25 at half power, and as I am well aware, 5 watts at low power), of course I would not need to use full power at all times and can simply press the button to lower it, passing this exam means I am allowed to do this, does also mean changing the callsign programmed into the radio but that's an easy job to do.

You should also be aware that 2 weeks ago I bought a QYT KT-8900D 2/70 radio that can output 25 watts on 2-metres and 20 watts on 70cm, coincidence is that before I took my foundation exam I bought my Leixen VV-898 and my CRT-SS9900 in preparation for entering the Amateur bands for the first time after my pass, the VV-898 gave me 2 wonderful years of operation until I replaced it, the CRT-SS9900 is still in my shack but otherwise not used as there is no suitable 10-metre antenna connected, I posted about building a groundplane antenna to place outdoors for 2-metres as well, as I aim to finish that next weekend I hope it can be ready in time for my intermediate licence coming through, which whether I pass or fail today's exam it will be ready regardless, I bought the QYT radio as it would allow me to make the most of my Intermediate from home once a suitable external antenna is set up and operating.

Also I have sat down when I can to read the book to ready myself for today's exam, hopefully this revision has helped, though I feel confident that things should be pretty much there for me it is best to revise.

I shall post a little later on to let you all know how I got on

73 de M6RSQ

YouTube channel overhaul to focus on radio

I have had an account on YouTube for a number of years, nearly a decade in fact, and had used it for a number of videos both radio and non-radio related, yesterday I removed all the non-radio related videos after backing them up to my laptop in preparation for a different account later as I want to use my existing one for radio.

The changes I made were:

• The channel description
• An introduction/promo video for new subscribers (which will be changed after I get my 2E0 callsign assuming I pass my exam this week which I remain confident that I will)
• Adding a section to my channel showing my subscriptions, so far this is only TX Factor at time of writing but it will certainly increase as time goes on

There is a little bit more work to be done as the course of time goes on, and more and more videos will be making their way onto the channel in due course, how this will affect existing subscribers is beyond me, however I may get more subscribers, I'll keep an eye out and see.

73 de M6RSQ

Some tinkering

In the early days of this blog I posted about building a homebrew extension speaker out of an old shower radio that bit the dust, I have had this speaker in service ever since and it has only let me down on a couple of occasions, today it received it’s first major upgrade in almost 6 years, a headphone jack, this is in the hole where the original AM/FM selector was fitted when it was a radio, I still have room to fit a mute and volume control, the headphone jack itself came out of an old speaker mic I disassembled, and is a mono jack as fitted to the rig at the other end, my CRT SS9900 at present, this was done after something else.

I had previously built a mono to stereo converter to run my stereo headphones (well both pairs of Sony over-ear headphones) from the socket on the back of the radios without losing audio in one side as these are mono, the previously built circuit was destroyed unfortunately, and had slightly too high resistors that made it so I had to turn up the connected radio to full, this new one was rebuilt using the same jack plug and lower value resistors, all this does is ties the left and right sides of the stereo part together using a pair of resistors for each channel, theoretically it should work in reverse but I’ve not tried that as I intend to use this solely with my radios, it works with them all and my improved speaker as noted above.

Earlier in the day I had run a test of a 2-metre groundplane antenna I had built a while ago, or part-built as it will be mounted atop some plastic waste pipe, it seemed to work ok though I did test it on a bed with a metal frame and mattresses are full of metal springs, so a proper test outdoors is needed, the test was done at 10 watts on my Leixen VV898 powered by my jump starter, the VV898’s first time on air since the QYT KT-8900D replaced it in the shack, needless to say the fact the antenna radiated at all (verified by my field strength meter I posted about) was impressive as the radiator is simply a piece of copper wire on the centre of an SO239 socket.

Well it’s what Amateur radio (and the radio hobby as a whole) is all about, making it yourself and tinkering with it, as well as the communication aspect of course.

 

73 de M6RSQ

Field strength meter

A field strength meter is a useful tool to have in the shack as it detects the presence of RF, and in the shack that is undesirable and can be a sign of potential feeder radiation, which as is known is often a problem if a balanced antenna is connected to an unbalanced feedline without some kind of balun, RF in the shack can also occur if the antenna is also in the shack (which in my case is more or less unavoidable at present).

A basic field strength meter does not require a battery, it works similar to a crystal set but without the tuned circuit, I had an old unreliable SWR meter for CB and set about salvaging components from it, 2 of these components were germanium diodes (silicon diodes won't work as well if at all), so I found what components I could close to the values specified from a particular circuit (some of these were from the SWR meter I had disassembled) and assembled a crude field strength meter onto a veroboard, in close range of an HT at full power it swings the needle on the meter display fully over to the end stop, a potentiometer reduces sensitivity so I was able to bring the needle back over to the end of the "FS" markings (this SWR meter had readings for field strength but they were not used in the meter as it was a basic CB SWR meter and the majority of CB users usually don't need to know more than if their antenna is working and not going to kill their radio's finals).

I built the meter as a proof of concept and just to practice my soldering skills, as I've not soldered anything in a little while and am a little out of practice, I plan to build a proper one, in a metal box, using exact value components for the circuit, at some point in the future, I could have built one of these for my Intermediate but my instructor had other things he wanted me to do and it didn't really occur to me at the time.

73 de M6RSQ