Stateside you may or may not have heard of ML&S (Martin Lynch and Sons), however in the UK it's a different story. Recently, Martin did a quick review of RM Italy's BLA-600 solid-state amplifier. Very cool, but expensive.
If you're dying for some 11m DX and have about 5 hours to kill, take a listen to Skipgates post from 6/19/2019.
Jim, W6LG, talks about using Ferrite beads, common mode chokes, and correcting RFI in the shack.
If you're old enough to remember the TV show "Space 1999" content publisher Shout Factory is releasing the entire series on Blu-Ray July 16th. But, why wait? They have episode 1 online now.
Amateurlogic.tv (which I've followed since they began) has a new episode (54) of their Ham College series.
Finally, the latest episode from the No Net Net folks, where they talk to KB3WUM, who has a shack. At work. 200' in the air.
While 11m is dead in SE Texas, the Atlantic coastal states up thru Canada continue to have decent activity thanks to weather systems that continue to move West-to-East across the Nation. This is the biggest downside on having a QTH so far South in Texas because it's rare to get a frontal system that will pass thru after the end of May. Until the Sun starts spitting out Sunspots, both 10 & 11 meters will be in the doldrums. In listening to one of my favorite SDR websites I found lots of activity from 26.5 - 29Mhz. Previously I've mentioned the "Super Bowl" channel (ch.7 AM) and the enormous watts scattered into the ether by those "big" stations, but moving up the dial I found ch.28 to be just as annoying.
ALMOST 200 kHz OF TOXICITY
While listening on 27.385 LSB I heard one of the operators talking about getting splatter from ch.28 (27.285) AM, which was 100 kHz below 38. A quick look at the waterfall was all it took to see why - whoever this guy was he was spreading toxic rf as low as ch.20 and as high as ch.38 - not one of 11m better moments.
PRESIDENT MCKINLEY AM/SSB MOBILE
PICTURE COURTESY SIMONTHEWIZARD.COM
While the McKinley has been around for over a 2 1/2 years, and has received generally favorable reviews, it was surprising to find that New Zealand's "Yeticom" was just now getting a hold of it. Apparently they received it last month (June) and are just now in the review stage. Quite possibly the auto-SWR meter function is the "most liked" feature of the radio. It takes all of the guess work out of the equation.
MikesRadioRepair does a complete review on his YouTube channel (SEE BELOW).
Also - CB Magazine has a written review as well as the YouTube video below.
MEANWHILE...
As I just mentioned SSB and AM in a previous paragraph, here is a 2017 Podcast by the ARRL "The Doctor Is In" discussing both modes courtesy QRZnow. Also, looking into my archives I found my Oreo cookie diagram (right) which shows the Oreo being one CB channel (lower, middle, upper) AND, if used on AM your 5 watt RF output would more-or-less be spread across the entire cookie 😢.
On the other hand, by choosing either LSB or USB you can concentrate your 5 watt output on just one wafer of the Oreo.😁
While on the subject of "The Doctor Is In", if you are trying to figure out what type of coaxial cable is best for you, check out the July 4th episode available through APPLE, GOOGLE, or follow this link to QRZnow.
'Nuff For Monday,
Woody
Sunday, July 07, 2019
COOL STUFF FOR
PORTABLE
OPS
Whether you run QRP in the field, or 100 watts, radio operators around the world have come up with their own homebrew "Field" paks. Fortunately, the sharing nature of Ham radio allows the less inventive of us to copy their plans and even make modest modifications. That's what Hams do.
But what if you're not the hands on type of person and still want to go off grid? There are several companies that will help you out (for a price).
First, if you are trying to assemble your own pak you may have already picked up a rig that runs portable like the Yaesu Ft-818, or it's older brother the 817. If you have tried using this it's internal battery pack I guess you've found out that it doesn't take much time to run the battery down. An external battery certainly helps, and there are so many different types available it's sometimes difficult to figure out what you should get.
You can start with Facebook and join the FT-817 / 818 group and begin asking questions from other members of the group. I asked about decent batteries to buy and had several members recommend the TalentCell Rechargeable 12V 6000mAh/5V 12000mAh DC Output Lithium Ion Battery, available from Amazon.
In the field, your radio equipment should be well protected and several companies are here to do just that. Possibly the best / least expensive protection comes from Portable Zero.
FT-817 / 818
The rails protect all sides of your radio and looks cool too! It's just not for the FT-817 though. They offer rails for the 857-897-891 and even the FT-991.
FT-991 RAILS
Portable Zero offers setups for ICOM too(Check out their website for the models they cover). Once the money fairy visits me, I'll try these out myself but I've heard good things about them. Chameleon antenna, makers of quality EMCOMM antennas has a set of rails for the FT-817. They are heavy duty, and cost almost twice that of what you can buy from Portable Zero.
The biggest downside I have with these are that they don't widen out at the front of the rig. Personally, I need a little extra room to use the front panel controls and tuning knob on my 817. Secondly, while the openings on the rails allow access to your speaker and microphone jacks, I think I would prefer a wider gap, like the ones from Portable Zero. I will compare the two one day (once I pony up for the P.Zero rails). The Chameleon rails are available thru DX Engineering. Once again, let me point you to the EXCELLENT YouTube channel run by Julian - OH8STN to get a good idea on what to buy for the field.
What if you have money to burn and want and turnkey solution? Try looking into Hardened Power Systems. If you want something that will fit into an ammo can you will be happy.
HPS COMMANDER SERIES
This setup allows you to fit your FT-857 or 891 into a ready-to-go field kit. Just add the radio and ammo can and your set to go! Don't look for a review from me on this one - my wallet doesn't hold that much ($695 w/Free shipping in US). They offer Commander kits for the ICOM 7100 and 7200 as well.
73 Woody
Saturday, July 06, 2019
ADVENTURES WITH ANTENNAS PT.1
(Leading down the path to an MLA)
Living in an apartment or a house with NAZI-Like HOA's can be frustrating to the modern Ham, in fact, the apartment we lived at 10 years ago was so much easier to rig up an antenna system compared to where we are now. I have tried indoor dipoles, no-ground ham sticks, and even the MP1 "Super" Antenna with nary a success during the course of several years. My sanity has been preserved by either ignoring HF altogether, selling off my equipment, or using indoor wires near a window for listening purposes only. For several reasons it became clear to me that this year it would be time to put-up or shutdown, with the latter not truly being an option. "But what could I do successfully" I asked myself, especially with our current Sunspot cycle in the doldrums'? The hunt for a solution had begun! [disclaimer - I am definitely NOT an expert in antennas. Anything you read here should be double-checked via web sources. I'm throwing out information that I've picked up from reading, surfing, and watching videos, so I may err unintentionally, 'Nuff Said] One likely candidate presented itself in the form of an end fed half-wave wire (EFHW). These antennas are basically a wire, precut to a certain length, attached to an UnUn as opposed to a Balun, fed with at least 22 feet of coaxial feedline plugged into a antenna tuner by the transceiver.
FIGURE A
There is plenty of information about the specific lengths you can choose to get easy-to-tune low SWR, but for my purposes that length was going to be 33.3ft. The UnUn (Unbalanced-to-Unbalanced) would typically be either a 4:1 or 9:1 ratio, with 9:1 being the current favorite for builders of their EFHW antennas. The >22ft. length of coaxial feedline would actually be acting as a counterpoise, negating the absolute need for an Earth ground. Just GOOGLE UnUn and/or EFHW antennas and you'll find a butt load of information. Do the same on YouTube and then be prepared to spend hours upon hours watching different operators testing a variety of homemade or OEM designs. Figure A shows the basic, simple idea behind the EFHW antenna. You take a 1/2 wave length of wire (in my case - 33.3') connected to the "Impedance Transformer" i.e. - a 9:1 UnUn, which has 22 ft. or more of coaxial feedline, running to your rig and external antenna tuner.
FIGURE B
On EBAY, you'll find a variety of "Mystery" boxes similar to the one in FIGURE B. There are several exterior connections. These are: 1. An SO-239 (bottom) 2. Connection for the length of wire 3. And, a connection for your ground / counterpoise Assembled UnUn's are usually priced from around $40 to as high as $100. So what is the secret Mojo inside?
FIGURE C
By looking at FIGURE C, you can see that it's nothing more than a circular ferrite core with groupings of 3 wires wrapped on 4 turns around and through the ferrite core. Ferrite cores are something you've seen before, and can be found in many different electronic designs - Computer power supplies / motherboards, etc. With one difference: The particular material used to make up a ferrite core is specifically matched for RF / HF situations. One wire connects to the center pin of the SO239, another to the SO239 ground, yet another to where your half-wave wire will attach, and finally to the lug where a ground / counterpoise will be attached, should you use one (that's the tricky part - not using a ground-counterpoise).
FIGURE D
A diagram of what you see in Figure C is viewed on Figure D. There is no magic. As well, typical results will vary from "GREAT" to "Argh" I wasted my money I had issues using one inside on the 2nd floor without the counterpoise. Outdoors, running QRP with my FT-817ND I had good results, and better results when I utilized a counterpoise. I bought the least expensive UnUn with antenna wire off Ebay for about $39. I was lazy and did not feel like scrounging around for one part or the other so I picked the least expensive-yet-well-regarded setup and suggest that, in lieu of building one, do the same thing. During November-March I might be tempted to use one at the local park, but the SE Texas heat is not my friend. For some excellent information on end fed antennas you could google or simply check out AA5TB's website! Is
the end fed good for an indoor antenna? I can only speak for myself and
in my situation - No. My antenna wire was 33' however, if you had the space,
a longer wire with a counterpoise might be doable. But, that's a lot of
wire strung around your QTH.
MAGNETIC LOOP ANTENNAS
When it comes to antennas, as a rule, there is NO magic. As a rule. The closest thing to "Magic" is the Magnetic Loop Antenna, or, MLA. Most of the commercial MLA's under $500 with the exception of the MFJ model,are built for QRP communications, usually under 25 watts. These QRP MLA's are very portable and break down into a small canvas carrying bag very easily. They are great for taking your station off-the-grid. Most MLA's can be used horizontal or vertical and all of them have common traits like:
Being very narrow-banded, requiring constant tuning if you change your operating frequecy more that 15Khz.
VERY directional when used as a vertical.
Quiet. Because of the narrow bandwidth the MLA will let you minimize electrical noise as well as helping with adjacent channel rejection.
In PART 2 of my article (Aug-Sept) I will go into more detail about MLA's and the benefits or drawbacks of using one.
And now... A look at the weather:
73, Woody
Monday, July 01, 2019
THE SPARK HEARD ROUND THE DIAL
I read a short article on Hackaday about the early (EARLY) days of radio / spark transmitters. While it's now illegal to build and operate one due to wide band interference, two YouTube channels have combined to recreate them. Read Hackaday's article here. I've embedded one of the YouTube videos below.
THE NO NET NET UPDATE
Besides their latest promo (top of this Blog), they released a second promo complete with flubs. Take a listen:
The No No Net is a nice shot-in-the-arm, demonstrating to newbies who may feel like they're being shunned on-the-air because they're not connected to the right "clique", realize that there IS a nice place for them to have fun. That's what Ham radio is all about (fun). See my review in the previous post.
If you have ever enjoyed watching any regional travel programs like "The Eyes Of Texas", or "Daytrippers" (PBS), you will appreciate the endeavors of Brian (KB3WFV) and Clark (N1BCG) in their YouTube series "The No Net Net".
It's simple idea: Two Ham operators linked, but in different states, travel the Echolink "Highway" in search of interesting conversations to be had on repeaters across the nation. Each episode introduction (there are only 2 episodes so far) lets the listener know a little about the area surrounding the repeater, as well as leaving interesting tidbits in the show notes.
To date, the format goes as follows:
Brian and Clark locate an active echolink repeater and initiate a QSO with the locals, asking intelligent well thought questions that lead to intelligent answers without making anyone feel like they are actually being interviewed over-the-air. This casual method enforces good will between all participants and we, as the listener/viewer get to learn a thing or two in the process. Unlike many YouTube videos, I did NOT find this to be a waste of my time. Take a listen below -
73,
Woody
Saturday, June 29, 2019
WOW!
It's a wild free-for-all in London as the Red Sox play the Yankee's! What a slugfest!!
Go Sox!
Meanwhile...
I always fail to mention one of my larger CB/HAM radio photo dumpsites. This one happens to be on Pinterest (I'll try to remember to add a permanent link). There are over 1500 images at this time, with hundreds more waiting to be uploaded.
Back to the game.
Woody
(Just put a permanent link to Pix on the right-side).
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
YOUTUBE VIEWS
Very quickly, here are some of the interesting (to me) videos I've seen lately...
COOL? NO! "TactiCool" (WEIRDASS HT ANTENNA)
OTA QSO WITH..
[I've been following both Kevin Loughin KB9RLW and Dave Casler KE0OG for sometime. What is interesting here is that not only have they setup this OTA meeting, but each one has their own video of that experience, so you can actually see how each guy sounded on the other end! Dave's video is here]
Across the pond, Fredintheshed gives a look/listen to DX coming at him in the UK. I haven't found an SDR site close enough to his QTH (SE UK) to catch the local .305 group. Someday.
ANOTHER YT CHANNEL I FREQUENT IS BY OH8STN, Julian. "Technically" embedding is not allowed, however... (If it doesn't work goHERE) Julian has started to Premiere his YT posts so when watching "LIVE" you can chat with him and others.
I've mentioned 3885 a few times, and here I am doing it again. W3MMR (Perry) and KD2AFV trying to get new AM blood for 75m and off of 11m.
