Just sayin’. Read and decide for yerself.
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Just sayin’. Read and decide for yerself. I tuned in late. But this weekend 10m began to show signs of possible life. Signals from EU in the morning. Signals from South america and the west coast US in the afternoon. Hopefully they were from actual openings rather than VHF type e-skip. That would sure be nice for the CQWW on the weekend. It seems like the current sunspot cycle will be lower - an opinion based on no actual facts other than the lackluster rise in solar activity. An opinion I’d just love to have prove incorrect. Time to start paying more attention. Start checking the 10m beacons more regularly. Maybe even work a few stations. Is there room for a better 10m antenna in the wire farm? Spent some time over the last week re-conditioning an old Mosley TA-33 jr, courtesy of N4YDU. The date on the box is 1979. Gotta wonder if 30 year old aluminum is ready for metal fatigue, but its a novelty project. Some of the hardware was shot, so I decided to replace most of the u-bolts. Got a quote from Mosley on those parts, but since I needed some other hardware bits for other projects, I instead went with parts from DX Engineering. The u-bolts available from DX engineering were slightly shorter than the original parts, but seem to be a good fit. Spent some time cleaning everything up, and used a scotchbrite pad to remove some of the oxidation and crud around the joints and at the trap connections. Got all of the elements assembled on Friday evening without burning any of the chicken on the grill. That project will likely languish after testing the elements for resonance. Might assemble the whole shebang for an on the ground SWR check, but it looks like some moderately serious tree trimming would be required before it could ever actually be put to use at the QTH. More likely to use it for Field Day. The TA-33jr is a versatile bit of kit. It is light weight for a three element yagi. If space or weight were a problem the driven element and reflector can be used to make a ta-32jr, the two element version. The driven element can also be used by itself as a stand alone dipole. Mosley also sells a set of traps for converting the low power version into the hybrid light weight/high power version. Saturday morning was spent over at KZ1X tugging on ropes along with KA1ARB, with KZ1X and N1LN up the tower. Steve needed to debug a problem with his 20/15/10 yagi. We found that the coax run up the tower seemed to be the problem. After swapping that off to a different coax run, things looked better. Steve also hung a replacement 80m dipole for one that went down with a falling branch. Got a first look at the K3 panadapter while doing the in shack checks. A cool gizmo. Lesson Re-Iterated: Do NOT trust readings from an MFJ antenna analyzer when the power supply is weak. A portable supply or external battery pack is worth using when that is practical. My own MFJ-259 has long had its internal battery pack removed in favor of an external pack. The pack is about 1″x3″x”slightly longer than the 259″.   It’s a cool little pack, that has a charger and two output jacks. It is taped to the back of the MFJ-259. With 10 rechargeable batteries it supplies about 13v when fully charged. It is slow to charge, but the cigarette lighter socket makes it versatile. Note: don’t have the matching solar cell, just the charger, ac supply, and car adapter. Had a bit of R&R on Saturday unwisely spent watching the LSU-Tennessee game. Being an LSU football fan is an interesting experience - but not always pleasant. O’course, the Tennessee fans really got the short end of the stick, but their own teams last second decisions were just as squirrelly as those of “The Hat” and associates. I sure hope LSU gets their offense to pull together going into the tough part of their schedule against three current top-20 teams(Florida, Auburn, Alabama) in the next four weeks and end the season with another(Arkansas). Ouch. Tough schedule. Life in the SEC West. Glad to see the Tigers defense is working well as a unit, but the talent on the offensive side is there too, just not clicking yet. After being beaten by Tennessee(and UNC and WV) right up to the brain death of coaching staffs on both teams on the last play of the game, they really need to find their best game quick. Otherwise the losses will accrue rapidly, despite excellent defensive play. I suppose Florida will be mad as hell after their spanking in Tuscaloosa. Sunday R&R consisted of a hour or two in the shack. Turned on the radios and heard some of the California QSOP guys on 15m. I’ve sorely missed 15m these past few years, so it was a bit of fun to make a few Q’s on the band. Signal strengths ranged from S1 to a very loud S9+, and only one station was called without answer. That’s an improvement compared to 15m over the past two years. Not a lot of stations heard, but a few European QSO’s were also decent copy. 10m was still silent. Requests for audio reports indicated the RFI issue introduced on SSB when setting up the sound card DVK into the SO2R set up is now fixed. [Yippeee!] Good audio reported by all. The issue with the RFI on the PTT line for the K2 is still a mystery, but ferrites on the mike and PTT lines going into the K2 were needed to resolve the problem.  Resolving that problem has me looking forward to the coming contest season, and hoping that the bands are better during 2010 Sweepstakes. As fall rolls in it is time for some much delayed antenna maintenance on the 160m inverted L. It would be nice to get the 80m element added, and the radials need maintenance since the falling branches have taken out about half of them since last contest season. Gotta work that into the leaf raking schedule – the sooner the better. I’ve been running a bit of an informal experiment in house lighting for the past seven or eight years. Been using CFL’s since they first appeared in the local retail outlets. Hate to think about how expensive they were before they became Politically Correctified. Some of the fixtures in the hacienda have sockets for two bulbs. I’ve gradually been removing the old bulbs and replacing them(simultaneously) with a mixed pair – a regular incandescent paired with a “name brand” compact fluorescent. Just wondering if the CFL longevity claims have any merit. The sample size is pretty small, but the CFL performance has been a lot less than the hype. I had high hopes for one of the outdoor fixtures, but the outdoors CFL crapped out before the incandescent. The CFL crapped out first in one of the indoor fixtures too. CFL Bad: The bad points
CFL Good:
I also had high hopes for the longevity claims – hopes were shattered by the reality. Don’t see any improvements in either longevity or the light color with newer bulbs. Wondering what the cause for the “early” failures might be. Is it:
Whatever the reason, the CFL’s are moving rapidly to the top of the “get rid of this crap” list. Several reasons, besides the shorter than advertised bulb life. Don’t much care for the light color when they are the only source. The color can also be a positive side to the CFL’s – if you like it.  It seems worthwhile  to combine a CFL and an incandescent for workshop lighting, the two together are good. Conclusion: In general, for my purposes, CFL’s suck. The CFL’s absolutely suck for outdoor usages. CFL’s really suck most in the winter outdoors. They seem to be good for about half there rated output once temps drop into the 50’s. Time for the LED’s from Lighting Science Group.  Getting close to pulling the trigger. Sometimes common sense is everything but common. Just never can find the right adapters when hooking everything back together. Case in point: It is a lot easier to use 1/8th(3.5mm) stereo plugs, and use an adapter to go up in size to 1/4 inch.  Going from large to small just adds stress to the connections. The smaller size is also becoming the more commonly used jack on gear as the gear itself becomes smaller. Soldering the teensy connectors is more of a PITA, but such is life. Just as soon chop all of the paddle and keyer plugs now – almost all of the shack radio gear has 1/8th jacks now. But the peripherals seem to all still have 1/4 plugs. Another fun fact: It’s easier to use all stereo connectors than a mix of stereo and mono. A stereo plug can be wired tip and shell for mono usage, but a mono plug is worthless when you need stereo.  So to hell with mono 1/8th and 1/4 audio connectors. They are banished forevermore from the KazShack. Soldering Tip: When soldering RCA, 1/8th or 1/4 plugs, it is worthwhile heat sinking the connector, especially with low-quality connectors. The easiest way is to just plug them into a jack. That seems to provide enough sinking, unless you really try to cook them. This seems to really be helpful with RCA connections, where the center pin will sometimes drift if the connector is overheated. Using an RCA barrel as heat sink allows a melted connection to re-solidify correctly aligned. Good to go, unless it shorted when overcooked. Put together a WinKeyer2 in a couple of hours two weeks before Field Day. This accessory was added as part of the plan to have the SO2R station capability operational with either USB or serial ports on the logging computer. I chose the version with a serial port, and plan to use it with a serial to USB conversion dongle. In essence, the shack will be forward or backward compatible with the computer hardware, allowing the SO2R to be feasible with whatever crappy piece of computer I have available at any given moment, from an old dos box to brand spanky new. The keyer kit itself was built with only about 30 minutes of plugging and soldering. The kit was missing a couple of capacitors, but they are common values which I had in the parts box. It took another couple of hours to get the enclosure drilled and nibbled out – including a db9-sized hole in the wrong place. Oops. On hindsight, a simpler plastic enclosure would have been easier. The finished product worked without any re-work. The WinKeyer2 is the newer release of the serial port version of the kit. I tested the kit out using a USB to serial converter and the “wktest” program available for download on the K1EL site. After a quick test and config with the wktest program, I brought up writelog and tested that. Flawless performance. Hooking up the paddles was a bit less satisfying. I’m not terribly proficient using paddles and a keyer, and the WinKeyer2 seemed a bit temperamental with my shaky fist. Maybe after more practice it will become easier. But for now, the paddles will be routed through the logikeyer CMOS4, and the paddles will be combined with the computer generated CW from the WinKeyer via a “Y” connector going into the CW input. I also have the same problem using an MFJ keyer I have on hand. I’m not sure why that is, but so far the Logikeyer and the keyer built into the K2 are the easiest to use of those available. One quirk I found with the winkeyer(or my understanding thereof) was related to the pot setting for the keyer speed. Starting the programs(either logging program or “wktest”) while the speed pot was set to maximum caused a bit of confusion. To allow computer control of the speed setting, it seemed necessary to disable the speed pot via the software. Part of the learning curve. Don’t know if its practical, but its a great experiment even if it only makes it to proof of concept. A project to create a mouseless mouse. Getting home from vacation a couple of weeks back, a huge branch was found in the rear area of the antenna farm. One ginormous limb had fallen from one of the white oaks holding the north-south 40 meter dipole. It was on the opposite side from that antenna, but must have crossed paths with the 80 meter folded dipole on the way down. The bad news is that the 80m antenna was on the ground, as well as six or eight radials from the nearby inverted L for 160m. The good news was that only the line holding the antenna itself had failed, and not the line over the branch, and the nearby 40m vee was not effected. On most of these hard to hit branches, the approach that usually works best is to use two lines for the center load-bearing supports. Once a pilot line is shot over a branch, a heavy line is run up and over to make a loop. At the joint in the heavy loop line, a pulley is attached. The actual antenna support line is then run through the “pulley”. Haul the pulley up to the desired height, paying out antenna support line as it goes up. Note: The “pulley” is usually just a simple welded steel ring, attached to the heavy loop with a swivel. Real pulleys often bind – never a problem with the simple steel rings, although the steel ring may cause the line to break more often. The swivel is to offset some of the twist a line can take on when being hauled up 50 or 60 feet. Using that method, the heavy line over the branch can usually be pulled up and left alone, reducing the amount of line “sawing” that is caused by raising and lowering a hard-to-tune antenna. More importantly, the line over the branch breaks less frequently. Easier to pull the ring down and send up another support line than to shoot a new pilot line. So – One dead folded dipole. Worse, its always been my favorite antenna for 80 meters. It has a broad bandwidth, and seems to do a great job in the domestic contests. Making lemonade out of lemons, it was a great time to do long delayed maintenance. The line over the branch was at least three years old, maybe four. Worse, its probably too lightweight for the spot – a large branch at about 70 feet. It was a hard shot to hit, so the heaviest line available. about 10mm, was pulled into place as a replacement line for the pulley support. The antenna pull line was also replaced, using 6mm line. With the new support lines ready, one other minor issue was repaired. The antenna was built directly from the cookbook dimensions, from an article in the antenna book chapter on portable antennas. (Reproduced with permission in the Cary Amateur Radio Club newsletter, the Feedline). The tuning option used was the open stub of twin lead, since the twin lead was here back in 2002, but no suitable capacitors. Since then the parts bin has been augmented with suitable panasonic capacitors. The twin lead stub functioned properly, and was trimmed only slightly from the cookbook dimension of 37’4″[11.28m] . The “third leg” was always a bit of an additional problem to deployment, as it needs to be stretched away from the feed line rather than coiled as might be possible with a coax stub. Plus the extra weight. The stub was removed, and the junction was repaired physically. 240pf of 3kv capacitors were pulled from the parts bin and used to replace the stub for impedance matching. The cookbook called for 289pf, but I took the time to experiment. The 240pf value was arbitrary, but it paid off. the original antenna had a 2:1 SWR bandwidth from 3550 to about 3920, with the sweet spot of 1:1 at 3730. The modified version using 240pf for matching lowered the 1:1 point to 3675, and the 2:1 bandwidth extends from 3500 to about 3860. The autotuner in the FT-920 has no problem providing a good match across the entire 80m/75m allocation. With 100w, my 80m results have always been competitive. When re-installed, it was also possible to get the apex a bit higher than before. Nice. Hopefully it will survive a few more seasons before needing additional work. Well done Katia. I would like to be this good one day myself! Link arrived here via N3ND. Tnx Dan. Â
Looking for ==> 2011 Hamvention links <==? (This post to be amended as more links turn up, de w4kaz, last update 2010-06-09) Well, sure, Dayton 2010 was probably very much like 2009, or 1995, or 1970.  But its more fun to go than to stay home. But congratulations to my friend Nathan, N4YDU. This year Nate placed 6th the in the annual pile-up competition sponsored by the Kansas City DX Club. (If you want to see what the competition is like, the club has sample audio files posted, as well as a custom logging program provided by VE3NEA. For those of us unable to experience the  2010 Dayton Hamvention in corpus, here is a round up of the easy to find “stuff”. Send me a link and I’ll add it to the list if it seems suitable. Antenna Presentations [via K3LR] K8CX “mug-shot” photo gallery , see previous years photos too, plus other stuff Photos: N2ZN, N3QO, N6PSE, “rbatina”, J Peric, KCDXCLUB, HF Pack QSO Rally, QSY Hamradio, “William”, “Keith”(not this one!) More Photos: OZ3RIN, “davidjmessing”, N2YTF, “Dave”(Kenwood stuff) KB2BSL [Friday], K2BSL[Saturday], K2BSL[Sunday] WB8CXO videos, KB3MJ(flea video), N8MDH(TS-590 video), “erayboul”(Elecraft panadapter video), Drake Forum, CubeSat NT7S – FDIM Day 1, NT7S -FDIM Day 2&3 More randomly chosen Youtube video, here, here, here, here And if you want a professionally done video, perfect for a club meeting program, for $15USD you can get the 2009 mooo-veee from central NC local Gary, KN4AQ. [I’m not affiliated with Gary, nor any pecuniary interest in ARVN. Gary has been doing a great service by documenting recent amateur activities. I’ve seen his work, so $15 is a bargain with the forum material included.] [2010 release??? see KN4AQ’s comment.] |
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