A Birthday w00t!

Ok, for those of you not in the know, "w00t!" is a good expression. A couple of days ago my bestest brother (never thought I'd ever say that :-) ) surprised me with a package in the mail. When I looked at the label I saw it was from Powerwerx. Backing up a bit we've been working out or communications abilities between our locations using various digital modes. I'd operated during Field Day on battery power and hadn't re-charged a week or so later. Well, when we tried to play the battery was too pooped to party. He asked if I had anything to monitor the voltage and I said I wanted to get a good gadget but just kept using the multimeter and hadn't checked it lately.

Coming back to the present time I opened the box and found a Whattmeter. I said, "w00t!" This thing is pretty slick. It gives you current and average amperage/voltage along with power consumption. Now I can compare the amperage my radio is drawing with what the manual states. I'll be able to use this data to make more accurate power plans.



The Whattmeter is small, too. It also came with Anderson Powerpoles so it was installed in seconds. So big birthday thanks to my big bwudder.

NVIS Update

I finished the HF NVIS antenna last week and used it to check in to the North Florida Phone Net on 3950. My friend Bill was running the net that night and the first thing he did was tell me how good my signal was. I was very happy to hear that. Here's a little rundown of how I put the antenna together. The design is based on the AS-2259 military antenna and can be found here.

The 15' mast is made of 3 5' pieces of 1.5" schedule 40 PVC. I used an end cap for the antenna connection. The hardware is brass for conductivity. Here's the cap before assembly.



Holes are drilled. The S0-239 needs a 7/8" hole. The other holes are sized for #6 screws.



The original plans called for the head to be cut off a #6 screw with the end inserted into the center conductor of the SO-239. I don't see how this is possible as there's no way I see it fitting. I scaled down to a #4 and it fit fine. Here is the assembled cap.



I used a 2' piece of 3/4" rebar to stabilize the mast bottom and keep it from kicking out. Here it is with the bottom section in place and the other two on the ground. I originally started with #18 stranded copper wire but it proved to be horrendous to work with. It knotted, kinked, and twisted to the point of being unusable, at least for this project. I have since switched to #14 insulated stranded which seems to be working much better. Each side of the antenna has two wire runs of 38' and 25'. These terminate at dogbone insulators but you could just as easily use some PVC if you have it laying around.



My feedline is RG-8X and it enters the bottom of the mast through a 3/4" hole and travels up to the SO-239 in the cap.



There was (imho) a design flaw that presented itself early on as I started to raise the mast. The PVC couplers used to join the mast sections didn't provide nearly enough support or rigidity. As the mast went up is leaned and swayed every which way until the top section finally fell off. I panicked since it was the holiday weekend but I managed to slip into Ace Hardware before the closed. I switched to threaded couplers and they provide a great deal more support. Keep in mind that nothing is permanently attached. I didn't glue any of the parts together. I may in the future but for the moment things seem to be fine without it.



After the first night on the air what I thought to be another major design flaw proved to be true. I awoke to find the antenna leaning severely and thought that the stakes holding the legs out had come loose. Instead I found that the center conductor and screw had broken off. I never really understood the logic behind putting so much stress on the connector. I came up with my own design mod and it seems to be better and stronger. I drilled a hold in the side of the cap where I ran a 1" #6 brass machine screw. I then used about a 4" piece of #12 solid wire that I soldered between the center conductor (using a new connector) and the new screw. Now the heavier screw can take the stress without straining the connector itself.



This is what the latest mod looks like with the legs attached.



You may have noticed that I also decided to paint the mast so it blends in better than the stark white PVC. I used Krylon's Fusion Camo paint. It's supposed to bond to plastic without primer but it seems to scratch off the PVC very easily. Time will tell how well it really holds up.

Here is the finished antenna after the mods and paint job.



And finally the cap and legs.



It's been a fun project. My next goal is to model the antenna. Stay tuned for that.

Independence Weekend

Happy 4th of July!! Drat, it was yesterday already. :-/

Since I had Friday off for the July 4th weekend I started working on a new antenna project. I'm building a HF NVIS antenna. I battled some weak structural integrity on the PVC mast due to the couplers not holding enough. I made it back by Ace Hardware just before they closed and got threaded couplers instead. They seem to add enough rigidity to keep it fairly stiff. It will still definitely have to be guyed.

I also made the mistake of using some 18-ga bare stranded wire from Home Depot. I thought it would work well but instead I ended up with a horrible rat's nest of wire that I'm tempted to just throw in the trash. The stuff knots, twists, and kinks horribly. I replaced the four runs with my 14-ga jacketed and it works much better.

I ran out of time today to get it on the air so hopefully I'll have an update tomorrow.

Right now I'm in the middle of my first digital contest. I'm participating in the 070 club's 40M Firecracker Sprint. Due to late birthday festivities I missed the first 1.5 hrs and I'm giving the rig a break to cool down a little now. The temp gauge looks fine but my output power is being reduced so I felt it prudent to let it breath a little.

I'm not getting anywhere near my goal of 100 contacts but it's still fun. If I get 40 I'll call it a success. It took me a few QSOs to get the contest macros worked out. I can still do a little tweaking but so far I'm not doing to bad I guess.

Well, I'm going to give it another shot. Wish me luck! :-P

Field Day Follow-Up

Well, I'm finally stopping to take a breath and can give my after action report on Field Day. The first joint exercise between Duval County ARES and the Beaches Amateur Radio Society (BARS) was a resounding success. Our estimates (not everybody signed the roster) have us at about 60 visitors. I'm still tallying the logs but it looks we have about 300 contacts. Not bad for some leisurely operating.

I really was surprised by the number of people that came out. We had the largest waterspout (later deemed a tornado) on Friday night and the temps were in the mid to high 90s on Saturday. It didn't seem to keep the people away though. Fortunately we'd also fogged several times and that kept the bugs at bay.

We operated as K4D and were 5A. The plan was to operate 160, 80, 40, 20, and 15. I was assigned 15M but I was so busy running around that I didn't really operate there much. By the time I could sit down nothing was happening so I moved to 20. Here are some of the guys setting up the "true" 20M station's rotating dipole.



We ran a variety of antennas in addition to the rotating dipole. We had a couple of wire dipoles that had been built by the Jr ARES youth during their meetings. We also used a G5RV from the UASI grant money, and below are some of the BARS members assembling their June meeting project, a 20M Moxon antenna.



We started serving dinner at about 5 and everyone had a good time. The Red Cross brought out ice and drinks and others brought out various picnic items. This sort of gives you an idea what type of crowd we had. We certainly didn't expect to have a parking problem. :-)





With everything that was going on it was time to get some media coverage. I had contacted our local CBS/Fox affiliate and they came out just before dinner and stayed for a couple of hours. During the time they did some live interviews, shot video for later broadcasts, and even did a live feed. Throughout the weekend they aired three stories about the event. We couldn't have asked for better exposure and publicity.



I finally got to start operating around 4:30 Sunday morning. It was the first chance I'd had to really do anything other than run around. Of course I did take a little nap from 1 to 4:30. The bands were open and 40M was really hopping. I was only interested in working digital and knocked out 57 PSK31 contacts in the short time I had. I enjoyed a nice sunrise while the bits were flying.



We've really set the bar high for next year but I already have ideas bouncing around in my head. Can't wait for 2010!

Field Day Around the Corner

I realized I haven't posted a pic of the new IC-7000 since I added it to the shack. Sorry about that. Here you go.



I know I've said it before but I'm really digging the SignaLink and 7000 paired together. Unfortunately there's been a lot going on and I haven't been able to spend much time on the air lately. I'll have to make up for it this weekend.

Ok, so on to the preps for this weekend. Earlier this year, the family of Donald C. Clifford, K8JZK (SK), donated their father's radio equipment to ARES to give the Jr ARES members a kickstart. As a way of saying "Thank you!" to the Clifford family, the TS-520S they donated will be our Get On The Air station. We thought it was fitting to use it to help introduce people to the world of amateur radio.

The radio has been off the air for about 7 years so we're treating it gently. I've currently got it running off a variac to bring it back to life slowly and hopefully avoid blowing any capacitors or other components. She's been going fine all day and I've got her up to 60V. We'll let her cook overnight and then bump up to 80V first thing in the morning. I figure that by this time tomorrow she'll be up to full power. Here she is. Beauty, ain't she?

Field Day Preps & Other Stuff

We've finally gotten our Field Day location set in stone for 2009 and it's looking to make for a wonderful event. My church has graciously allowed us to use their Marshside campus. It's 24 beautifully wooded acres with plenty of camping area and gorgeous trees.

At the next ARES meeting we're hoping to have a couple of new antenna projects to work on for Field Day. So far the high vote getters are a 3/4" hardline antenna for 40M and a Moxon antenna at 20M or higher (due to size). I'm really excited about what Field Day has in store for us this year.

My General upgrade course continues to progress. This past weekend we covered the exciting topic of Rules & Regulations along with a little math refresher and some formulas. This week we'll be diving into simple circuits, resistors, inductors, and capacitors. I've got a couple of breadboards so hopefully seeing the circuits for real will help solidify the concepts.

We had a walk-in visitor for the last class and she seems to be very interested in amateur radio. Hopefully she'll be back on Saturday.

HF Update

I have to say that I've been having a ball since getting the new 7000 and ditching the RigBlaster. I'm knocking out DX contacts on PSK31 left and right. In just about a month spending only an hour or so at a time and operating sporadically throughout the week I've already racked up about 25 DXCC contacts. I highly recommend this setup.

This past weekend marked the first day of the General upgrade course I'm teaching for one of our local clubs. We had one couple traveling but I believe everybody else on the roster made it. We even had some that weren't on the list show up. Nobody fell asleep, walked out, or threw anything at me so I consider it a good class. :-) Next week probably won't be too exciting. Rules & regulations with a math review. Yuck. Oh well, I'll do my best to make it interesting. At the least I have some tips to share that will hopefully help them remember things like the band plan come test time.

Tomorrow I should know more about our Field Day location. Who would've thought we'd have such a hard time finding someplace to operate? I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my church will allow us to use our property. We have 22 acres of beautiful, wooded property that doesn't see much use. The trees are tall and spread out where we'd be operating and I think we could really get some great contacts with our antennas so high. The staff meets tomorrow so hopefully I'll know something by lunch.

Some of us did helped with the Diabetes Association's Tour de Cure. It's a 100K/100M bike ride. It took us through some parts of the local area I'd certainly never been through. It was an interesting experience but we definitely have some communications issues we need to work out with the ADA staff if we do this again next year.

I guess that's about it for now so I'll say 73. See you on the bands!