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A 160 METER VERTICAL BUDDIPOLE ANTENNA EXPERIMENT PART 2

   
 * Moleculo
 * Apr 5, 2023
 * Amateur Radio Antennas
 * Replies: 2

In Part 1 of this topic, I showed how I accomplished creating a 160 meter
vertical using mostly Buddipole parts, although I ended up using a Chameleon
shock cord extension and whip which I already had for the length above the load
coils. For this segment, I acquired a cap hat from a local ham that has 3/8-24
threads for use in mobile or portable antennas. I believe the cap hat originated
from Chameleon, but I'm not 100% sure.

I put the cap hat between the shock cord extension and the whip:




The immediate, expected effect was that the low SWR point moved down lower in
the band than desired. So now I needed to re-tap the coils. The capacity hat
made the tuning process easier as adjusting either coil became more forgiving
than without the cap hat. Before, the process was super finicky trying to figure
out which coil to adjust to achieve the lowest SWR, but with the cap hat I could
adjust either to move the low SWR up and down the band. In the end, I found that
the best combination was to leave the top coil tap in the original position and
then adjust the lower coil tap for the desired frequency. I ended up taking
coinly a couple of turns out of the lower coil, but the process was much easier
and more forgiving to adjustments with the cap hat installed.





Here's the new SWR plot; 1.74:1 at 1.903 Mhz, which is just slightly better than
before. It has just a hair wider bandwidth, about 10khz more under 3:1.





I also tried this antenna with only 1 load coil and the cap hat, but there just
wasn't enough length in the antenna to get it resonant in the 160 meter band -
it was closest around 2.2 Mhz. So, I had to go back to my original idea and use
two of the low band coils. Now its' time to make some more contacts!

A 160 METER VERTICAL BUDDIPOLE ANTENNA EXPERIMENT

   
 * Moleculo
 * Mar 22, 2023
 * Amateur Radio Antennas
 * Replies: 8

I live in the Los Angeles metro area on a small lot but have wanted to try out
160 meters for years. I have considered building or constructing various types
of antennas that will fit on the property and even purchased a coil loaded
sloper that I was going to suspend from a palm tree in my back yard. The palm
tree was taken out because it became a hazard to the power lines that run along
the property border in the back yard, so that plan was gone with it.

I've had a deluxe Buddipole kit for years, which I use mainly while RV'ing in
places that won't let you put up wires. Last year I was looking for my Buddipole
low band coil for 80 and 40 meters and when I couldn't find it, I assumed that I
loaned it to someone and never got it back. I ordered another and of course,
promptly found the one I already had. This led me down a path trying to figure
out what to do with two 80 meter Buddipole load coils...and the 160 meter
Buddipole vertical experiment was born.

My idea was to stack the two coils to create a pseudo 160m coil. I stacked two
arms on the versa-tee and then the two coils. Then I used a 12' MFJ telescoping
whip on top of the coils. I ran a single 160m 1/4 wave (roughly) ground wire out
around the property for counterpoise and hooked up the Buddipole Triple Ratio
Switch Balun at the feedpoint using the 1:1 setting. Using a Rigexpert AA-600
was absolutely critical for helping me understand the tuning of this
arrangement. I figure that stacking the two inductors might cause them to
interact in unexpected ways, but was hoping that the proximity of the two would
make them act more like one big coil. I was wrong about the latter.





Ultimately what I found is that I could adjust the lower coil tap to find the
best SWR on the frequency I wanted, and then adjust the top coil to affect the
SWR curve and bandwidth while making the SWR dip even more. I expected that the
bandwidth for a low SWR on this band would be very narrow. Making small
adjustments and then sweeping with the analyzer helped me quickly understand how
to adjust and it wasn't long before I had something reasonable. Next I decided
to replace the telescoping whip to get more metal in the air, so I took it off
and put a Chameleon shock cord whip and extended base on top of the load coils
to make the whip a total of 17' above the coil. I extended the Buddipole tripod
up just a little bit to get the coils about roof eave height, but not so high
that it would tip over. The antenna is sitting right outside my shack so the
coax run is less than 20 feet.





A quick retune of the coils, a bit of shortening on the ground radial, and I got
an SWR of 1.8:1 at 1.915 Mhz. The antenna is under 3:1 SWR between 1.860-1.945
Mhz.





The 160 meter band isn't that wide, so the tuner in the Elecraft K4D easily
tunes up the antenna at any frequency I've attempted. With such a short coax
run, the coax loss using the tuner in this manner is small. So the real
question: Does it work? Yes! Obviously this not a very efficient antenna. The
noise floor in the big city is HUGE. In the short time I've played with it at
night, I haven't come across many strong SSB stations, but I've heard a few weak
ones...I will continue to listen when I have time on the weekends to see if I
can make some phone contacts. I decided to try some FT8 - there is quite a bit
of activity there. Currently my 100 watt station is heard better by others than
I can hear - likely due to the high noise and local interference. But I have
made more contacts than I expected in North America.

Here's a screen shot of my transmit activity last night and the stations that
heard me over the course of a couple of hours:





I'm not done experimenting with this antenna - a local ham is gifting me a
Chameleon cap hat that I am going to integrate to see if I can eliminate the top
coil. I will also experiment with different RX antennas while using the
Buddipole as the TX antenna. When I started this journey, I googled around to
see if anyone had come up with a way to use the Buddipole system on 160 meters
and came up empty. I'm pretty happy that I was able to accomplish even this
much, so stay tuned while I see what else I can do with this setup on 160 meters
on a postage-stamp sized lot in the L.A. metro area!

Edit: See Part 2 where I add a capacity hat.

HAM SHACK REBUILD

   
 * Moleculo
 * Mar 14, 2023
 * Station & Mobile Pics
 * Replies: 13

After almost 20 years, it was time to do some remodeling in the house, and I
decided to include the Ham Shack / Office in the process. It took me forever to
find a desk that is large enough to double as a home office and ham shack, but I
finally found one and completely redid the ham/cb station. Here's a few pics!















TOWER BUILD OUT

   
 * Red Bull
 * Mar 1, 2023
 * Station & Mobile Pics
 * Replies: 7

After almost a year I'm finally motivated to move forward with my tower install.
Below is a photo montage of the steps in the process.





Prepped and painted the tower


Time for the hole digging.



Had the concrete delivered and placed right next to the hole.



Tower has been planted thanks to the help of a few friends! The plan is to use a
4 element beam with a GP on top. I'll post updates as time goes on.

NEW TRUCK NEW INSTALL

   
 * RT431
 * Feb 28, 2023
 * Station & Mobile Pics
 * Replies: 4

The boy wanted his truck back so had to uninstall the radio and antenna and
install in the f150. What a pain!
Didn't have the correct mount for the sirio so had to do a temp antenna till the
new mount arrives later this week.




TIDRADIO BLUETOOTH RADIO PROGRAMMER

   
 * Moleculo
 * Jul 17, 2022
 * Ham Equipment
 * Replies: 5

Tidradio contacted me and asked if I would like to take a look at a new product:
their bluetooth radio programmer and software for the various Chinese radios
such as Baofeng. Of course, I couldn't turn down the opportunity. I also picked
up a new Baofeng UV-5RA , the high power model, to try out, as well. Here's a
video I made, reviewing the product:



It's about $25 on Amazon:


ELECRAFT K4D FIRST IMPRESSIONS

   
 * Moleculo
 * Mar 18, 2022
 * Ham Equipment
 * Replies: 4

I've had the Elecraft K4D for a week so it's time to report on first
impressions.






First, the display and user interface is stunning. The interaction with the rig
is a very thoughtful blend of touch screen and traditional buttons and knobs.
The HDMI interface allows you to run an external display with several
configurations controlling how it is used. In the picture above, I'm showing the
Panadapter for both VFO A and B in a split screen, while displaying only a wider
VFO A panadapter on the rig. I will post more pics with other configurations in
the coming weeks as I have a new LCD on order which I will dedicate to the rig.

I purchased an Icom 7300 when they first came out, curious about how well the
touch screen panadapter would work. Having used both, I can say without a doubt
that the Elecraft implementation is superior in every way possible. First, the
most important thing is the way signals just really pop on the screen on the K4
using even just the default display settings. For lack of a better explanation,
I always felt that the Icom 7300 panadapter was "muddy" compared to PC based
implementations. Not so with the K4. The span can be adjusted all the way out to
368 Khz or as tight as 5Khz. The "AUTO" reference level just works and I haven't
found a reason to turn AUTO off yet. The waterfall has a NB setting that you can
set to AUTO or adjust as desired. Lastly, the touch screen is intelligent enough
to usually "snap to" the waterfall station you're trying to listen to. It really
works well.

There are a couple of extra features that are pretty useful. For example, you
can freeze the screen, which is helpful if you want to take a screen shot, like
this:




That's right, there is a screen capture feature that will write to the USB
device you've inserted into the front port. If you touch the top left part of
the screen where the S Meter exists, it will change to a "Mini Pan", zoomed in
on the frequency you're monitoring (shown above).

I could write a small book about the UX, but I'll save some of that detail for
later. After getting over my initial fascination with the display, it was time
to dial around and listen for a while. Without changing any parameter related to
AGC (which you can tailor significantly), I tuned to 40m SSB, turned on the
Attenuator to kill some of the ambient noise (attenuator range is from 3db to
21db in 3db increments) adjusted the RF Gain slightly and dialed around to
listen to various stations and was absolutely impressed by the way even weak
stations popped out. This thing is a joy to listen to.

While listening to a net on 40m, there is the typical range of very strong, very
weak, and every signal strength in between. The K4 has a feature called "RX
Dynamic Range Optimization" which is normally turned on. Here's the excerpt from
the manual that describes this feature:

"The RX Dyn. Range Optimization menu entry can be used to customize behavior of
the K4's analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). In general it should be left at
the default setting of ON, which configures the ADCs for best response to very
strong signals. The OFF setting will slightly improve preamp-off sensitivity."

All I know is that it works and it's amazing. As soon as I heard how well the K4
handled both the strong and weak stations, I knew that it was this feature that
was making it's presence known.

The K4 includes the expected TX & RX 8 band EQ settings, a simple Macro language
that you can use to assign to buttons or external software, and every "standard"
feature that you would expect in a rig of this class. You can plug in a mouse
and keyboard into any of the USB ports to use with the UX. The front USB port
will power a wireless USB mouse / keyboard. I tested it with an Microsoft
ergonomic mouse / keyboard and had no problem operating the rig as if I was
running a PC. I will have more detail on mouse interaction in another post, but
suffice it to say that the rig makes good use of the left and right buttons, as
well as the wheel.

One function that I never got to work very well with my K3 was the CW decode. It
worked sometimes, but I gave up on it after a while. With the K4, I just dialed
up a station, set the RX filter to 400 (or less) Hz, turned on the text decode,
and all of the sudden I was reading CW without any special adjustments. Couple
that with a keyboard and even the most inept CW operators (like me) can have fun
in this mode. And again, the RX in CW mode is just a joy.

Since I opted for the K4D, I also have the ability to run Diversity RX, meaning
I can use two different RX antennas at the same time (one in each ear/speaker),
helping me copy on the antenna that is receiving the best for a given
circumstance. I've never had this capability before and having fun playing with
it. For now, my RX antenna is a low 80m (roughly) loop feed with a DX
Engineering DXE-BFS-1 into the MFJ-1026. This setup is neat because I can also
adjust the gain of the RX loop. I originally set this up to help null
neighboring interference and not as a true receive antenna, so I've ordered
another active receive antenna (there are a bunch of antenna ports) to this will
give me even more diversity RX options.

I have found a few quirks with the new radio. Some of these "quirks" can be
attributed to my own learning curve and some are actual bugs. But reporting the
issues discovered to Elecraft has resulted in superb response - in some cases
the issue was already known with a fix being beta tested and in other cases I
reported something new that was put into the next build. If you're considering
purchasing one of these rigs (or have already done so), I highly recommend
joining the Elecraft K4 list on groups.io where Elecraft principals hang out,
along with much of the support staff. They also listen to feature suggestions,
which is pretty cool.

There are new features coming in the next build that I can't wait to try out. I
will be writing more about this rig, as well as posting youtube videos. In the
mean time, if there is something you're curious about, ask away and I'll try to
answer the best I can. I'm having a lot of fun with this new rig.

ELECRAFT K4D IN THE SHACK

   
 * Moleculo
 * Mar 10, 2022
 * Ham Equipment
 * Replies: 3

After a year wait, I received the Elecraft K4D and installed it in the shack. I
have a lot of work to do to get everything configured, but I got the initial
install done and made my first contact on 40 meters last night. Check it out:



A PRIDE DX300 IS LIKE A 44 YEAR-OLD BOX OF CHOCOLATES.

   
 * nomadradio
 * Feb 28, 2022
 * Amplifiers
 * Replies: 2

You never know what you're going to get.

First boo-boo on this job was mine. We install a circuit breaker on the rear
panel to protect the small transformer. The Pride's 10-Amp fuse will keep it
from burning down your house. But an overload on the small transformer that
powers the grid-bias, filament and relays will cook it before that fuse can
trip. This is bad juju, since nobody sells a direct replacement for it. Have to
drill a 3/8-inch hole just above the fuse holder to mount it.





Just one problem The twisted pair of black wires that got damaged here were
glued to the inside of the rear panel. And in just the wrong spot. Shoulda
looked first. I'll admit this is a first. Been servicing this model for 44 years
or so. First time I've seen this. Only a nuisance, though. Got the wires spliced
and on to the next problem.

It wasn't obvious at a glance, but somebody had installed the wrong tube socket.
Seems to me in all these decades I have seen exactly one of these sockets
actually go bad in this model. Somebody thought this one was, and replaced it.





The one reason I question the guy's judgment is the socket he chose as a
substitute. The socket at the bottom of the pic is the new one. Same as the
factory socket. Has a metal ring all the way around it with a mounting ear on
each of four corners. The socket in the foreground is wrong. Pins 2, 4, 6 and 8
are connected to the tube's cathode. The reason for using four pins in parallel
is to reduce the inductance of the tube's circuit path to ground. I'll skip
putting people to sleep with why that matters, but in this case it creates a
problem. The tube never shuts off. It's always "keyed" no matter what the main
relay is doing.





The reason is this socket. The correct socket for the Pride has all the tube's
pin lugs insulated, not connected to anything but the pin of the tube plugged
into it. This socket is different. The four flat mounting eyes are connected
directly to the four cathode pins, 2,4,6 and 8. Mind you that for an amplifier
running at 150 or 420 MHz this is a clever way to shorten that path from the
tube's cathode to ground.

But the Pride runs at 30 MHz and under. The tube's cathode is what we switch on
and off, grounding it when the relay closes. Opening the circuit path from the
tube's cathode to ground shuts it off.

But not with this socket. Just when you think you've seen everything. I was
fortunate to have one socket of the correct type on hand, installed it and sent
the customer home with a working amplifier. But we bought that socket in 2003 or
so. Yep, that one just doesn't go bad very often.

Now I can't find anyone who will sell me more of them. EF Johnson type
124-0107-001. Unobtanium, so far.

So here is the clue I missed. Customer says it's stuck on High, won't go to Low
side. The High/Low switch makes no difference. I just assumed they got it
backwards. The more-common fault is a Pride stuck on Low side. High side is
selected by shorting across a resistor in the tube's ground (cathode) circuit.
When the connection to the High/Low switch goes bad, you get Low side all the
time. A common fault, really. I just assumed he got it backwards.

But stuck on High side? Never saw that. Not until this specimen. Like The Who, I
won't get fooled again. Not by this symptom. But the guy was right, it WAS stuck
on high side. As a bonus, the tube was never really on standby. It was powered
and pulling current the whole time the power was on and the fan running, whether
you keyed it or not.

Just when you think you've seen everything.

73

BUILDING A HOMEBREW MANUAL TUNER

   
 * HomerBB
 * Feb 9, 2022
 * Home Brew
 * Replies: 15

I have finally began putting together my manual tuner. I rolled those two
inductors about 3 years ago. I got busy, and sidetracked. Now, I've just mounted
them on the board. I know, primitive, but what else do I do...
What I will likely need is some of you who've made your own to offer tips along
the way.
Maybe this will keep me focused.




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