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took down the 40 meter dipole today. going to try my luck with a 40 meter windom/off center fed dipole/whatever the gently caress you want to call it, see if i can get two bands out of it instead of one wound a 4:1 balun out of AWG 12 thhn wire on a weed container (its like a big pill bottle) rg-58 feed with a five turn coax coil right below that balun one 44 foot leg, one 22 foot leg i got the long leg up and am cooking dinner now, gonna get it up around midnight  e: oh this is all prompted by the fact that I got a heavy duty extending paint pole at home depot on clearance today, 8 foot extending to 24, i'm using it to get the wire way up in the trees. its huge lol. i dont think it'd be stiff enough for beams or whatever but this could absolutely hold up an inverted V or something on field day. 20 bucks Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Apr 28, 2015 |
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Apr 28, 2015 04:58
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based on a bunch of research i altered the antenna before it even went up. it's now a 1/6 - 5/6 offset dipole (11.5 feet on one leg, 57 on the other) with the 4:1. evidently this puts the feedpoint at a better node for 15 meters. basically a longwire almost now still tryin to get the wires up. turns out it sucks putting ropes in trees when the sun's lined up juuuust right e: if you're curious about what the gently caress i'm building it's here https://rsars.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/k1poo-4-band-ocfd-40-20-15-10m-richard-formato-iss-1-3.pdf basically a compromise-ish antenna that makes you build a balun, but you get to work either 3 or 4 bands with acceptable match. rather than my dipole, which was bang on 1:1 at 7.175 mhz, but couldn't do anything but 40 meters (well it had the 3/4 resonance around 22.7 mhz which is useless)
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Apr 28, 2015 17:49
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and surprise! cut to the nearest inch and installed within 1m of design height, it resonates at 6.2 mhz instead of 7.2 loll also it has a perfect 1:1 at 30 meters, is a little high on 20 (expected), 15 wont tune at all, 10 was OK till i cut a foot off and now its trashed Antennas!
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Apr 28, 2015 21:51
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Jonny 290 posted:and surprise! cut to the nearest inch and installed within 1m of design height, it resonates at 6.2 mhz instead of 7.2 I have a Jetstream fan dipole kit strung up, but haven't put it to the final height, or slapped the analyzer on it yet. The spacers that came with it are maybe 5" long at most, and I'm wondering if I should just replace them with some longer pieces of CPVC for separation, before I even try to get the thing tuned up. I haven't dealt with tuning a fan dipole yet, so I'm expecting to take it down about 500 times before getting it anywhere close to tuned.
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Apr 28, 2015 22:29
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its hard enough for me to get one pair of elements resonant on one band, no fuckin way would I ever be able to get one of those tuned up I am RF cursed but i also think this windom is hosed b/c i used twisted pair for it, and used one (shorted at both ends) pair for each leg. im going down to ham radio outlet as soon as mrs comes home and grabbing 100' of real antenna wire that isnt some weird linear-loaded RF wormhole. gently caress this im tired of playin around --I would lengthen the spacers somewhat, that seems too close. i'd want at least a foot or two e: christ i forgot about insulation VF reduction too. i got this all wrong Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Apr 28, 2015 |
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Apr 28, 2015 22:34
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still the best thread in the 'pos crs: gonna solder some powerpoles tonight aww yeah
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Apr 28, 2015 23:10
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caved in and bought four dogbones and this from ham radio outlet (its so cool to drive down to the ham radio store)quote:The best of the rugged, stranded, coated antenna wires (CQ 531) now has a new brother, CQ 532, with 18AWG (OD 0.0445") "Silky" 40% copper-clad steel conductor (Nominal OD, 0.090" including 0.020" jacket. This group of antenna wire, including the CQ 534 26AWG "stealth," is the most popular addition in this field in years! Break strength 125 lbs super strong, no stretch, and it disappears against trees or pretty much anything i almost got the 26 just to be an rear end, but its SO TINY and i'm hanging a 4:1 balun and coax off the middle oh i realized the fuckup on that weird 1/6 5/6 windom - i missed this part in the article quote:K1POO studied the 40m OCFD using computer models and in the May and October, 1996 issues of QST, suggested a 0.174 + 0.826 (3.65m+17.38m) split. This split allows the OCFD to be operated as a 4 band antenna as the SWR on the 40m band is less than 3.6:1 and less than 1.4:1 on the 20,15,10m bands so yeah i'm back to the conventional 33/66% (22/44 feet) windom. bout to finish throwin it up
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Apr 29, 2015 01:38
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just handed my kid a couple of power poles and she intuitively knew to connect them together like legos. lol. I handed her one of the solder pin things and she shoved it in where it's supposed to go.
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Apr 29, 2015 02:33
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IT WORKS ok so, i took my time, i did this +/- 1/2 inch. did all the adjustments tweaked the model blah blah. Soldered poo poo up properly and used the right insulators. IN THE AIR WE GO (between 15 and 20 feet) gently caress. 3:1 swr on 40, 20 meters has a worthless dip around 14.800, blah. On a lark i cut 1 foot of wire, run up there and attach it to the short end ZOWIE WOWIE 1.2 swr at 7.000, flat as a board at 7.150, 1.3 at 7.300 DAAAMN lets check out 20 HOLY poo poo THERES 20 its a little high on the low part of the band so I gotta use my tuner if I want to hit PSK on 14.070, but its 2:1 at 14.200 and 1.5 at 14.350, so the top end is there 15 and 10 need a tuner and both are dead this time of day so i dunno. both are below 3:1 and tune readily though so if nothing else i have a 40/20 antenna that works great. first thing i heard on 20 was italians. 40 is absolutely blowing up, i have to run the attenuator now
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Apr 29, 2015 04:06
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http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/28/after-nepal-earthquake-people-turn-to-ham-radio/
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Apr 29, 2015 15:51
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i heard so many sw bc stations last night, i couldnt stop tuning a short log -radio romania -NHK japan -china radio int'l on about 20 freqs -radio taiwan -ABC Northern Territory -radio new zealand -vatican radio -alcaravan radio (1kw out of colombia :O) -so many others tldr new antenna is rly fun
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Apr 29, 2015 16:28
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lolol 5 watts of power on 40 meters is making some relays click in the bus. but only on 40 (the antenna is about 5-8 feet above the top of the bus) sounds like we've got a ~30 foot wire on that relay (quarter wavelengths do this) and it's time to buy some chokes and capacitors
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Apr 29, 2015 17:15
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Jonny 290 posted:lolol 5 watts of power on 40 meters is making some relays click in the bus. but only on 40 i noticed when i keyed up my yaesu in the driveway it set off the security light. lol. also i think my tape deck-->3.5mm thingy is picking up RF
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Apr 29, 2015 17:16
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almost guaranteed. the two main ways to get rid of RF loving with stuff: -if it's DC you can put a blocking capacitor between + and ground on the DC rail. this shorts out AC and RF to ground (not dangerously), but blocks DC. -put inductors or chokes on the lines coming in. This works with stuff like cat5, coax, DC power. but you have to buy ferrites and if you get toroids (best) you have to make several turns through the core. for the tape adapter you'd obviously want to do a ferrite core with the cable through it a few times (inductance goes up as the square of the turns count) i'm not sure what value caps to use but I've got a grip coming so we'll throw some on the long DC lines in the bus and see what's up. Upside of this old thing is I can't really gently caress anything up, there's no ECU or electronics.
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Apr 29, 2015 17:24
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this is why i'm obsessed with putting at least a ferrite/cm choke on every I/O line when i design stuff, conducted and radiated susceptibility can be a real bitch with unshielded cables
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Apr 29, 2015 17:25
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longview i know you're dabbling with throwing HF wires up and want to suggest you try this OCFD/windom style if you haven't hottest wire i've ever used mine evidently punches a four-dimensional wormhole straight to VK/ZL land. i heard so many australians last night e: i have five turns on the feedline choke, thinking of adding 2-3 more to see if that licks it easy
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Apr 29, 2015 17:31
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i might give it a try, will have to check if the dimensions are doable there in any case i talked it over at the ham meet and decided to start with an 80/40m horizontal delta loop for that sweet nvis rag chewing, still gonna run a ladder line feed
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Apr 29, 2015 17:39
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deltas are cool. i almost threw one of those up. are you buying ladder line or are you going Full Ham and boiling dowels in paraffin for standoffs
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Apr 29, 2015 17:40
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Jonny 290 posted:deltas are cool. i almost threw one of those up. might wanna get that looked at
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Apr 29, 2015 18:31
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In other news I got my KX3 back from repair today (a couple of the knobs were a bit unresponsive) Slapped on my sideKX's on and was farting around with the power meter I picked up in the meantime:  I'm also beyond hyped to get outside and get this guy put up:  Need a mast tho
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Apr 29, 2015 19:02
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those radios are so gd pretty. i'm not a cw dude tho so an elecraft would be wasted on me i love the filter lcd thingy
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Apr 29, 2015 19:28
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http://www.amsat.org/?p=3592 posted:+ Fox-1A will launch on a NASA ELaNa flight during the 3rd quarter of 2015 from Vandenberg AFB, also tw, reddit, but the top comment is a AMSAT engineer or smth. http://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/349sc1/with_any_luck_we_will_have_a_spot_on_a_geosat/
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Apr 29, 2015 19:44
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wow this is sounding solid as hell Really wish we could convince just five or ten of those hyper-rich startup nerds to get into ham radio, a dozen of those guys throwing fun money and you've got another satellite up. yes i am asking for handouts lmao
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Apr 29, 2015 19:47
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oh man that ammeter is hella cheaper than the one i got.. i got fleeced
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Apr 29, 2015 19:51
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for now i just unhooked the control line to that clicking relay. i'm still being doused in 7 mhz RF, but it's not making noises any more. lol (i dont run more than like 25 watts ever)
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Apr 29, 2015 20:21
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Sniep posted:oh man that ammeter is hella cheaper than the one i got.. i got fleeced The one powerwerx sells is ridiculously overpriced.. $50 or something.
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Apr 29, 2015 20:32
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Jonny 290 posted:those radios are so gd pretty. i'm not a cw dude tho so an elecraft would be wasted on me It's making me want to learn CW tbh. Although I did squeak out some nice DX last summer, working Hungary with 5W on SSB.
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Apr 29, 2015 21:05
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/310969767011 $13.48 
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Apr 29, 2015 21:23
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manero posted:The one powerwerx sells is ridiculously overpriced.. $50 or something. yeah 60. i got it off amazon just by searching for it by name, didnt even think to comparison shop cuz i didnt know there were more than one of them.
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Apr 29, 2015 21:26
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powerwerx, rigblaster and west mountain radio are things that sprang into existence because hams in general are easily loosed of their money nice poo poo but jeeeeeezus that shits steep, and they get away with it with a bunch of :usa: its like ten-tec. nice radios but god drat theyre proud of em
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Apr 29, 2015 22:39
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yeah i am learning more and more than most anything Ham Radio specialized now has cheaper counterparts that are RC Car/Plane specialized since hte latter market is booming in popularity with drones and poo poo, but, the hobbiests arent 70 years old on nice fat fixed incomes and no expenses
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Apr 29, 2015 23:02
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r/c is a great great market driver. those guys have 0 problem ordering from china so it keeps good shops low --I got the Windom up higher. it's probably close to 35 feet above ground at the peak of the long end, the center is up to a good 20 feet, short end is about 18. and of course HF is dead today (confirm with my vertical) so no love. maybe as the sun sets. needs retuning again though. i added a total of 2 feet at this point, still resonating a bit high (which is expected; antenna impedance rises as you raise it, so you gotta re-tune)
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Apr 30, 2015 00:00
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Well this is promising...  Aw hell no. Got a little work to do on this thing. It's way too high for 20, 18 is almost non-existent, 15 has a dip, but nowhere near useful, and 10m is way too short, too. 
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Apr 30, 2015 00:03
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incidentally, the moment of torque of a filled liter water bottle on the end of a 24 foot pole as you try to lift it overhead and drop it between a fork in a tree limb is pretty impressive
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Apr 30, 2015 00:03
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Jonny 290 posted:incidentally, the moment of torque of a filled liter water bottle on the end of a 24 foot pole as you try to lift it overhead and drop it between a fork in a tree limb is pretty impressive I had the same idea, but I had a leftover fishing reel, and used an extra antenna insulator! Worked like a charm.
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Apr 30, 2015 00:11
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my arkansas house's trees look like Harbor Freight socket trees from all the hosed up deep wells i threw on 10 pound test and got snagged in a crook i like the pole approach more now, esp since i'm kiiiiinda dealing with an overhead power line 3 feet behind our property. more control
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Apr 30, 2015 00:40
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Jonny 290 posted:my arkansas house's trees look like Harbor Freight socket trees from all the hosed up deep wells i threw on 10 pound test and got snagged in a crook wrap a coil 'round that poo poo and get more free power
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Apr 30, 2015 04:00
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atomicthumbs posted:wrap a coil 'round that poo poo and get more free power i have plans for parasite drones that stay in the air forever by seeking out high tension lines, hanging from one of them bat-style with a little hook, and using an induction coil to steal juice to recharge
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Apr 30, 2015 05:37
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Jonny 290 posted:i have plans for parasite drones that stay in the air forever by seeking out high tension lines, hanging from one of them bat-style with a little hook, and using an induction coil to steal juice to recharge I want to build this but I don't know why it should exist beyond the novelty
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Apr 30, 2015 05:54
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Bloody posted:I want to build this but I don't know why it should exist beyond the novelty 
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Apr 30, 2015 05:55
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