As it has almost all areas of our lives, COVID-19 has affected ham radio. Here are a few observations:
- It seems to me that the bands have been more active over the past couple of weeks. This makes perfect sense, of course. Ham radio is the perfect hobby for people trying to avoid being infected. Ham radio lets us keep in contact with others while still maintaining our distance.
- This is just anecdotal, but this situation is bringing out some guys who may not have operated CW for a while. What leads me to say this is that the operators were definitely out of practice. Just like I hope that the level of activity remains high, I hope that these ops find their way down to the CW sub-bands more often in the future.
- I hope that activity remains high once we get back to a more “normal” situation.
- It would seem as though this is a perfect time to work on the ham radio projects that are languishing in your workshop. This is not necessarily the case, though. One of my projects is a surge suppressor for the ladder line I use to feed my homebrew Cobra antenna. BUT, one of the reasons that I hadn’t gotten around to building it was that I had planned on using stainless steel hardware as it is going to be installed outside. The Catch-22 is that the hardware stores are now closed, so I can’t paw through the fastener bins of my local hardware store to get the right nuts and bolts.
- As an aside, a friend of mine, Tom, W8TAM, reminded me indirectly that I had all the parts, aside from the hardware. A year or so ago, we both bought the parts around the same time, but like me, put them aside. He emailed me with a question about the project, and I replied that DX Engineering had just come out with a commercial version, and I was thinking about buying it. I felt really silly when he reminded me that I already had the parts, and with a bit of soldering, could avoid spending the $80 that DX Engineering wants for their product.
- After finding out that R&L Electronics was now selling a version of the nanoVNA, I decided to finally purchase one. I ordered one online last Sunday, and on Monday, received an email from R&L that it had been “sent to shipping.” I still haven’t received it, so I punched the tracking number into USPS.Com just now and found out that it’s supposed to be delivered tomorrow. That’s a lot longer than it would normally take for a small package to travel from the Columbus, OH area to SE Michigan, so I guess that this is hitting the U.S. Postal Service, too.
- Finally, my hands are a lot cleaner, if a lot drier, than normal.
Dan- For the NanoVNA, right now I know in the Genesee County and the Metro Detroit areas the mail is currently delivered every other day, might be the same for the Ann Arbor area too.
I think you will like the NanoVNA, I bought one through Amazon last year and of course had to compare readings on it and the MFJ-259C I own. I found that the VNA and the MFJ readings while not the same were close, it Antenna A at say 7.150 was reading an SWR of 1.34 on the MFJ and 1.32 on the VNA, at say 14.230 it was 1.54 on the MFJ and 1.57 on the VNA. Antenna B at say 146.0 was reading 1.2 on the MFJ and 1.17 on the VNA. To me the two devices being that close together I am going to say shows that they are at the same accuracy (I have tested my MFJ-259C and another hams 259C on the same antenna and have had similar results, which I expected due to slight variances that can and do happen in the components).
Check-in’s for nightly VHF/UHF voice nets are up noticeably in my vicinity.
My QTH has overwhelming QRM (Downtown Chicago). Normally I operate at another location. Darned if I didn’t leave some cables there as I can operate using digital modes QRP with my mag loop antenna. If I could only get that cable …
I wonder if R&L had your NanoVNA drop-shipped from their supplier in China.
They said that they had it in stock, but that’s possible, I guess.
If you find you still need hardware, you can go onto the Ace website, order what you need and stipulate Hackney Hardware in Dexter, MI for pickup. You can go there and call them and they will bring it out to your car. I imagine other Ace hardware stores are offering similar service
Stadium Hardware will bring it out to your car in the back parking lot (which is the usual entry into the store, if you’ve been to Stadium in the past, you will know what I’m talking about). Stadium is not allowing customers in the store, but if you call ahead, they can put the order together for you and have it ready when you arrive. They have a massive selection of stainless hardware, so they should have just about anything you are looking for there.
On the ‘time to do kits’ front, and finally got around to assembling the NPR-70cm kit I’ve had in my ‘kit bin’ on Monday, since we had that day off as well as the previous Friday. I used the weekend to put my shack back together after having a flood in there a couple of weeks ago from the severe weather we had. Finally on Monday, I had a clean bench and was ready to git ‘er done. In retrospect, I should have ordered to of those kits, so I would have a master/client pair to try out on the bench.
Not easy these days to get together with someone else in the club to test my kit with theirs.