KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

I got an Elecraft K1 for Christmas! I’m getting the four-band version. This looks like a seriously fun kit to build.

What did you get?

My colleague, Martin Rowe, forwarded a link to this National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) news item about printable transistors. As he says in his e-mail, “This is just plain cool.”

The news item describes a research project at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a Xerox subsidiary, that has successfully created a transistor array of the type used to control a flat-panel display using a modified ink-jet printer and semiconductor “ink.” Using a semiconducting polymer ink they sucessfully built a prototype flat-panel display.

While the first application will be to manufacture cheaper displays, think of what we will be able to do with this technology once it gets cheap enough for hobbyists to use. We’ll be able to design circuits on the computer, simulate them, and then print them and test them. Want to experiment with DSP circuits? Just print one out! It didn’t work quite as expected? No, problem, just toss it into the recycle bin and try something else.

I think this is going to be an incredible boon for hobbyists.

For many years–17 to be exact–I’ve owned an MFJ 941D VersaTuner II antenna tuner. I never really had any success using it, though, and for most of those years it’s simply sat on a shelf. Not being an antenna genius, I could never figure out whether my lack of success was due to my poor antenna skills or the less-than-rugged construction of the device.

Well, about a week and a half ago, I decided to give it another whack. Connecting my Autek VA1 antenna analyzer to the transmitter connector and a precision 150-ohm resistor that came with the analyzer to the antenna input, I first set the selector switch so that the resistor was connected directly to the analyzer. I measured an SWR of approximately 3:1. So far, so good.

I then switched in the tuner circuit and fiddled with the controls. Voila! I was able to set it so that the SWR I measure was close to 1:1. Setting the antenna analyzer to frequencies in the various ham bands, I was able to get a good match on all bands except one. (I forget which one, exactly). So, I’m guessing that the tuner does indeed work as advertised.

Last weekend, I put up a 30m dipole. Unfortunately, due to my fear of getting up on the roof and the odd shape of my backyard (the land slopes upward such that when you’re at the back of the yard, you can almost see over the two-story house), the highest point of the dipole is only about 20 feet off the ground and one leg is only about 15 feet off the ground. That being the case, the lowest SWR I could obtain is 1.35:1.

That’s not too bad, and I did make some nice contacts with it, but I always feel better when that SWR meter on the rig barely budges off the peg than when it swings up further. Having a little more confidence in my antenna tuner, I thought I’d hook the thing up and see if I could drop that SWR. So, I connected the antenna and analyzer and again fiddled with the knobs. Well, what do you know? I was able to adjust the tuner to that I measured an SWR of almost 1:1.

I then connected the tuner to the rig, and sure enough, the SWR meter barely moved when I transmitted. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, though, so I tuned around trying to find a QSO. As luck would have it, the band conditions were quite poor, and the band was very quiet. I did hear a W7 calling, but he didn’t come back to me. It was getting late, so I called it a night.

I wasn’t able to get back to the shack until last night. I fired up the rig again, and tuned around the band. Again, conditions seemed kind of poor and the band was very quiet. I sent out a couple of test transmissions and verified that the SWR reading was still low. I then set the meter to read forward power, just to make sure I was putting out a signal, and sent out another test transmission. Everything seemed to be working fine.

Tuning around some more, I happened upon J8DX on 10.107, operating from St. Vincent in the Caribbean. After a couple of tries, he came back to me. Cool! My first QSO using the tuner was DX. I’ve since made several more contacts all with good reports.

While the tuner section seems to be working, it looks like the meter circuit is shot. No matter how I set the switches, I can’t get the meter to move. I’ll be contacting MFJ to see if there’s a simple way to test and adjust the SWR/power meter.

I’m also going to try to get the antenna to tune up on other bands. It would be nice to work some 20 meters, or maybe 15 meters, and the ARRL 10-meter contest is this weekend. If I can get the antenna to tune up on 10, I could do a little contesting.

Sidney Harris was a newspaper columnist columnist and cartoonist whose work appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. If you were reading at all during those years, I’m sure you’ve seen his work. He was a keen observer and a wry wit.

Every now and then, he’d write a column entitled “Things I Learned While Looking Up Something Else.” If I recall correctly, there were seven or eight little tidbits in each column. If he were still writing today, I’m sure he’d write columns with the title, “Websites I Found While Searching for Something Else.” So, with apologies to Mr. Harris, here’s my first installment…

• Phil’s Old Radios. Many hams are also collectors of antique radios. There are many reasons for this, the first being that we just like radio, in all its forms. And if you’ve been around for any length of time, you’ve probably formed a sentimental attachment to a particular brand or model of antique radio. It may have been the first shortwave radio you bought or used, or you may just like the design of a particular set.
     you’re into old radios, then you’ll want to check out this website. Phil has an extensive photo gallery of his own collection, including not only shots of the front panel, but shots of the chassis, and sometimes, manual pages. There are also articles on antique radio collecting, including good ones how to start a collection and how to restore old radios. All told, there are 34 articles on Phil’s restoration projects. There is also a big list of links to other old radio sites.
     Another cool feature of this website is the free classified ads. There are hundreds of listings from readers offering radios for sale and looking for particular antique models. There are also a number of postings just looking for information. The ads are not organized in any particular fashion, but they’re all fairly recent. The oldest is from May 1, 2003, so it looks like Phil deletes anything older than six months.
• Discover Circuits. This site is the work of David A. Johnson, P.E., an electronics engineering consultant. According to Johnson, this site has links to more than 7,000 electronic circuits, including some that Johnson designed himself. Johnson has categorized the circuits into more than 500 categories to make the circuits easy to find.
     If you do visit this site, also check out the stuff Johnson is selling on EBay. When I visited, I noted that he was selling a foot switch with 1/4-in. phone plug for $7. That’s not a bad deal.
• The Homebrew HFpacker-Amp Project. A while back I wrote about how it would be nice if QRPers would have an amp they could switch on when conditions were marginal. You could make the contact with low power, then switch on the amp to make the QSO easier and more enjoyable.
     Well, I found one today. It’s called the Homebrew HFpacker-Amp Project and is the baby of Virgil K5OOR. For only $122, you can get a kit of parts that will allow you to build a solid-state, wideband, 35W amplifier. Also available are power supply and filter modules. Not only does this look like a nice design, but in the QRP spirit, it’s being sold by the HF Projects Group at or near cost.

At the Findlay, OH hamfest, back in September, I bought a used Gap Titan antenna. At the time, it looked like I got a pretty good deal on the thing. I payed only $100 for an antenna that cost about $340 new. Even so, I put off building it and setting it up as everything I read about it said that the instructions were difficult to follow, and since mine was half-built, I figured it would be even harder to build.

That turned out to be the case. All the pieces were there, but figuring out where to put them was a bear. And one of the hose clamps used to attach some spacers to the main mast was broken.

Finally, when I did get it all together, I had to decide where to mount it. Having had some success with ground-mounted verticals, I decided to stick the pipe I’d mounted it on into one of the flower beds and guy it down with three ropes. I figured that would do at least temporarily.

Unfortunately, when I connect my antenna analyzer to it, the readings were all over the place and nowhere near resonant on any of the bands. My guess is that it was just too close to the house and that I’m going to have to get it farther away, or ideally, up on the roof. The problem with putting it up on the roof is that my house has a fairly steep roof, and I’m pretty much chicken about climbing up there.

The real pain about all this is that to put the Titan up I had to take down my Slinky dipole, pretty much putting me off the air. After failing to get the Titan to work, I decided I might as well put the Slinky dipole back up on 30m, which is quickly becoming my favorite band.

Unfortunately, I’d unstrung the rope that supports the antenna, so that I could use that piece for one of the guy ropes. Replacing it wasn’t too difficult, but when I started to hoist the thing into the air, I discovered that I had somehow missed stringing it through one of the coil turns. When this happens, the coil gets all twisted up. This is bad because you can’t then easily adjust the number of turns in the antenna.

It’s not that hard usually to get the coil back into its original form, but somehow in trying to do so, I screwed it up even more. Pretty soon, I had at least two twists in the helical coil. It took me more than two hours to untwist the coil, and by the time I’d finished it was 5:30 pm and dark outside. So much for getting on the air that day.

That evening, I took another look at the antenna, only to find even more bad news. Some of the turns were beginning to rust. On top of that, one of the solder joints had come loose, probably because of all the handling.

So much for the Slinky. I put it into a box and put it on the shelf. I still think it will make a good portable/temporary antenna (with a little reconditioning and maybe a little mechanical redesign), but for now I think I’ll play with some other designs.

About a week ago, I got an envelope full of QSL cards from the FISTS QSL Bureau, and today a packet arrived from the ARRL Bureau. About half the cards in the Fists envelope were from guys I worked in the Fall Sprint. Two of the hams I worked in the Sprint were WB4JJJ and W8III. With those cards, I think I now have about ten or eleven cards where the suffix are all the same letter.

Another notable card from the Fall Sprint came from KH6HHS. Now, how is that for a CW call? For readers not familiar with Morse Code, this is a difficult call to send and to receive. The H is a series of four dots, the 6 a dash followed by four dots, and the S a series of three dots. If I was issued this call, I’d seriously consider getting a vanity call.

Finally, I got a card from WL7WH. This is my first card from Alaska since getting back on the air.

In the packet from the ARRL, there were seven cards: one from the Czech Republic, two from France, one from Spain, and three from the Canary Islands. The cards from EA8DA and EA8AOQ included maps of the Islas Canarias. I now know that there are seven islands in all, and that the highest point is on Tenerife, which tops out at more than 3,700 feet above sea level.

The Canary Islands are located quite far south of Spain, off the coast of Morocco. After contacting these guys and listening to weather reports on Radio Exterior de Espana, I was thinking a trip there might be fun. Then I read this on the lonely planet website:

Scandinavian sun worshippers, German grannies, British lager louts and French family groups – come to the Canary Islands before next season when ten million European fun seekers drop by. The Canaries are a seething mass of oiled flesh jiggling in the lap of the waves and to the beat of discos, bars and gay nightclubs. They offer the worst of mass tourism: concreted shorelines, tacky apartment block after tacky apartment block, and bars where you can pretend you’ve never left home; but they also offer some of the best beaches within easy escape from a snowy European winter.

Maybe I’ll reconsider.

A couple of months ago, I subscribed to the Elecraft mailing list as I was thinking of building a K1. I’m still thinking about it, but even if I never buy one, I think I’ll stick with the mailling list. The reason is that there’s just a lot of good ham radio information on it.

For example, a while back someone asked about antenna connectors. Gregg Lengling, W9DHI replied:

Let me add my 2 cents worth. I spent over 20 years in the 2-way radio field and operated 800 MHz repeaters and systems all over SE Wisconsin. We went to crimp style connectors for all cable from RG8 type and down. We always bought solid center conductor RG58 for mobile installs to facilitate the N-Crimps we used. Granted a good crimping tool with die set will set you back almost $100.00 but then you’ve always got it and the connectors are only a buck or 2 a piece. The “N” connectors are 3 pieces. The center pin, the body and the ferule. Very easy to install and always the same, never a worry about a bad connection.

I personally probably did over 20,000 mobile installs in my life and never had a connector problem. We also used RG142B for all our interconnecting cables on repeaters and combiners. This is 58 sized double shielded Teflon cable, and we used all crimp connectors on it with no duplex noise and no reflected power. We always swept the whole system once complete so I know that this is the way to go.

We did a lot of government work for the military and they have rules that don’t allowed standard soldered connectors. You must use crimps, so I figure if it’s good enough for the military it’s good enough for me. I think that their reasoning is that you can replicate the connection many times, whereas someone soldering a connector, never does it same twice.

I then asked:

Can you tell me what brand of crimper you used or would recommend? I’ve been rather unhappy with soldering UHF connectors and this really does sound like the way to go. $100 is really not a lot if you experiment with antennas much and consider all the time you spend (waste?) soldering PL259s.

To which, he replied,

I have the MaxRad Deluxe Crimp tool kit. It includes the crimper with 3 sets of dies, and an antenna rod cutter for mobile 17-7ph Stainless whips. These are the die sizes (they are all hex dies except for the .042 center conductors that are square dies). .042, .068, .092, .178, .213, .255, and .412 this covers RG58 and 59, RG172 and various forms of that size plus it will crimp 9913 and RG8 variations. I bought the set from Primus Electronics (http://www.primuselectronics.com) and also get my crimp connectors from them.

Certainly makes me want to toss all those PL-259s and never solder one again.

Tuning around on 40m yesterday, I ran into two contests:

1. CQ- Western Electric. This contest is primarily for Western Electric employees. The unique thing about this contest is that the exhange includes an employee’s years of service, and that number also serves as the multiplier. Non-employees count as having one year of service. The three hams I worked must have hated it, since I didn’t give them much of a multipler. I may go down to the shack and try to work a few more stations and then submit the log electroincally.
2. OK/OL DX Contest. There were several strong OK/OL stations coming in on 40m last night. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to work any of them. They must have been running high power to be coming in so strong here and not hearing me at all. Or, maybe they just weren’t listening for weaker stations.

This reminds me that I have to send in the logs for the FISTS Fall Sprint today….

Nearly every ham who also has Net access knows about eHam and QRZ.Com, but from time to time I run across other ham radio websites that deserve a little publicity. So here goes:

• Pete’s Homebrew Page: The question here is, “Who is Pete?” Nowhere to be found, amid the plans for a bunch of homebrew projects, is any mention of Pete’s last name or of his callsign. That’s no biggie, I guess, as the site is full of interesting homebrew projects, including an antenna tuner, 6m receive converter, and a CW filter. Pete has links to a bunch of SW listening sites as well.
• HamStop.Com: The net has allowed many small retailers to get into business. Being a small retailer myself (Quality Technical Books), I always like to browse the sites of other retailers to see what ideas I can steal from them. Unfortunately, most ham radio retail websites are really bad.

  Fortunately, HamStop.Com is not one of them. The owners of HamStop.Com have done a nice job with their website. The navigation is easy to use, meaning it’s easy to find the products they sell.

  Unfortunately, they don’t have a really good selection. I understand this, however. It’s hard to keep a lot of stock on hand without making a big investment in inventory and facilities. I need to contact them and see how they’re doing.