Ham Radio . Magnum Experimentum
Antennas, experiments, engineering and other articles of interest to radio folks.
John S. Huggins Avoid the ARRL Field Day Deer-Fever
Bonus points are important for the annual ARRL Field Day event in June.
If you are thinking of participating in your local club’s Field Day festivities or are heading to the campground with your family for a Bravo station, bonus points are available.
One of my favorites is the Alternate Power Field Day bonus.
To quote the ARRL Field Day rules for 2009…
Use 802.11 in your Field Day network for flexible multi-mode success.
Working at an airplane company as an EE certainly puts energy density of electrical storage components at the top of the list of important things.
Of course the buzz word of the decade when talking about batteries is Lithium, Lithium, Lithium.
Is there standard “good practice” for Olivia?
Watch out for game table noises leaking into your PSK31 or any other digital signals.
N1MM can put your transmissions out of band.
I have experimented with Radio Mobile for a few years. If you have not tried using it, you should. It is a free RF link analysis program that uses geographic elevation data to help you determine the obstacles between two radio stations.
The details of this program’s capabilities are too numerous to mention here so please visit the web site here…
I made my very first Olivia QSO tonight. It was a bit daunting, but I took the time to study a little about the standard, already had MixW rigged up with the Olivia DLL, listened around a bit on 20 meters then 40, figured out where to call CQ and just did it.
It was not even two minutes before a ham came back to my Olivia 16/500 call on one of the 40 meter calling frequencies.
During our Sunday night Tech Net in Northern Virginia one of the participants described a 140 watt amplifier he just finished building for use on the HF bands.
My immediate thought was “Hmmm, he already has a 100 watt style typical HF radio. Why does he need something that does 140 watts?”
The I remembered he also has a QRP rig which generates the typical 5 watts or so and this linear amplifier allows this QRP rig to be just like the typical 100 watt radios when you need or want it.
The amplifier concept comes from a company called…
Solar energy from photo-voltaic (PV) panels is a great thing to show off at the ARRL Field Day, but economic realities and lengthy ROI periods continue to make it financially unsound for home use.
A tax on every QSO proposed by US authorities threatens further balkanization of amateur radio social cliques.
Presented is a relay controller for operating two orthogonal 75m dipoles to make them operate as a circular polarization turnstile antenna.
Big HF loop antennas provide great performance, but they can’t do everything. 160 meter full wave loops won’t work well for NVIS when used at 3.8 MHz.
Previously I introduced some free and some not free software applications which allow one serial port to be shared with multiple applications…
Investigating the free offerings I experimented with Ham Radio Deluxe and a non ham radio related application from Eterlogic.
Many times I have built home-brew radio to computer sound card audio interfaces with success. The goals were to have some fun with the many digital modes out there including PSK31, MFSK, Olivia and RTTY with an emphasis on PSK31.
Also available for use are handy CW decoders like CWGet and CWSkimmer.
To complete the computer to radio marriage I purchased and built a WinKey and Winkey USB kit from K1EL.
By this time, the number of cables between the computer and the radio was getting a little out of hand. I sought a new approach that connected to the computer with just one cable.
Would you pay three times the price for a product? Watch out for Toroid prices.
Recently I got up to speed with MixW for some PSK31 work. It works great.
I also tried out CWSkimmer with similar results.
I noticed there was an advantage of allowing each application access to read and control the radio so the frequency information correlates.
No problem I thought. However, I began thinking about the upcoming Virginia QSO Party where I will also be using a logging program from N3FJP or N1MM.
Perhaps you have heard about PSK31 and the many other digital modes available to today’s ham radio operators.
You have gone the next step and know you need to, somehow, connect your computer soundcard with your radio’s speaker and microphone.
Many devices exist to help you do just that including US Interface, BuxComm, SignaLink, etc. I have my eyes set on the US Interface Navigator product to be my sound interface plus mop up a WinKey CW Keyer and rig control (CAT) in one box entirely powered by the USB port. Nice.
However, I am enjoying the digital modes today with absolutely no interface. How?
If you have been reading this web site you will recall I have paid much attention to the 43 foot antenna manufactured by DX Engineering and Zero Five Antennas.
After much simulation and trading the benefits against pitfalls, I purchased the DX Engineering 43 foot antenna kit with the balun.
However, a shiny aluminum antenna in the back yard would attract the kind attention I just don’t need. Research on the Internet reveals several solutions including:
A viewer asks about coax losses associated with using the “tuner required” 43 foot vertical antenna.
This is a bit silly of a post for an amateur radio web site.
However, I just had to toot the horn of one company who has consistently provided great service. That company is DX Engineering.
Hello all,
I wonder if any of you had your display unit for your Kenwood TM-G707 2/440 transceiver go blank and reboot even while the radio operates just fine.
If I move the wire with respect to the control head in a certain position this happens.
Is this just a case of dirty contacts between the little cable adapter and the control head or have any of you seen the wire in the cable actually break?
