What did you do in the shack today?

[ToddDubya]

AI noise reduction is coming. I saw someone demo it and it's incredible. There are products on the market that seem to work well, but they're not ham specific. I think if it was designed for speech vs music/video it could be really good. Pretty soon QRP will be like legal limit since AI will just pull out the signal for you.

 

[Evtide]

@Evtide , can you assign the skip function to their quick access functions? If so that might save a few button presses.

I'm gonna see if this is a faster way to skip a memory channel and will let you know, thanks!

And for Catman, this is one of the first things I did when setting up the FTM-500. The as-built menu is long and tedious, this old-style menu as shown in the below YouTube is much easier to navigate around.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGAYsWrKBjI

 

[ToddDubya]

Not so much in the shack, but I've been really studying hard on transistors. I'm sure we learned about these in college, and I'm sure we never learned how to actually use them because we didn't learn anything practical in college.

I've been reading books/articles/etc, watching W2AEW's videos, and I stumbled onto The Signal Path's channel, which has at least one really good video on designing a common emitter amplifier circuit. I've been through it a few times and at the end I'm like yup, I got this. Then I try to do it myself and I fall flat.

A guy at work was showing me some things he's been messing with on circuitlab.com. It isn't free like LT Spice, but it's very nice. I may treat myself to a subscription. It's $79/yr, which I hate because I hate subscriptions, but it looks like an excellent tool for building and simulating circuits, and what-if-ing. You can tweak things so easily. It also looks like it has a sharing component kind of like Thingiverse.com, but for circuits instead of 3D prints.

The goal here is to build a QRP CW transceiver of my own design. I've looked at a lot and I struggle to understand what all is going on, and a lot I think are things people cobbled together without really understanding what they were doing, as opposed to designing intentionally. But every so often something clicks, so I know I'm making progress.

Note: I just realized I have spice on my machine. Man does it suck.

 

[ToddDubya]

Holy cripes. I got the 160m antenna setup today. There was no snow at the house, but lots of snow at the Super Secret Squirrel Location. The kind you don't break through until you have all of your weight on that foot. I had to try a few different directions to get it mostly in the clear.

I ended up with the radiating element kind of setup in a sloper configuration, from about 6' at the feed point to a branch about 45' up then a long stretch to another branch even higher, but the ground slopes off too so I'm not sure how much higher it is. I'd say it's a bit of a lazy inverted L.

The counterpoise has a similar kind of setup but ends up maybe 10-12' up. I thought that would be way easier to setup, but I was mostly getting tangled in sapling branches. I supported it a few places along the way, so it's not just sagging.

It tuned up at the low end of the band, which is about where I wanted it anyway. I probably could have trimmed it a little but I didn't have it in me to do that today. The SWR of 1.17 is right around 1.8MHz.



The proof is in the pudding, so I called CQ a bunch of times to see what the RBN would have to say. Considering the SNRs I got, I was surprised how many times I had to call to get a report. It did occur to me that there may be fewer stations listening on 160 than the more common bands. The distances are probably a little off because I wasn't at my home QTH, but they're close enough. I was probably a little early in the day for it, too. The first two were around 4PM, then I tried again around 5PM and got three more in a few minutes. 50w.

 

[Gerbs54]

Got on FT-8 last night for the first time. I had previously set it all up but ran out of time before making a contact. Last night I made contacts with several US stations as well as Croatia, Dominican Republic, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Panama & Madeira Island. Pretty impressed with my EFHW speaker wires tossed over the barn. I think the next goals are to build a compensation coil to bring down the SWR in the higher bands and a link to add 80M as well.

I also set up my Ham Clock, pretty fun playing around with that as well.

 

[oldguy68]

Being new to this hobby I decided to check my house for (RFI) radio frequency interference.
Holy cow, I took an AM radio tuned to the low side of the band and it was humming like a lightsaber everywhere.
Every led light bulb and dimmer was setting it off like crazy..
The other electronic devices and appliances were relatively quiet.
Future not to self, dx in the dark!

 

[ToddDubya]

My AlexLoop (mag loop) antenna was giving me some weird sudden high SWR issues that I attributed to the connector. I tried touching up the soldering, but ultimately just had to cut it off and put on a new connector. I think it's good to go now. Too bad it's raining or I'd head out to the woods with it today.

 

[ToddDubya]

I won a drawing for a Venus SW-3B today. It's a three band (20/30/40) QRP CW rig from China that looks really cool. It'll receive LSB and USB, but only transmits CW. It's got one memory that looks to be programmed to call CQ and use your call. But some people say they can program it to whatever they want. I guess we'll see. I'm really looking forward to putting it on the air.

Other than that, I was up at my Super Secret Squirrel Location today and played a little radio. My 857 didn't seem too happy; I'm hoping it was just the cold. It worked fine, but the audio was a bit off. In it's defense, it was 19 degrees plus a shitload of wind. I didn't do too well in the cold either, so we were a real pair. I need to learn to not use my aluminum portable paddles in the cold. Or maybe add some heat shrink or tape over top to save my fingertips.

 

[Parker Duofold]

I rebuilt my 80-10 meter OCF inverted vee. I used a new Balun Designs 4:1 heavy duty (5KW) balun. This should be able to handle a bit of a mismatch on 80 meters.
I'm very disappointed in my SWR readings on 80, 40, 20 and 10 meters. The SWR is about 2.7:1 on 40 CW at 7025 khz. If your SWR on 40 isn't good there I think you're in trouble on the other harmonically related bands. The long side is about 96 feet and the short side is 39 feet.

 

[ToddDubya]

Is that the dip on 40? That doesn't seem right. Are you using a choke?

When I built my 40m OCFD I used the design (wire lengths) from Palomar Engineering and once I got it dialed in, it was pretty nice. I used a choke right at the feed point, but I don't think I measured it without the choke. I spent a lot of time trying to get the long end up as high as I could. That had a noticeable impact on both the SWR dip and where (what frequency) that dip was.

Their 80-10 design seems about the same as yours as far as lengths.

Off Center Fed Dipole Notes - Palomar Engineers®

Here are some typical OCF dipoles that are successful designs 160-6 meter Double Off Center Fed antenna layout (using a double tuned stub for better 20/40 meter performance) Here is the 160-6 meter SWR graph using 200 feet of RG213 feed line and an average height above ground of 35 feet...

palomar-engineers.com

 

[Parker Duofold]

Thanks for your input. Yes I an using a 1:1 choke right under the balun. I do probably need to get the long end up higher.
Somewhere around here I have an old MFJ antenna analyzer. That might help me figure out where the antenna is resonating. I'd have to take the measurements at the end of the coax which might not necessarily give me accurate feedback. I did shorten both ends a bit thinking it's resonating low. Kept the ratios consistent with the 66%/33% wire lengths.

Here is where I started: https://www.balundesigns.com/content/OCF Dipole V2.pdf

 

[ToddDubya]

That design is closer to 70%/30% but I assume you meant the amount you trimmed. But if you aren't using an analyzer, that would be helpful. It's possible your dips are above or below the bands, or even just up in the SSB portions. I think you're right that measuring at the shack end of the coax may give you a skewed reading, but I believe it gives you a lower SWR reading because some of the reflected power dissipates in the coax. But unless you have really long arms I'm not sure how you'd measure it at the feed point

I always have trouble visualizing it, but an inverted vee will use shorter wires for the same resonant frequency as a flat top dipole. That tells me that as you raise the ends of an inverted vee, without changing the lengths, the resonant frequency will increase. But the height of the ends has an impact on SWR, too. In my head, it makes sense that it's capacitance to ground effect.

I can't say this is scientific or even correct, but I tend to adjust the height of the ends of an inverted vee for low SWR, then trim for desired frequency. There can be some back and forth, but that's been my method.

I hope this is at your SC QTH where it's not cold and windy.

 

[Gerbs54]

This is my first month of time on HF. 204 QSOs, 137 Confirmed via QRZ, eQSL & LoTW combined, 32 countries total. Mostly FT8/4 (yellow pins) as most of my free time is after the kids go to bed and conditions taper off.

I plan to keep messing with wire antennas, I am thinking about a 10m vertical to try and get HI on SSB. I follow a particular POA activator that favors 10M.

 

[ToddDubya]

What are you currently using for 10m, the 40m EFHW?

If you go with a vertical, I recommend elevating it a few feet and using an elevated counterpoise (or multiple if you want). This makes a significant difference over a ground mounted verticals with ground radials.

 

[Gerbs54]

What are you currently using for 10m, the 40m EFHW?

If you go with a vertical, I recommend elevating it a few feet and using an elevated counterpoise (or multiple if you want). This makes a significant difference over a ground mounted verticals with ground radials.

Yes currently using the 40m EFHW. I have a 7M squid pole and could pull off a vertical dipole. I also think about the Poor man’s POTA performer. The basis of design for the POTA performer includes a telescoping whip and linked, elevated counterpoises. In the poor man’s version Jerry KM4ZKB swaps the whip for a wire.


View: https://youtu.be/R2-Qpzb7n7A?si=C0W9cd6vPNv2cTVS

 

[ToddDubya]

That's the idea. I've seen that same design under a number of names. It's the premise behind the Buddipole system.

I use a whip with dedicated counterpoises for each band, but I really should just make one linked counterpoise. And I should also make a string gauge so I can setup the whip faster, like he does in the video below. My whip is a little too short on 20m, but next time I use it I think I'll just add a short length of wire to remedy that.

I'd be interested to see how the vertical dipole works. My gut says similar to the vertical w/raised counterpoise, but slightly better because it's higher. You could easily test that with your squid pole and WSPR/FT8.


View: https://youtu.be/dxTEJl7jqDY

 

[Gerbs54]

Coincidentally Jerry posted a video today where he deployed both an EFHW and Poor man’s POTA PERformer and collected two signal reports from everyone during his activation. Skip to 53:20 for the results.

Spoiler

The POTA performer works better

 

[ToddDubya]

I didn't watch the whole thing. Did he just use 20m?

A couple other things coming into play are the radiation patterns on the harmonic frequencies and losses in the transformer for the EFHW. A 40m EFHW on 10m will have a radiation pattern that looks like a hedgehog. And depending on the ferrite mixture, losses in the core increase at higher frequencies (although mostly above 10m). I know in the past I have said they're wonderful, but they do have drawbacks. For most of my portable ops, ease of deployment is what determines the antenna I'll use, and if the bands are good I do just fine.

To be fair, the radiation pattern thing is common to all multiband antennas. It has to do with having plural (half) wavelengths on the wire vs just one (half) wavelength. In practice, I can't say I could ever identify a direction it wasn't working. Even when I use the 10m hex beam it favors a direction, but pretty much works in every direction. Probably comes from living in town.

Edit: In summary, I think you'll be happy with the 10m vertical. Worst case you can just turn it into a dipole if you don't like it.

 

[ToddDubya]

I won a drawing for a Venus SW-3B today. It's a three band (20/30/40) QRP CW rig from China that looks really cool. It'll receive LSB and USB, but only transmits CW. It's got one memory that looks to be programmed to call CQ and use your call. But some people say they can program it to whatever they want. I guess we'll see. I'm really looking forward to putting it on the air.

Other than that, I was up at my Super Secret Squirrel Location today and played a little radio. My 857 didn't seem too happy; I'm hoping it was just the cold. It worked fine, but the audio was a bit off. In it's defense, it was 19 degrees plus a shitload of wind. I didn't do too well in the cold either, so we were a real pair. I need to learn to not use my aluminum portable paddles in the cold. Or maybe add some heat shrink or tape over top to save my fingertips.

I got the SW-3B today and just fooling around with it on a dummy load it's pretty nice.

The memory does let you save whatever you want vs just your call sign, which is nice. I guess there have been a few iterations of that over time.

The keyer speed adjustment is probably not accessible enough for on the fly adjustment, but it's easy to get to. It's a little weird that you can just go up or down in speed but it doesn't tell you your speed. So you have to get out of the menu, try it, adjust as needed.

It's got a nice screen, and at least indoors is plenty bright on the lowest setting.

I like that when you are out of band it still generates the side tone, but doesn't actually transmit. You get an error message. The designer says to use this for practice or when setting up the keyer/memory and you don't want to accidentally transmit.

I'm going to try the SSB (receive only) when I have an antenna on it. I'm not sure exactly what that's useful for. Since it'll send CW, I'd be tempted to answer a POTA call with CW and see how the operator handles it.

The guy I got it from printed side rails and a cover for it, so the rotary encoders are protected.

The only negative I can see so far, and it's a real nit, is that it always powers up in memory mode even if you last used it in VFO mode. It's literally one button to switch to VFO mode, so I don't see this ever being a problem. Possibly a slight annoyance if you cycle power then want to go back to where you were. And it seems to go to the last saved memory, not necessarily the one you were last using.

I just got home from the woods. I had a bitch of a time between setting up the dipole in the snaggly trees, using what appeared to be the wrong wires, running out of daylight and having to hike out in the dark, running out of daywarmness and having to hike out in the cold, and 20m apparently not being too good. Gotta revisit some things so I'm not such a mess.

 

[ToddDubya]

Nope, I was using the right wires the first time. For some reason I was getting a high SWR on 20m. So I switched to what I (correctly) thought were the 30m wires and got more power out, so that's what I used. I hope it protected itself and I didn't burn the thing up right off the bat. I gotta stop using that dipole in that location anyway. It seems clear, but everything is just a snaggly mess setting up.

I was kicking myself for not bringing the antenna analyzer. I was in a rush to beat sunset and was lucky just to have the bare minimum.

 

[ToddDubya]

I made a couple of these today. I always find myself having to rig up some janky setup to temporarily power something, always running the risk of shorting out my battery. Not no more. PowerPoles on one side, Wago inline connectors on the other, with a bit of heat shrink to keep everything tidy.

WAGO 221-2401 Lever-Nuts Inline 2 Wire Splicing Connectors (10-Pack) 02212401K000004 - The Home Depot

Fuel up your empty rv tank with ease by choosing this WAGO Inline Splicing Connectors. Comes with zinc construction.

www.homedepot.com

 

[ToddDubya]

Feeling frisky after making that power adapter, I decided it was time to build the control pad to access the keyer memories in my FTDX10. Yaesu buries them painfully in the menus and it became a real bear to use them when I did 13 Colonies. They sell a control pad for the low low price of $100. No thanks. It's literally a headphone jack, buttons and resistors.

As with most projects, laying everything out so the final product is tidy was the hard part. Even then I got to the end and wanted the headphone jack on the other side, but everything else seemed to work out fine.

Underneath is a protoboard with everything soldered to the back side. I just used a piece of 3M foam sticky tape to hold it down and that worked a charm. I wanted to cover the board up and have a way to label the buttons and a business card was just the right size. And it turned out a hole punch was just the right size for the button shafts(?) to poke through. Then the colorful caps hide the holes. I may redo the business card with something nicer, but probably not. This works fine.

I tested it out and it works perfectly. I'm pretty pleased with how this came out. Cradle to grave was probably 3 hours.

 

[UJay]

re-hung a 160m antenna and did 10 hours in NAQP.... Tired... lol

UJay

 

[Parker Duofold]

I have been working on getting the ability to restart/control my remote station in Maine remotely (!!) from a phone app. The first outlet switch that I purchased was from Digital Loggers - their web power switch - Pro Model. I spent $200 on this and then after trying to set it up, realized I am by no means an "IT Professional." I had to purchase (99 cents) a clunky app for my cell phone that I could not get to work. I returned it to The Jungle yesterday and maybe will buy it again if my new idea doesn't work out. It really does look like a very nice unit but I couldn't understand how to get it working.

Instead, I bought a few of these Govee Smart Plugs. They are made to turn lights and just about any AC operated (15 amps) item on/off. The Govee app works very well and was very easy to setup. You can also use the Alexa app but since I hate the Alexa app I'm not doing that. After I successfully managed to turn a lamp on/off here at the South Carolina QTH I then disconnected from the home WiFi network here and tried it through the phone network. The app had my network name and password and it actually worked!

Moving on; I used the Smart Plug on the power supply (12VDC) that runs my Elecraft K4D and was able to turn that on/off. I then hooked the N6TV Y-Box up to the transceiver and then turned the power supply off with the Govee app. What do you know the radio AND power supply turned off/on/off/on with the Govee app. So why do this?

The K4D (and other Elecraft stuff maybe other transceivers also) will not reset itself and turn back on in the event of a power failure. Indeed, even if the power blips for a few seconds the transceiver will turn off. Also, I don't want to keep the station running 24/7 because that's unnecessary and taxing on the rig and power supply. Of course, I'm not in Maine right now and once I get back there I'll be able to try everything out there but I feel confident it will all work as planned. So this should allow me to basically control the station in Maine. It's a start.

 

[oldguy68]

I took 20ft of 1 1/4" PVC conduit and secured it to my wood storage rack and made an inverted L with my 40m EFHW antenna.
Securing the other end to an eye hook on the soffet of the 2nd floor rear of my house.
Longest Dx of the day was Bosnia at 40m.

 

[ToddDubya]

Bosnia on 40m! Can't be mad at that.

Cool setup, it sounds like it works great.

 

[ToddDubya]

Coincidentally Jerry posted a video today where he deployed both an EFHW and Poor man’s POTA PERformer and collected two signal reports from everyone during his activation. Skip to 53:20 for the results.

Spoiler

The POTA performer works better

You know, for a while I've been using a dipole (inverted vee) on top of a fiberglas mast for portable ops. It just occurred to me today that I could put the feedpoint at the bottom, run a wire up the pole, and run the other wire out as a raised counterpoise and have an antenna just like this. It would give me more options because the low feedpoint means my coax would reach farther. Plus the wires are WAY less likely to snag in the trees, and the thing would be easier to setup. I'm going to have to try it out at home and see how it tunes. If I can do it without cutting any of my wires, that's even better.

My mast is 7m, or about 23' so I can easily get up to 20m on it, 30m would have the feedpoint pretty much at the ground. Maybe with a little sloping action I could get the feedpoint up a couple, three feet.

Why didn't I ever think of this before?

 

[Gerbs54]

You know, for a while I've been using a dipole (inverted vee) on top of a fiberglas mast for portable ops. It just occurred to me today that I could put the feedpoint at the bottom, run a wire up the pole, and run the other wire out as a raised counterpoise and have an antenna just like this. It would give me more options because the low feedpoint means my coax would reach farther. Plus the wires are WAY less likely to snag in the trees, and the thing would be easier to setup. I'm going to have to try it out at home and see how it tunes. If I can do it without cutting any of my wires, that's even better.

My mast is 7m, or about 23' so I can easily get up to 20m on it, 30m would have the feedpoint pretty much at the ground. Maybe with a little sloping action I could get the feedpoint up a couple, three feet.

Why didn't I ever think of this before?

Can’t wait to hear how to works out.

I rolled the dice on a 17 foot whip from AliExpress. It was $12 vs $70 from Chameleon. I don’t have it in hand yet. I wanted something that I could use to catch the higher bands like 10 to 17 meters as a 1/4 wave vertical but will also build the POTA PREformer. The biggest issue is the cheap whip is an M10 thread vs 3/8. Surprisingly there isn’t great availability on adapters but I think I have figured out an easy-ish work around. I’ll have to report back once things are up and running.

 

[QTHNH]

I made a couple of these today. I always find myself having to rig up some janky setup to temporarily power something, always running the risk of shorting out my battery. Not no more. PowerPoles on one side, Wago inline connectors on the other, with a bit of heat shrink to keep everything tidy.

View attachment 953452

WAGO 221-2401 Lever-Nuts Inline 2 Wire Splicing Connectors (10-Pack) 02212401K000004 - The Home Depot

Fuel up your empty rv tank with ease by choosing this WAGO Inline Splicing Connectors. Comes with zinc construction.

www.homedepot.com

I have used these lever nuts in several projects. Makes for a nice clean build.

 

[ToddDubya]

Can’t wait to hear how to works out.

I rolled the dice on a 17 foot whip from AliExpress. It was $12 vs $70 from Chameleon. I don’t have it in hand yet. I wanted something that I could use to catch the higher bands like 10 to 17 meters as a 1/4 wave vertical but will also build the POTA PREformer. The biggest issue is the cheap whip is an M10 thread vs 3/8. Surprisingly there isn’t great availability on adapters but I think I have figured out an easy-ish work around. I’ll have to report back once things are up and running.

If you ever look at the jaw mount that clamps onto whatever, Workman makes one way cheaper than Chameleon. It's exactly the same.

If you end up liking the whip but want something more, those new 25' whips look nice. If you don't use 30m it won't really buy you anything, though.