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76
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eHam Forums / Station Building / RE: K3 or ICOM 7600 ?? Help
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on: March 27, 2012, 03:21:35 PM
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Spectrum displays like the Icom has look real neat but that's about it.
I have sat in front of an IC-756 Pro 3 for HOURS in contests on 80 meters and I probably never looked at the spectrum display after the first 10 minutes.
It never had any effect on what I found, or could hear to work.
Spectrum displays and panadapters are overrated as a useful feature in my opinion.
We are however visual creatures so it does have a lot of visual appeal to help sales.
That is because not many people have thought about how to write software that lets one use panadapters efficiently in a contest. There is a ton of data in a panadapter display, but it needs some organization to be visually useful. For example, if you tag signals you have already worked with a different color, your eyes can instantly spot new signals, much faster than you can find them by tuning around. This has completely changed the way I operate contests. Take a look at http://code.google.com/p/so2sdr/Tor N4OGW |
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77
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eHam Forums / DXing / RE: Please tell us what you think.
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on: March 21, 2012, 06:28:34 AM
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One way to save $ on bureau cards (but not all the labor): I remember one time my bureau card was returned back to me from a dx station/qsl manager. He had stamped my card with an ink stamp saying something like "Confirmed. Bureau cards do not support dxpeditions" and signed it. I submitted the card for DXCC and it was accepted.
Tor
N4OGW
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78
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eHam Forums / Antennas and Towers and more / RE: Single op field day antenna for campsite
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on: February 29, 2012, 01:09:32 PM
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As someone that does a fair amount of operating in the woods, I stay away from non-50 ohm antennas. Not that a balanced line antenna and tuner wouldn't work well, but especially in a Field Day setting, dorking with a tuner will get very old, very quickly. An autotuner is an option but it would take some careful forethought to plan antennas that will be easy to deploy, work for the bands you want, and work within the limits of the tuner.
Field Day is a 40 and 20 meter event. As a single op you will not likely run out either of those bands. My antennas of choice are multiband ("fan") dipoles pre-cut and ready to go. One 40/20 dual dipole covers 40, 20 and 15 and once it's up, you're ready to go.
Mark K5LXP
Albuquerque, NM
Just put a piece of paper behind each dial on your tuner. Make a pencil mark for each band, and you are set for the weekend. No more dorking needed except for the first 10 minutes  If you are in the eastern half of the country you might want 80m in addition to 40/20. This was my band breakdown the last time I did field day as single op/qrp (2007). Antennas were two ~135' dipoles fed with ladder line to johnson matchboxes. All CW. 160: 0 80: 137 40: 380 20: 384 15: 53 10: 0 Tor N4OGW/5 (MS) |
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79
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eHam Forums / Antennas and Towers and more / RE: Single op field day antenna for campsite
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on: February 24, 2012, 06:04:53 AM
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As BYU said, the main consideration is what supports you have. If you have trees, it is hard to beat a simple dipole fed with ladder line. If you have room, put up two dipoles oriented in different directions and use a simple coax switch to switch quickly between them. A car battery will not last very long at 100w. With a trolling battery you can probably go the entire field day at 5W output. Tor N4OGW I intend to do Field Day this year at a compsite in Northern Michigan. Just me and the IC706 with a LDG auto tuner doing CW. What do you think the best antenna to work all the bands, except probably 160? A simple 66 foot long wire? Or, perhaps a 100 ft dipole fed with ladder line? I may run off the car battery, so may be using 100 watts.
Suggestions?
Joe
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80
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eHam Forums / Contesting / RE: 160M Contests Dec-Jan-Feb
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on: November 19, 2011, 03:36:13 AM
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If you look for some fairly thin wire it won't be that expensive to put down 30-50 radials about 100 ft long each. Thin radials work fine electrically but don't last very long physically- that is usually ok for a short-term portable operation. Large spools can be found on ebay. Aluminum electric fence wire is also relatively cheap- that is what I used the last time I did a 160 contest as portable.
Yes, you will want to separate the rx antenna some distance away from the inverted L.
Tor
N4OGW
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81
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eHam Forums / Contesting / RE: 160M Contests Dec-Jan-Feb
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on: November 16, 2011, 03:24:58 PM
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It sounds like your portable location will have very low noise- that is good. With just a 40 ft support available there is not much better you cold do than an inverted L. But putting down more than 4 radials will be a big improvement.
Tor
N4OGW
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82
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eHam Forums / Contesting / RE: SO2R & Field Day?
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on: November 14, 2011, 03:07:25 PM
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When I first operated FD in the 1980's, there was a time you had to wait after a band change (10 minutes?) before you could change bands again. Sometime between then and a few years ago that rule was removed.
To do 3600 qso's in FD, you would have to have two (or more) stations and operators calling cq and running stations. The transmitters run through an interlock so that only one can transmit at once, so there is always a single transmitted signal. You keep the cq messages short.
It is not too hard to get ~1500 qso's in class A on CW in FD (field setup no so2r/etc, simple dipoles). 3600 definitely requires one to be running on more than one band at once.
Another thing: some of those 3600 qso's could have been on VHF which is a "free" extra transmitter. 6m was open this year and several hundred qso's could have been made on 6m.
Tor
N4OGW
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83
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eHam Forums / Antennas and Towers and more / RE: How to work on a Large Yagi on top of tower?
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on: October 25, 2011, 04:00:22 PM
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If you are going to try and tilt it to reach the feedpoint it can also help to remove some of the center elements (the ones easily reachable from the tower) on the boom first. Also, be sure the gin pole is strong enough- if the mast already in place is long enough that may be easier to use (and stronger) rather than a separate gin pole.
Tor
N4OGW
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85
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eHam Forums / Antennas and Towers and more / RE: 80 meter rotatable dipole
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on: August 15, 2011, 11:31:31 PM
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I have an M2 80/75 rotateable dipole at 100 feet . It has been up since around 2005. It is an awesome antenna. It far outperforms wire antennas such as inverted V's , slopers, and even 4-squares.
The only thing that beats me are 2 el and 3 el rotaries. At 94 feet long it does an awesome job and the sag is very minimal due to the robust construction. It has built-in switching between Fone and CW using a relay system.
73,
John, W4NU
I'm not surprised it beats your 4-square or inverted vee. I'm sure a horizontal dipole at 100 feet would do the same. Another data point: For 80 I have a full-size wire dipole with the center at 95 feet, and the ends at about 85 feet (running out to trees). And also a 4-square with wire elements and on-ground radials. In my case the 4-square is always about 1 s-unit better for dx than the dipole in the dipole's favored direction. Tor N4OGW |
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eHam Forums / Computers And Software / RE: Changing configuration on Hamlib
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on: August 07, 2011, 06:34:04 AM
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Is there a way to make configuration changes to hamlib permanent?
I am using a TS-850's if out to drive a sdr tuned to the if for a panadapter. It works great with PSDR IF. I would like to use HDSDR since it is less of a CPU load. HDSDR can use a EXTIO_DLL to interface with Hamlib. I can make hamlibs rigctl talk to my 850 with the command line "rigctl -m 209 -r com5 -s 4800 -C stopbits=1 -C serial_handshake=None". If I leave out the stop bits or handshake info it will not talk to rigctl. My problem is that there is no way to pass a command line to hamlib with it's implementation with HDSDR. You can only pass the -m and -r parameter and nothing else that is useful. Since the default stopbits is 2 and the handshake is hardware it will not talk to the rig. So back to my original question. Is there a way to make configuration changes to hamlib permanent short of editing TS850.c and compiling? I wouldn't know where to start with cgwin and gcc.
Marty
N5KBP
Hamlib is just a library for accessing radios/etc. It is up to the application software (ie HDSDR) to save the configuration you choose. Tor N4OGW |
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eHam Forums / Antennas and Towers and more / RE: Setting Antenna Resonant Frequency Point on a 40m Four Square
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on: July 08, 2011, 11:27:56 AM
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By the way, a traditional hybrid coupler will have about 20 dB less F/B and less gain than the DXE unit has. So while it is possible to build something, the microprocessor based control box, omni pattern, and better F/B and gain are all good features. :-)
73 Tom
Tom, I am curious about that statement- it seems that the controller DXE is currently selling (TFS4) is based on a hybrid coupler with an added omni function. I remember they advertised a non-hybrid one (for a lot more $$$) a few years ago, clearly different from the one being sold now. Are you referring to the currently offered DXE controller? Tor N4OGW |
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90
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eHam Forums / Station Building / RE: Computer Display Mounting
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on: July 08, 2011, 07:45:08 AM
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It is also very easy to homebrew a mount for a flat-panel display: just get some aluminum angle stock and metric screws matching the monitor. If you are trying to build into a specific cabinet, this can be easier that trying to buy a vesa mount.
Tor
N4OGW
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