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106
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eHam Forums / Elmers / RE: Neon lamp antenna match indicator
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on: December 22, 2012, 07:05:10 PM
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Used to work from Las Vegas to quite a few places in southern CA, UT and northwest AZ using a DX-100B and a 75 watt light bulb right on my desk. The receiving antenna was a 15 foot length of bell wire.
I personally witnessed another ham working the same range with just the output of a Heathkit VF-1.
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108
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eHam Forums / CW / RE: Fun word rhymes to send with cw?
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on: December 22, 2012, 12:36:01 PM
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K7KBN DE GW3__ GM OM TNX FER CALL . UR 579 579 HR IN Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch
NAME IS ED ED . SO HW CPY? K
Gotta admire the Welsh...!
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109
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eHam Forums / Elmers / RE: External Tuner vs Radio's Internal Tuner
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on: December 21, 2012, 06:55:24 PM
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The range over which the unit can match. Many built-in "tuners" can cope with up to something like 3:1 mismatch. Anything worse than that will kick it out of line.
A decent MANUAL tuner can handle much worse mismatches.
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111
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eHam Forums / Antennas and Towers and more / RE: SWL Random wire question
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on: December 21, 2012, 07:16:44 AM
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Receivers don't care. As a teenaged SWL in the late 1950s, I ran a piece of #22 wire (orange with a blue tracer, actually...  ) from one corner of my bedroom ceiling, held up with a thumbtack, passing near the ceiling light (another thumbtack), and finishing in the kittycorner, right above the SX-99 with another thumbtack. I connected the end of this 15 feet of wire to the antenna terminal of the receiver. I could hear the entire world with that. How did I come up with ~15 feet? That's what fit. Granted, there were a lot of really high-powered SWBC stations back then, but the rule for back then still holds true: just a piece of wire will work well for receiving. Don't worry about SWR (or Baluns) for receiving antennas. They absolutely do not enter the picture. Just don't try transmitting with such antennas without a bit of forethought. |
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113
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eHam Forums / CW / RE: Users Danish Amplidan 50713 Straigth Key
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on: December 19, 2012, 09:02:36 AM
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Experiment with other knobs. I don't think I could get really happy with that one but there's no law, AFAIK, that says you MUST use it. I've had good luck with a regular J-38 style knob and a poker chip.
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115
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eHam Forums / Amplifiers / RE: Load values changed. al-811H
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on: December 18, 2012, 04:23:52 PM
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Not an answer to your question, but 30 ft of 18 ga copper wire running from your lightning arrestor to the ground is not much of a lightning ground. Generally the "codes" specify 6 ga or larger. Even though a lightning strike only lasts milli-seconds, the 18 ga wire may either burn in two or offer too much impedance to effectively dissipate (carry off) lightning strike energy.
Dick AD4U
My mistake. Its 14ga solid copper. So it's still WAY smaller than the 6 gauge that it's supposed to be (not 16 - six). "Solid" copper at 14 gauge will fuse far short of the tens of thousands of amperes in a typical lightning strike. You can't "ohm out" wiring with a 259B. I don't know what "ohming out" is; I suspect it's checking resistance, for which you need a multimeter. |
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116
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eHam Forums / Antennas and Towers and more / RE: 2 meter/ 70 cm antenna: indoor vs outdoor.
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on: December 17, 2012, 08:42:33 PM
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I've been using an old dual band mobile 5/8 wave magnet mount antenna for a while now... its magnetic base is in my closet about 7 feet off the floor (which means maybe 10 ft off the ground, accounting for crawlspace area). Most of it sticks up into the attic. The ground is a small metal square. With it connected to my baofeng uv-5r it seems to 'get out' about 15 miles to get into repeaters.
If I put it out on the back deck, with the base on a metal bbq grill (way more metal as ground) as ground, and with the magnetic base being about 8 feet off the ground, would it be able to work farther away, since it's outside? Or would it lose a height advantage?
Thanks!
Why not try it and SEE FOR YOURSELF how much difference there might be? And while you're at it, add a few decent size radials (1/4 wave on 2M; they should work on 70cm just fine). In a situation like yours, nobody but YOU can answer the question of how much difference this will make, although just about any antenna outdoors will beat the same kind of antenna indoors. |
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117
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eHam Forums / CW / RE: I should wake up properly next time!
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on: December 15, 2012, 04:38:18 PM
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It's rather odd here in the USA where a contact from Maine to Hawaii is 5,250 miles and still legally one nation and so possibly might cause a grumble if they are calling CQ DX and another American answers. OTOH, when I was operating in Europe, I had a huge variety of countries and languages within easy reach. "DX" is in the 'ear' of the beholder. 73 de Ray W7ASA ..._ ._ Ps. Please enjoy a fine , dark pint for me in absentia . We in the U.S.A. may have put a man on the moon, but we still have no idea what a fine, dark draught is.  "...in the ear of the beholder", indeed! In the summer of 1993 I operated for a few hours at the QTH of Mr. Simo Hoikka in Singapore. He was "Mr. Nokia" for Southeast Asia at the time and I worked him just a few hours before my flight to the Far East. Of course, I had to use his call (9V1YW) - but one little CQ produced about four hours of non-stop DX. Whenever a Finnish station called, he would jump in, using the Finn version of "Morse". And I was handling all the JAs with wabun. Prefixes I never heard before, or since! All of Africa! If I'd died right then I'd have lived happily ever after. |
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118
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eHam Forums / CW / RE: I should wake up properly next time!
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on: December 14, 2012, 04:47:23 PM
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It would seem that "DX" is a relative term. For me, here in Washington state, both you and the OE would be DX in my book. Canada (particularly the East Coast entities) would qualify, as would Mexico.
What's "DX" in Europe? I never thought of it....
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120
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eHam Forums / Antennas and Towers and more / RE: Soldering radial lugs
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on: December 11, 2012, 05:57:32 PM
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Here's at least what I found. Si/Pb solder rapidly degrades when exposed to the acidic rain that we experience here in the east. The once gleaming fillet of solder quickly develops a white crust, and the entire joint continues to "rot" away. I use a DX Engineering stainless steel radial plate with my vertical's large radial field, and what I've chosen to do is to make a loop in the copper wire and connect it directly under the bolt head foregoing a lug at all. I suppose a more noble solder alloy may work better than the 60/40 that I had on hand.
Curious as to the integrity of the joint, I have on occasion measured the resistance in any given radial wire by clipping one lead of my VOM to the plate, then successively piercing a number of wires with the other lead connected to a hat pin. The joints appear to have not degraded in the least, but there could be a minute amount of resistence that my meter cannot measure. I also have a number of high tensile aluminum radials that I installed as a longevity experiment, and these too are connected to the plate in a similar manner.
Just curious - what's the melting point of that silicon/lead solder? |
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