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- Written by: Maintenance Guy
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Well well well. This is welcome news. I was beginning to wonder if this would ever happen, but I'm very glad to see that it's now imminent.
I hadn't realised quite how much I'd missed these fellas.
If you've never seen TX Factor, you can't really call yourself a radio amateur. OK, so that might be a bit of an overstatement, but if you're new to the hobby, get on YouTube and get caught up!
Episode 27 was released way back in December 2020. It seems even longer ago than that, but episode 28 will apparently be released in the next fortnight.
Happy days.
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- Written by: Maintenance Guy
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Join us at lunchtime (13:30 kick-off) every weekday this week to listen in on our 15m Lunchtime Club Net. No radio required!
You can look at mine instead. It's the (fairly) new Yaesu FTDX10, and I'm lending it to you for free.
All you need to do is click on the link to our Zoom channel on the website homepage.
To give you a taste of what you'll get, I've uploaded a 15min clip to YouTube, and you can find a link to that on our Videos page.
I'd be happy to hear any audio reports and suggestions for the Zoom recording if you'd like to pass them on to me. I've been playing around with the various audio settings in Zoom trying to maximise the quality, but it's not quite there yet. I currently have Zoom set to 'Original Sound' because the automatic background noise filtering that gets applied was taking out not only the noise, but some of the higher audio frequencies. All input welcomed.
This is by no means a permanent arrangement, but maybe we can find a cost-effective solution to stream audio on demand from the club shack at some point. We'll make that happen somehow, I'm sure.
73's
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- Written by: Maintenance Guy
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Please be aware that on Tuesday 1st February, the traditional lunchtime net frequency of 21.345 MHz was considerably disrupted by a rogue signal maybe 3 kHz wide smack bang on top of our USB window. Very annoying, but it wasn't long before Ken managed to reassemble the members 20 kHz down the band at 21.325 MHz. Please keep this in mind and sweep around the band in the coming days if you encounter this problem when joining us.
Regards
Berni M0XYF
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Dropped down to the 15m FT8 slot on 21.074MHz after the net on Thursday just to have a look at the propagation. I'm seeing some noticeable improvements over time as the SFI gets above 100 more often.
No useful signal reports from me I'm afraid, other than to say that the locals were booming in, Gavin was readable, but nothing heard from Thomas or David. Keep going Thomas, you'll get there. Enjoy the journey as they say. The signal from Ken's 15m loop is a dramatic improvement here in terms of both signal strength and audio clout over both the 20m version and the dipole.
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- Written by: Phil G4UDU
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Happy New Year to all club members
I thought I would post an update on the proposed antenna for MSARS at Cyprus Hall.
As previously mentioned, this will be based on a half wave ended design using a 64:1 matching transformer at the feed point.
I have this in place at home now for testing and have been trying it with the mast wound up and the antenna at 39 feet plus also with the mast wound down and the antenna at 22 feet.
The reason for this is I thought it would be useful for others to know how it would perform if someone chose to use it themselves and maybe didn't have the ability to get it up as high into the air.
As you can see from the two sets of designs, you have an option for a very compact one operating on 40m and up, or go for the full 80m one which is the design that's going to be put into effect for MSARS.
From what I have found so far the tuning especially on its lowest frequency of operation does change with respect to height above ground - and as you move it up, the resonant frequency goes down.
It is possible to buy this design as a ready-made antenna, but you can build it yourself - all that's needed is the wire as detailed on the right plus the matching transformer.
* The schematic on the left (click to enlarge) is for a 49:1 transformer. If you want to deploy the 64:1 version, you simply require two more turns on the secondary winding, one on each side of the 'crossover'. For moderate power levels, you can just use 1 x FT240-43 mix toroid, or scale with more toroids of differing mixes as you see fit.
Steve Ellington N4LQ has done much research in recent years, and has produced several excellent YouTube videos on the subject, including this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpdpkUEW39o
He also started a great Facebook group which has really moved the EFHW discussion on leaps and bounds IMO. It can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/EndFedHalfWaveAntennas
[* Inserted by M0XYF]
If there is anything you need to know about this - please contact me.
73 Phil G4UDU
