The Elmer's Shack
Ohm's Law
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"The Elmer's Shack" is the brainchild of our very prolific writer Cory Sickles, WA3UVV. The idea behind it is to try and encourage a number of our experienced members to become Elmers, in the verbal sense, to our readers that could use the information provided. We have members that have experience in RF, DXing, digital modes, antennas, soldering, computers, contesting, and many other disciplines within amateur radio. This section is an open invitation for them to share their knowledge and experience with those who merely have an interest in amateur radio, are fully licensed, or somewhere in between.
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Fred Cady KE7X and Vic DiCiccio VE3YT have published a book: “The Successful Ham Radio Operator’s Handbook”. This new book is aimed at new or returning hams, to help them understand the practical aspects of the hobby, how to use their radios, build antennas and baluns, and get on the air successfully. For more information about this book and where to order it, go to: www.ke7x.com/successful/ordering-the-successful-ham-radio-operator-s-handbook. |
Maidenhead Grid Square Introduction
Introduction to Maidenhead Grid squares
"W1AW this is N4EGA and my grid square is Echo Mike Seven Six X-ray Bravo (EM76xb)."
As Amateur Radio operators, many of have used or heard this type of exchange before. A great number of us even know what our "Maidenhead" grid square is. But how many of us really know what it means? This is a question that I am asked by hams and non hams alike. When hams new to Amateur Radio see a Maidenhead map, their first question is usually about all the grid squares, letters and numbers.
Before I began designing maps for hams, I too was aware of Maidenhead but not really the how and why. Developing the Maidenhead Grid square layer in the Geographic Information System/Software (GIS), a few things became very apparent that I had never thought of.
Introduction to Maidenhead Grid squares
"W1AW this is N4EGA and my grid square is Echo Mike Seven Six X-ray Bravo (EM76xb)."
As Amateur Radio operators, many of have used or heard this type of exchange before. A great number of us even know what our "Maidenhead" grid square is. But how many of us really know what it means? This is a question that I am asked by hams and non hams alike. When hams new to Amateur Radio see a Maidenhead map, their first question is usually about all the grid squares, letters and numbers.
Before I began designing maps for hams, I too was aware of Maidenhead but not really the how and why. Developing the Maidenhead Grid square layer in the Geographic Information System/Software (GIS), a few things became very apparent that I had never thought of.
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As Earth is an ellipsoid (squished sphere), representing a system of grid squares requires the Earth to be flattened (also known as a projection) in order to understand the system. Thinking back to high school geometry, Maidenhead is much like the typical Cartesian coordinates that are represented on a +/- quadrant graph. As we only want to think in terms of positive, this flattened projection of Earth is placed into the +/+ quadrant, the upper right as in Figure 1
Typically, when we speak of coordinates, we speak of latitude and longitude as it begins at 0 degrees |
Figure 1
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north or south and 0 degrees east or west, which is just off the coast of the central Western Africa. In the case of Maidenhead, our origin is at 180 (or 0) degrees West and 90 degrees South which is the South Pole. This is to ensure that all grid squares only advance up the alphabet.
As such, all grid squares designations from west to east start with "A" and end in "R." Each grid square from South to North also begins with the letter "A" and ends in "R." West to east boundaries of the grid square are 20 degrees wide while South to North boundaries are 10 degrees. Therefore, the origin grid square has a designation of "AA" (lower left) and the last grid square is "RR" (upper right). See Figure 2 below.
The grid squares are not really squares, but rectangles. Yes, because of the way Earth is shaped. As an ellipsoid, lines of longitude are spaced far apart at the equator and converge at the poles. Latitude lines are evenly spaced from pole to pole. This actually causes the grid squares to be shaped as trapezoids. When viewed on a globe or any map projection that causes curvature, this becomes very apparent. Also keep in mind that there are 360 degrees of longitude while there are only 180 total degrees of latitude.
The grid squares are not really squares, but rectangles. Yes, because of the way Earth is shaped. As an ellipsoid, lines of longitude are spaced far apart at the equator and converge at the poles. Latitude lines are evenly spaced from pole to pole. This actually causes the grid squares to be shaped as trapezoids. When viewed on a globe or any map projection that causes curvature, this becomes very apparent. Also keep in mind that there are 360 degrees of longitude while there are only 180 total degrees of latitude.
Figure 2
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Reading the grid : A very simple way to remember how to read these grids is that each letter is a direction to read. The first letter is read from left to right and the second is up. So if a ham tells you "EM", then you would read on your map from left to right until you find "E" and then you would read up until "M". Right then up. For you military members out there familiar with the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS), it is the same concept. See Figure 3 |
Figure 3
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Now that the largest grid squares have been laid out it's time to work on the sub grids, the "Numbers." These are created nearly identically to the larger grid squares in that they are placed in a positive ascending manner from west to east and south to north. However, the sub grids are only 2 degrees wide from west to east and 1 degree from south to north for a total of 100 sub grids. Keeping with the same logic as the main grid squares, these sub grids are also read from west to east and then south to north,
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Figure 4
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but this time with ascending numbers beginning with "00" and ending with "99." See Figure 4
So now you have been given a Maidenhead grid of "EM76" and you want to find it on the map. You will read to the right to E and then up to M. Now that you are in grid square EM, start at 00 and read to the right until see 7 and then read up until you find 6. Right then up and will land on EM76!
The last part of EX76xb is a little bit different in that the smaller sub grids are 5 minutes from west to east and 2.5 minutes (2 minutes and 30 seconds) south to north. So now we are back to letters but use lower case instead.
So now you have been given a Maidenhead grid of "EM76" and you want to find it on the map. You will read to the right to E and then up to M. Now that you are in grid square EM, start at 00 and read to the right until see 7 and then read up until you find 6. Right then up and will land on EM76!
The last part of EX76xb is a little bit different in that the smaller sub grids are 5 minutes from west to east and 2.5 minutes (2 minutes and 30 seconds) south to north. So now we are back to letters but use lower case instead.
Why are these sub grids using 5 minutes by 2.5 minutes? One degree is made up of 60 minutes. If the units were divided by the same base 10 unit, our grids would be 12 minutes wide and 6 minutes tall. Making the grids 5 minutes by 2.5 minutes allows for a greater number of grid squares which in turn gives us a greater precision for location. Therefore, these sub grids are divided into a 24x24 letter pattern. The result is an origin of "aa" and ending in "xx." See Figure 5
Figure 5
Looking at your map again, you are now ready to find EM76xb. Each first character in the grouping is read from west to east and then the second character is read from south to north. Right then Up. Read right to "E" and then Up to "M." Now read Right to "7" and then Up to "6." Lastly, read Right to "x" and up to "b." There you have it, the QTH of N4EGA!
With a 6 character grid square, a location can be found to within a 5'(minute) by 2.5' (minute) square. What does that mean? A couple things :
- In the continental US, based on an Equal Albers Conic Projection (a projection is the Earth is flattened on a flat surface), each 6 character grid square covers about 12 square miles, or about 4 miles by 3 miles. This is fine for chasing grids but too coarse if you wish to locate a street address. For that, you will need to extend into fourth and fifth characters.
- As these are grid squares, you should really think of them as two dimensional boundaries and not singular points as with traditional Latitude and Longitude. Each six character grid square encloses an area that is 5' by 2.5'. Your position could be within any location inside of that grid square which is about 12 square miles in the continental US. Even increasing your precision to a 4 or 5 character grouping still places you within an area, not a point. It would be as if telling someone you are in a specific park, but not which part of the park. And then you tell them you are in a specific building, but not which room and so on. With latitude and longitude, you are telling someone that you are sitting in a chair, in a room, in house, in a city, in a state in a country on Earth.
Obtaining your Maidenhead grid square is fairly easy now. There are online resources for direct conversion from latitude and longitude. As web address change often, simply do an online search for “Maidenhead Converter” which will result in many good site.
QRZ.com has a database of nearly every Amateur Radio in the US and DX. Look up your callsign or one you hear on the air, and you will normally find their Grid Square listed along with other information about them.
For you rovers out there, numerous Global Positioning System (GPS) devices will provide Maidenhead grid squares to a high degree of precision. Just be sure to set your map datum to the official WGS84.
That's it!
73! DE N4EGA
Article Credit : Axles And Antennas.Com / N4EGA
www.axlesandantennas.com/pages/maidenhead-grids-square-introduction
www.axlesandantennas.com/pages/maidenhead-grids-square-introduction
Gloucester County Hams
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
In amateur radio, QTH means “location”. What’s your QTH? Are there other hams near my QTH? Is there an easy way to find out? There just might be!
Browse on over to: www.qrz.com/gridmapper and click near your home and see what happens.
Below is an example from clicking around here in Southern New Jersey. Can you find yourself, and your fellow club members on the map?
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
In amateur radio, QTH means “location”. What’s your QTH? Are there other hams near my QTH? Is there an easy way to find out? There just might be!
Browse on over to: www.qrz.com/gridmapper and click near your home and see what happens.
Below is an example from clicking around here in Southern New Jersey. Can you find yourself, and your fellow club members on the map?
Antenna Tuner Basics For The HF Beginner
By Tony Starr WA2FZB
By Tony Starr WA2FZB
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In ancient times, the average new ham used a transmitter with a vacuum tube final amplifier that most likely featured a “Pi Network” matching section. This allowed for matching the impedance of the tube, in the range of several thousand ohms, to the low impedance of a typical antenna, hopefully, but rarely, |
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somewhere close to 50 ohms. Most of these novices probably did not own an external matching network, or “antenna tuner” as they have come to be known, as the adjustable Pi network in their transmitters took care of matching the antenna load impedance to the tube final amplifier. The downside to this was the need to tune or adjust the transmitter with each change in band or even frequency.
In the early 1970’s, the technology to build solid state radios with 100 watt transistor finals had evolved to the point where manufacturers could offer them at a price which was competitive with the tube output rigs. The promise of “no tune” band changes was a big selling point. The problem was, most of these early solid state rigs had a fixed-tuned output which was designed to match 50 ohms, an impedance which few antennas can maintain over an entire amateur band. This necessitated the use of an external antenna tuner in most cases, which negated the “no-tune” selling point of these radios. Consequently, hams were slow to embrace rigs with solid state finals.
It wasn’t until the early 1980’s, when the automatic internal antenna tuner began to show up as an optional feature on HF solid state rigs, that hams began to accept the fully solid state radio as a first choice, and some of the legendary hybrid radios with tube outputs quietly exited from the market. Now a ham could just QSY at will, even between bands, and the automatic antenna tuner would follow and adjust the antenna match to the 50 ohm impedance that the transistor finals needed to see for full power output. But since there were a lot of older or cheaper radios without a built-in tuner still in use, the market for the external tuners remained strong, as it has, to some extent, to this day.
A basic manual tuner consists of either the Pi network mentioned above, which is a pair of variable shunt capacitors separated by a variable or selectable series inductor, or more commonly a T network, in which the capacitors are in series with the output path and are separated by an inductor which is a shunt to ground. As in the Pi network tuners, all three components are adjustable in some way. Modern automatic tuners use banks of caps and coils which are switched in by small relays, but they accomplish the same task in the end, which is matching the antenna impedance to the 50 ohm output of the transmitter. In spite of the near total dominance of auto-tuned radios on the market, the present day offering of external antenna tuners, both manual and automatic, is vast, with a staggering number of choices.
So why, if practically all radios sold in the recent past have a built-in automatic tuner, are external tuners so popular? To answer that fully, let us take a look at what an antenna tuner actually does and what it does not do. One thing that it does not do, despite the popular name, is tune the antenna. An antenna is normally tuned by changing its length. This sets the antenna’s resonant frequency. Every antenna has an impedance which consists of a resistive component (R), and a reactive component (X). By definition, the antenna’s resonant frequency is the frequency at which the reactance X is zero ohms. This can be, but is most likely not, the frequency at which the antenna will have a 1:1 VSWR. The reason for this is that a 1:1 VSWR will only exist if the R is 50 ohms, and most antennas are not 50 ohms. For example, a dipole in free space is about 72 ohms, and a quarter wave vertical over a proper ground is about half that, or 36 ohms.
Both of these antennas can be cut to resonance (X=0), and will still show a mismatch of about 1.4 to 1. What an “antenna tuner” does do, and do very well, is cancel reactance. An antenna which is not resonant at the desired frequency of operation will likely have a lot of reactance that needs to be countered, and a good external matching network will have a far greater matching range than the small auto tuners that are built into a modern HF radio. Most internal tuners will only match about a maximum of a 3:1 VSWR, but a good external tuner can handle ten times that, and that is one big reason why external antenna tuners have remained popular.
Another big reason for the popularity of external tuners is power handling capacity. If you own a high powered amplifier, the tuner in your radio will only match the radio to the amplifier’s input circuit. It will be of no value in matching the antenna once the amplifier is switched into the circuit. A large, high power antenna tuner can handle these duties for the QRO operator who needs more than just the 100 watt output of the radio. I have two full legal limit antenna tuners in my shack, and I use them both. They keep my kilowatt amplifier happy under a variety of antenna loads, including antennas which have been de-tuned by a buildup of ice. In several contests during ice storms, I have been able to keep on operating when others without antenna tuners have had to shut down. This can be a major competitive advantage.
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Even antennas which are properly tuned for the band of desired operation can benefit from a good external tuner when their VSWR bandwidth does not cover the entire band. On the lower bands of 80 and 160 meters, this is a significant issue since it is nearly impossible to build an efficient antenna which covers the entire band down there. My compact 160m vertical has a usable bandwidth of about 40 kHz, but by using my big DenTron tuner, I can easily double that. Operating a tuner on 160 will easily test its limits, and is the most likely
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band where a tuner will fail. The DenTron MT-2000A has never missed a beat, and I only use it on 160, at power levels up to a kilowatt. It is big, heavy, and bulletproof.
Generally, bigger is better when it comes to antenna tuners. When VSWR is high, the voltages developed in the tuning circuit can rise to surprisingly high levels. The only practical way to build big variable capacitors and inductors that can handle these voltages without arcing over is to increase the separation between the plates or coil turns, which in turn makes them very large. Physical size of these components is a good indicator of their ability to withstand the high voltages of a severe mismatch. Both of my tuners, the DenTron, and a somewhat smaller Drake MN-2000, have variable components of a large size. Neither has ever arced over on me, in spite of my best efforts to coerce them to. Very small antenna tuners are best reserved for QRP operation, as even a 100 watt signal can generate quite high voltages into a VSWR mismatch.
Another good practice which you should always adhere to is to keep the power levels down while adjusting the antenna tuner. Then, after you get a good match, you can crank it up and see how things are. If you try tuning a badly mismatched antenna at high power, you are likely to get all kinds of electrical fireworks in your tuner, amplifier, or both. This will be a mistake to regret, so it is best to avoid it altogether. You can actually do your initial tuning without even transmitting, just by adjusting for an increased noise level in the receiver. This will get you close. Then start with no more than about 30 or 40 watts until you have as close to a 1:1 VSWR as you can get. Once tuned, you can increase the power with some level of confidence that things are not going to arc and flash. The auto-tuners in most modern radios will reduce transmit power to about 10 watts or so when tuning, but for manual tuning you may need a bit more than this to get a good reading on your VSWR meter. Just use caution before applying full power.
As far as which antenna tuner to buy, get the best one that you can afford. An old Johnson Matchbox, if you can find one, offers a fully balanced output if you are into Doublet antennas fed with ladder line. Many good older tuners like the Murch and DenTron units can be found at hamfests at a good price, but if you prefer to buy new, the Palstar units are built well and are in current production. Ameritron/MFJ is often a good value, but I usually suggest buying any MFJ product from a good dealer like HRO or DX Engineering rather than ordering from MFJ directly, to avoid any potential customer service problems.
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In summary, I fully endorse the inclusion of a good, high power antenna tuner (or two) into every HF ham shack, even if you are only using resonant antennas. There will be times when having a tuner available will be well worth the expense, even if you don't use it all the time. I hope that all of you HF beginners out there will consider this important piece of equipment into your station budget for the reasons which I mentioned as well as others which I may not have. 73 and good DX to all!
Remote Ham Radio
By Karl Frank, W2KBF
Introduction :
For many years radio amateurs set have set up stations that can be controlled from distant locations. The motivation may be to take advantage of hilltop antenna sites or to permit hams who travel on business or on extended vacations to access their home stations. This article introduces a few concepts involved in remote operation and relates steps that I took to establish a basic remote station at my QTH in Swedesboro that I can access from anywhere.
To set up a radio station for remote control, one needs :
Selecting the Radio :
I wanted to operate CW and SSB on HF and also participate in nets on the GCARC 2 meter FM repeater. Some radios have a removable control panel and I liked the idea of being able to take the control panel with me when I travel. None of my existing radios met all of these specifications so a new rig was in order. Also, I did not want to spend a lot of money for a radio that would be left running unattended 24/7/365. For several months I vacillated between the Icom IC-7100 and Yaesu FT-857D, but reached a decision when Icom offered a factory rebate on the IC-7100.
Selecting the Antennas :
The IC-7100 has one SO-239 for HF plus 6 meters and a second SO-239 for the 144 and 440 MHz bands. I selected a 133 foot end-fed wire antenna from www.myantennas.com that presents a low SWR on 80 - 10 meters and re-used an old Cushcraft dual-band VHF/UHF vertical antenna. In this way, with two multiband antennas, I avoided the need for a tuner and an antenna switch (note: I recently added an LDG autotuner that helps on 75 and 80 meters).
By Karl Frank, W2KBF
Introduction :
For many years radio amateurs set have set up stations that can be controlled from distant locations. The motivation may be to take advantage of hilltop antenna sites or to permit hams who travel on business or on extended vacations to access their home stations. This article introduces a few concepts involved in remote operation and relates steps that I took to establish a basic remote station at my QTH in Swedesboro that I can access from anywhere.
To set up a radio station for remote control, one needs :
- A transceiver capable of Computer Assisted Tuning (CAT) : Most HF radios made by Icom, Kenwood or Yaesu over the last 20 years are capable of CAT control via a serial or USB port as are a number of current models from Elecraft and Flex. If your radio can be controlled by a local computer running applications such as N1MM or Ham Radio Deluxe it also can be controlled by remote over the Internet.
- A High-Speed Internet Connection : FIOS, cable or DSL are suitable but dialup does not have sufficient bandwidth.
- A “server” at the Radio Site and a “client” at the Control Operator Site to handle audio and command instructions between the radio and the control operator.
- Access to the router at the Radio Site in order to configure Port Forwarding (more on this later).
- A static IP address for the router at the Radio Site or use of a Dynamic DNS Service (more on this later).
Selecting the Radio :
I wanted to operate CW and SSB on HF and also participate in nets on the GCARC 2 meter FM repeater. Some radios have a removable control panel and I liked the idea of being able to take the control panel with me when I travel. None of my existing radios met all of these specifications so a new rig was in order. Also, I did not want to spend a lot of money for a radio that would be left running unattended 24/7/365. For several months I vacillated between the Icom IC-7100 and Yaesu FT-857D, but reached a decision when Icom offered a factory rebate on the IC-7100.
Selecting the Antennas :
The IC-7100 has one SO-239 for HF plus 6 meters and a second SO-239 for the 144 and 440 MHz bands. I selected a 133 foot end-fed wire antenna from www.myantennas.com that presents a low SWR on 80 - 10 meters and re-used an old Cushcraft dual-band VHF/UHF vertical antenna. In this way, with two multiband antennas, I avoided the need for a tuner and an antenna switch (note: I recently added an LDG autotuner that helps on 75 and 80 meters).
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Selecting the Client and Server Equipment:
There were two basic approaches : I could use computers to act as the server at the Radio Site and client at the Control Operator Site, or I could purchase a hardware solution from www.RemoteRig.com. I opted for the latter because I did not want to leave a computer running at the radio site. Figure 1 shows how the control panel plugs in to the RemoteRig client, which in turn plugs in to a router. At the other end, the body of the IC-7100 plugs in to a RemoteRig server, which in turn plugs into a router. The Internet carries the traffic between the two routers. This permits me to operate the IC-7100 using the control panel as if I were sitting in front of the radio, even when I am far away. |
Figure 1 : IC-7100 control panel, RemoteRig client and router
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How it works :
Audio is encoded and decoded by the client and server using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) which will be familiar to users of EchoLink and Skype. The server at the Radio Site handles communications between the radio and a router. The client at the Control Operator Site handles communications between the control panel and the router at that site. Tuning and other radio adjustments are sent using standard Internet Protocols, i.e. SIP, UDP, and TCP. When operating CW, a buffer helps with internet latency and jitter. For security, access to the radio station is password protected.
Configuration :
Setup of the RemoteRig boxes is not exactly Plug-and-Play, but it is not very difficult either. Configuration is via a web-based interface so, for convenience, I assigned the static IP address of 192.168.1.227 to the Radio Server and 192.168.1.228 to the Control Client, as recommended by the manufacturer. The static IP addresses make it easy for me to find the client and server on my network if I need to tweak a setting. Also, I configured the TX-timeout function of the IC-7100 to cease transmitting in the event that the remote control link fails and causes the radio to be stuck in transmit mode for more than 3 minutes (to satisfy FCC regulations).
Firewalls, NAT, and DDNS :
Home routers act as a gateway between two networks : The public Internet, which is a Wide Area Network (WAN), and your private home or Local Area Network (LAN). Routers perform several functions that guard your home network against hackers. Unfortunately, these functions also will block your attempts to access your radio station from the Internet.
The first problem is that home routers usually run a firewall that allows clients within the home network to make outgoing connections requests, e.g. to a mail server or for shopping on Amazon, but will protect your home network by blocking connection requests that originate from the outside. This firewall would make it impossible for a traveler to access their radio station when attempting to connect from outside of the home network. One solution is to set up a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that would make a designated server inside your LAN visible to the outside, but this could expose it to hacking. A better solution is to configure your router to permit Port Forwarding, such that only packets directed to specific ports are permitted to pass from the Internet thru the router to a specific server on the local home network. My setup required Port Forwarding for SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), UDP (Audio and Control Commands), and TCP (for the Web Interface). Instructions for configuring your specific model of router can be found at www.portforward.com.
A second problem is that, when acting as a gateway to the Internet, a router performs Network Address Translation (NAT) in which the router is identified on the Internet by a public WAN address, but re-addresses or translates incoming packets to be compatible with range of IP addresses used on your private local network. For example, as I write this, my router is known to the Internet as 173.54.23.5, but my computer is known to my LAN as 192.168.1.3 (the current public WAN IP address of your router can be discovered by browsing to www.whatismyip.com). This makes it difficult for connection requests originating from the Internet to find the target server within your LAN. A further complication is that unless you pay extra for a static IP address, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can change the public IP address of your home router at any time. This has been likened to the Post Office changing the street address of houses in your neighborhood on a daily basis. How could a letter that is addressed and mailed to you on Tuesday be delivered to your home on Wednesday if your street address was changed overnight?
The solution is to subscribe to a Dynamic Domain Name System (DDNS) service. This permits an application running on a server within your network to send periodic messages to the DDNS service reporting the current address of the router and the port to which it is connected. By using a DDNS service, the connection requests that you make when far away will be routed to the current, correct IP address of your radio station. RemoteRig provides a free DDNS service for its customers that permits my station to report its current public WAN address every 20 minutes. Other free DDNS services are available, but a paid subscription to a service such as www.dyn.com/remote-access, is reported to be the most reliable. Once I set up Port Forwarding and subscribed to a DDNS service, I could send connection requests to the appropriate port and IP address via the DDNS service and operate my radio by remote.
Discussion :
The approach that I described is just one of several ways to set up remote control over the Internet. The best method for you will depend upon the equipment at hand and how many users are anticipated. Club stations may want to use the free server application from
www.remotehams.com which can be installed on a computer that is left running at the radio station and accessed by software clients. Certain high-end radios from Icom and FLEX are Internet-ready with built-in servers. This eliminates the need for a host computer or RemoteRig hardware at the Radio Site. Depending on the setup, an Android phone with a good 4G connection plus appropriate app may be all that is needed as client for the operator at the Control Site.
In summary, good hardware and software is available that makes remote operation of an amateur radio station far less difficult or expensive than you may have thought. The hardest part is sorting through all of the possibilities.
Thanks to Randy WU2S for review and helpful comments, particularly with respect to Internet concepts.
An Easy Compact Vertical for 160 Meters (Plus a Bonus Band)
By Tony Starr, WA2FZB
By Tony Starr, WA2FZB
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Aside from contests, experimenting with antennas is one of my favorite activities in the ham radio hobby. This goes back to when I was about 11 years old and wasted a lot of time and wire clothes hangers on trying to get more range out of my Ch. 14 CB walkie-talkies. I built a lot of antennas out of junk in those early days, because junk was what I could afford with no income. Now, I like to experiment with vertical antennas. Verticals are the perfect antennas for experimenting because by their very nature, they require a lot of tweaking and tuning to make them work well. You can spend a lot of money on some vertical antennas, and they will not necessarily work well at all right out of the box. Some of them cost from $400 to as much as $600, and they don't necessarily work as well as a $50 wire dipole does. But what if I told you there is a high quality vertical antenna on the market, that for about $200, will not only work well right out of the box, but it will provide an enormous variety of potential for experimentation? And that antenna, the Hustler 5BTV, has been providing hams with an economical, but high quality basis for many great antenna projects for longer than I have been experimenting with antennas. The Hustler 5BTV is a 19 foot |
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aluminum mast with three traps, two "spider assemblies", and an 80 meter mobile resonator with a 36 inch stainless steel whip on top of it. It provides coverage on 10, 15, 20, 40, and about 50 kHz of 80 meters in its stock form. Many have added various kits to add other bands, and you can actually buy some of these kits right from DX Engineering. But there are also many other "hacks" on the internet that you can build yourself, some of which actually work.
Since I have a somewhat compact backyard, I was never able to put up any kind of real antenna for 160 meters. I read with interest an online article about replacing the 36 inch whip on top of the 5BTV with a 20 foot horizontal wire, to make it resonant on 160. Of course, this would be at the cost of 80 meter coverage. Since I primarily use a wire dipole for 80, I was willing to give this a try, as it seemed ridiculously easy to do, especially since I already had a 5BTV installed in my backyard over a field of 25 random length radials, which are an average of 32 feet in length. And since my 40 foot tower is only about 35 feet away, it made a convenient place to tie off the top wire, using an insulator and some small Dacron line.
What I found was that the 20 foot wire did indeed resonate on 160 meters, but that the usable bandwidth was no more than about 20 kHz wide. The other thing I found was that it was just about useless as a receiving antenna. My theory was that the three traps, which were never designed to pass RF at under 2 MHz, were effectively attenuating any signals that might have otherwise come down the antenna. But I still wanted to use the antenna for the ARRL and CQ 160 contests, so I connected a 2 port coaxial switch to my 80/40 meter dipole to allow me to route that antenna to the RCV ANT input on my TS-590. This actually worked. Using the 80m dipole for receiving, and the modified 5BTV for transmitting, I was able to make a couple of hundred contacts in each of those 160 contests, and I worked about 35 states and 10 countries in the process. The 160 mod to the 5BTV was in fact, a limited success.
Over the following summer, I started thinking about ways to improve the performance of this antenna on 160, because there were not a lot of other 160m antenna options for me that would fit in my small backyard. I considered the possibility that the three traps may be causing a lot of power loss, and attenuating received signals as well, using the logic that they were not designed to pass such low frequency signals. I was inclined to believe this because I have noticed in the past that that the 5BTV as a receiving antenna was great on 40 - 10 meters, but on 80 meters it was several S units below my dipole in received signal strength. If the traps were attenuating the 80m signals, they could be even worse on 160. Let me state that,to this day, I have not proven this theory to be true, but the results of my next step certainly supported it as a possibility.
Looking at the antenna as configured for either 80 meters, or now 160, the configuration of the antenna appeared to me as a center loaded vertical. The 3 traps, in series with the 80 meter resonator, acted as quartet of loading coils along the length of the mast. But keeping in mind that the same 80 meter resonator which sat upon a 19 foot mast as a 5BTV, could also be used on a mobile mast which was less than 5 feet long, got me thinking that the height of the mast below the resonator was not all that critical. This is true of all center loaded verticals. The radiator above the coil has far more effect on the tuning than that which is below the coil. But most of the radiation takes place below the coil. This is why a center loaded vertical is most efficient when the loading coil is at least 60% of the way up the total height. Putting more of the high current portion of the antenna before the loading coil increases radiated signal compared to an antenna with the loading coil at the base of the antenna. I surmised that I should be able to remove the lossy traps entirely and not only would the antenna still be resonant on the 160m band, it should also receive better and deliver better Effective Radiated Power on transmit.
To make the modification easily, I decided to just measure the OD of the trap tubing stubs and substitute three pieces of the same OD tubing. I was going to go with 6 foot lengths, to add some overall height to the antenna, but there were a number of factors that convinced me to use 3 foot lengths instead. For one, with the three foot tubes, the overall height at the coil would be just 25 feet, and lowering the top wire down with its support rope would place it within arms reach without using a ladder. This needs to be done a number of times when tuning the antenna, so this is somewhat significant. The other issue was that the six foot tubing would incur a shipping charge of more than the cost of the tubing, where the 3 foot tubing would not. I could just add the three pieces of 3 foot long tubing to a regular order for coax and other items from DX Engineering, and if it was more than $99 the shipping would be free. This is ultimately what I did, and the tubing cost me less than $10 for all three pieces. The tubing used had an outside diameter of 1.125 inches and fit right into the antenna tubing in place of the traps. I left 24 inches of each piece exposed. This gave me a roughly 24 foot high aluminum mast with an RM-80s resonator on top of it. The six pointed spider assembly came off with the removal of the 20m trap, but the small three pointed spider assembly, just below the resonator, remained in place.
I had to lengthen the 20 foot top wire by a foot or so after removing the traps, starting with around 21 feet and trimming it an inch or two at a time until I got my low SWR point up to around 1825 kHz. The method I used for attaching the wire to the top of the resonator was to use the short stub of stainless steel whip, which I had cut from the 36 inch whip when I had initially tuned the antenna for 80 meters. I then soldered the top wire to a copper grounding lug, the kind with a set screw on one end, and then just attached that lug to the whip stub. It is easy and provides a reliable connection. The other end of the top wire terminates to a standard ceramic dog bone insulator, with 1/8th inch Dacron line to tie off to any convenient support. This can be a tree, a fiberglass pole, or anything that is at least 25 to 30 feet tall. I have mine tied to a cross arm on my tower at about 35 feet. It is run through an eye bolt and comes back down to the ground so I can easily lower the top wire for tuning. I also added one, and later two, backstay guys of Dacron line to the antenna just below the resonator, for stabilization. An insulated guy ring is a good idea here as I found that the Dacron lines would de-tune the antenna when they got wet.
So how does it work? Actually it is not bad for what it is, a quarter wave vertical which has been electrically shortened to about one third of full size. The usable bandwidth is about 35 to 40 kHz, but I have successfully stretched that to about 75 kHz using my big DenTron tuner. I have also run about 750 watts into it during the ARRL 160m Contest, with no ill effects. And now, with the traps removed, I can actually receive strong signals with ease. For weak signal DX work, a separate low noise receiving loop would likely be a good idea and is in my future plans. Still, I have managed to work some DX with it, including a couple of Russians, for a DXCC total of 24 worked so far, and my WAS count is up to 43, which is more states than I have worked on 80 meters! I had decided at the start of the ARRL 160 contest that if I could work the West Coast and Europe, I would consider the antenna project successful, and that was not a problem. Not bad for a band that I thought I would never be able to put up an antenna for.
Oh, and the bonus band? This antenna, as I have it configured, also has a primary resonance of 10.150 MHz and is a great DX antenna for 30 meters! So if you think that you can't accommodate a reasonable antenna for 160m, get yourself a Hustler 5BTV and some tubing and start hacking! Just remember that when you get done, the antenna will no longer work very well on any of the five bands that it was designed for. Have fun and good DX.
Getting Started On HF
By Tony Starr, WA2FZB
Author's Note: This article is written primarily for both the newly licensed ham and those who have recently upgraded to General Class, but may be of interest to anyone who does not have an HF station on the air, but would like to.
When I was first licensed over 40 years ago, the Novice license was the entry level ticket, using CW only. My first station was set up for three HF bands and was a collection of crude, old, low-tech gear, as dictated by my teenage budget. When I later upgraded to General Class, I began to get interested in VHF and repeaters, eventually losing interest in HF. Nowadays, the entry level ticket is the Technician class license, and a first radio is more likely to be a dual band HT rather than some old HF boat anchor. This represents a big departure from the traditional gateway into ham radio, and has spawned a large population of hams who have had little to no experience on HF, sometimes in spite of being licensed for a significant amount of time.
Having recently gotten back into the hobby after a very long period of inactivity, I decided to go straight into HF operation, and made it a priority to put together a competent and reliable HF station, in marked contrast to the junk I operated 40 years ago. Much to my delight, I found that the selection of good HF gear, both new and used, is far better now than it was back then, and in real dollars, a much better deal in terms of the features that your dollars can buy. The radio that I started out with a couple of years ago, a Kenwood TS-850, is lightyears ahead of anything that i ever operated in my early ham career, in spite of now being old enough to qualify for membership in the QCWA. My new radio, a TS-590sg, is even more advanced, and is loaded with great features. Both of those radios together cost well under $2,000 and the 590 was brand new from Ham Radio Outlet.
If an HF neophyte were to ask me for my recommendation for a first HF transceiver, I would have a hard time picking one because there are so many good ones. Of course, the budget plays a huge roll. Under $500 will get you a good used rig of an older vintage like my TS-850. Move up to the $600 to $800 range, and there is a whole other world of choices. One radio that i must mention is the Yaesu FT-450D. Few transceivers on the market offer as many features as this one at such a bargain basement price. It is still in production, so you would have a choice of new or used. Another radio that I like, although no longer in production, is the Yaesu FT-950. This is a radio that is so nice to use that you will not likely outgrow it for quite some time. It was discontinued a few years ago, having been replaced by the FTdx-1200, but clean used 950's have been going for around $750, a great price for a really nice rig that will look really good in your shack.
Moving up to the next tier, which I consider to be $1,000 to $1,500; the choice really comes down to two transceivers, the Kenwood TS-590sg and everybody's little darling, the Icom IC-7300. Both of these radios are so good that there is really no bad choice here. It really depends on what kind of operating you plan to do. But the choice between these two is not an easy choice to make. Some hams that I know have one of each! There are several price tiers above this one, but if you get into those levels of radios, we can safely assume that you are no longer an HF neophyte, so no need to mention any of them here. There are also some great used radios on the market at these prices that were once the flagship models of their day. My advice would be to stay away from these until you have more experience to use and maintain these monsters. Better to start off with something simpler and easier to use.
As far as antennas go, there are good reasons why the dipole is the actual standard against which all other antennas are measured. I have a dual band dipole for 80m and 40m, which has served me very well. It is installed in the inverted-V configuration and the apex is only about 35 feet up, with the ends being 15 to 20 feet off the ground. I have several vertical antennas, and on thier best days they MAY work almost as well as the dipole. Needless to say, the dual band dipole is the workhorse at my station for 80 and 40 meters. It is actually two dipoles fed by a common feedline through a current balun. Some call this a fan dipole, or a "Maypole", depending on how the wires are configured with respect to each other. My four wires are roughly 90 degrees apart and are attached to various supports, none of which are trees. I typically only use trees as temporary supports. If you have an antenna tuner with a balanced output, a great way to put up a dipole is to cut it for the lowest frequency band that you plan to operate and feed it with ladder line. This will give you a very efficient antenna. Remember that an inverted-V will not take up quite as much space as a flat dipole, and is mechanically more secure.
What about verticals? I own several, but I must stress that the most important part of any vertical antenna system is the ground plane or radial system. If you use a vertical antenna without radials, you are not getting the most out of it. For an elevated vertical you can get by with as few as 2 to 4 radials, but if your vertical is ground mounted, you had better plan on installing at least two dozen, and more if you can. The radial system is vital for collecting the return currents from the antenna, and is really the other half of the antenna. Generally, elevated radials are cut to a resonant length, usually a quarter wavelength, but ground mounted radials need not be any longer than the antenna is tall in most cases. If you have a very small backyard, a vertical antenna can get you on HF with good results. My favorite vertical is the Hustler 5BTV, which covers 10, 15, 20, and 40 meters, plus about 50 kHz of the 80m band. There are others which are also good, but none offer the value that the Hustler 5BTV does. At around $200, it is in a class by itself for value.
Another thing to consider when putting up your antennas is whether or not you plan to get an amplifier. I initially did not plan to operate at high power, so I chose lightweight baluns and feedlines. Eventually I discovered that I was not being heard nearly as often as I would have liked to be, so I acquired an amplifier, and I had to then upgrade my baluns and feedlines. Fortunately, these low power baluns and feedlines have found a new life as Field Day antennas, where amplifiers are still a rarity. If you plan to operate only CW or the Digital Modes like PSK-31 and FT-8, chances are that you will not need an amplifier. On the other hand, if you are planning to operate phone contests on the lower bands, running some power can mean the difference between being heard and being frustrated. Legal limit amplifiers are expensive, and largely un-necessary. An amplifier which puts out between 600 and 800 watts will be fine for most HF operation under challenging conditions.
Choosing an amplifier can be as daunting a task as choosing a radio. And it can be every bit as costly! This is the biggest difference in the price of ham gear now as opposed to when I was last active back in the 80's. In many cases, a new amplifier can now cost more than a new radio. Back in those days, power tubes were cheap and commonly available. This is not the case today. In my opinion, one of the most important things to consider when choosing an amplifier is the cost and availability of the output devices (tubes or transistors). This will become a big deal only when you have to replace them, but eventually you will. A good choice for a first amplifier is the Ameritron AL-80B. It uses a single 3-500 tube, which are readily available new for about $200. You can find a clean, used AL-80B for around a grand, but a brand new one is only about $1500, if you want the assurance that nobody before you has ever abused it. That actually can be money well spent. Amplifiers are amazingly easy to abuse. More expensive amplifiers are loaded with protective circuitry, under the assumption that someone will try to abuse the amplifier, but of course you get what you pay for.
Getting on HF can open up a whole new world of ham radio for the ham who has been limited to VHF and UHF. Working DX can be exciting, and there can be a lot of activity on the HF bands, especially during the contest weekends. Right now, FT-8 is all the rage, but good old CW and SSB can be a lot of fun and have a long heritage of tradition on the HF bands. I say that if you are trying out HF, do not limit yourself to just one band or mode. This is a slump that is easy to fall into and may eventually result in your getting bored with your "favorite" band and/or mode. Move around, try different bands, work on your CW skills, and maybe try a contest or special event, like the 13 Colonies event, or the Museum Ships weekend. There is so much to do and so much fun to be had now on HF, and hopefully in a few years the sunspots may even come back!
Well that's all I have for now, but if you are putting an HF station on the air and have some questions, I will be glad to try and answer them for you. I don't claim to be an expert on anything but I read a lot and have a technical background, so I can usually figure things out. And I promise that any advice I give you will be worth every penny that I charge you for it! 73 and see you on the HF bands.
By Tony Starr, WA2FZB
Author's Note: This article is written primarily for both the newly licensed ham and those who have recently upgraded to General Class, but may be of interest to anyone who does not have an HF station on the air, but would like to.
When I was first licensed over 40 years ago, the Novice license was the entry level ticket, using CW only. My first station was set up for three HF bands and was a collection of crude, old, low-tech gear, as dictated by my teenage budget. When I later upgraded to General Class, I began to get interested in VHF and repeaters, eventually losing interest in HF. Nowadays, the entry level ticket is the Technician class license, and a first radio is more likely to be a dual band HT rather than some old HF boat anchor. This represents a big departure from the traditional gateway into ham radio, and has spawned a large population of hams who have had little to no experience on HF, sometimes in spite of being licensed for a significant amount of time.
Having recently gotten back into the hobby after a very long period of inactivity, I decided to go straight into HF operation, and made it a priority to put together a competent and reliable HF station, in marked contrast to the junk I operated 40 years ago. Much to my delight, I found that the selection of good HF gear, both new and used, is far better now than it was back then, and in real dollars, a much better deal in terms of the features that your dollars can buy. The radio that I started out with a couple of years ago, a Kenwood TS-850, is lightyears ahead of anything that i ever operated in my early ham career, in spite of now being old enough to qualify for membership in the QCWA. My new radio, a TS-590sg, is even more advanced, and is loaded with great features. Both of those radios together cost well under $2,000 and the 590 was brand new from Ham Radio Outlet.
If an HF neophyte were to ask me for my recommendation for a first HF transceiver, I would have a hard time picking one because there are so many good ones. Of course, the budget plays a huge roll. Under $500 will get you a good used rig of an older vintage like my TS-850. Move up to the $600 to $800 range, and there is a whole other world of choices. One radio that i must mention is the Yaesu FT-450D. Few transceivers on the market offer as many features as this one at such a bargain basement price. It is still in production, so you would have a choice of new or used. Another radio that I like, although no longer in production, is the Yaesu FT-950. This is a radio that is so nice to use that you will not likely outgrow it for quite some time. It was discontinued a few years ago, having been replaced by the FTdx-1200, but clean used 950's have been going for around $750, a great price for a really nice rig that will look really good in your shack.
Moving up to the next tier, which I consider to be $1,000 to $1,500; the choice really comes down to two transceivers, the Kenwood TS-590sg and everybody's little darling, the Icom IC-7300. Both of these radios are so good that there is really no bad choice here. It really depends on what kind of operating you plan to do. But the choice between these two is not an easy choice to make. Some hams that I know have one of each! There are several price tiers above this one, but if you get into those levels of radios, we can safely assume that you are no longer an HF neophyte, so no need to mention any of them here. There are also some great used radios on the market at these prices that were once the flagship models of their day. My advice would be to stay away from these until you have more experience to use and maintain these monsters. Better to start off with something simpler and easier to use.
As far as antennas go, there are good reasons why the dipole is the actual standard against which all other antennas are measured. I have a dual band dipole for 80m and 40m, which has served me very well. It is installed in the inverted-V configuration and the apex is only about 35 feet up, with the ends being 15 to 20 feet off the ground. I have several vertical antennas, and on thier best days they MAY work almost as well as the dipole. Needless to say, the dual band dipole is the workhorse at my station for 80 and 40 meters. It is actually two dipoles fed by a common feedline through a current balun. Some call this a fan dipole, or a "Maypole", depending on how the wires are configured with respect to each other. My four wires are roughly 90 degrees apart and are attached to various supports, none of which are trees. I typically only use trees as temporary supports. If you have an antenna tuner with a balanced output, a great way to put up a dipole is to cut it for the lowest frequency band that you plan to operate and feed it with ladder line. This will give you a very efficient antenna. Remember that an inverted-V will not take up quite as much space as a flat dipole, and is mechanically more secure.
What about verticals? I own several, but I must stress that the most important part of any vertical antenna system is the ground plane or radial system. If you use a vertical antenna without radials, you are not getting the most out of it. For an elevated vertical you can get by with as few as 2 to 4 radials, but if your vertical is ground mounted, you had better plan on installing at least two dozen, and more if you can. The radial system is vital for collecting the return currents from the antenna, and is really the other half of the antenna. Generally, elevated radials are cut to a resonant length, usually a quarter wavelength, but ground mounted radials need not be any longer than the antenna is tall in most cases. If you have a very small backyard, a vertical antenna can get you on HF with good results. My favorite vertical is the Hustler 5BTV, which covers 10, 15, 20, and 40 meters, plus about 50 kHz of the 80m band. There are others which are also good, but none offer the value that the Hustler 5BTV does. At around $200, it is in a class by itself for value.
Another thing to consider when putting up your antennas is whether or not you plan to get an amplifier. I initially did not plan to operate at high power, so I chose lightweight baluns and feedlines. Eventually I discovered that I was not being heard nearly as often as I would have liked to be, so I acquired an amplifier, and I had to then upgrade my baluns and feedlines. Fortunately, these low power baluns and feedlines have found a new life as Field Day antennas, where amplifiers are still a rarity. If you plan to operate only CW or the Digital Modes like PSK-31 and FT-8, chances are that you will not need an amplifier. On the other hand, if you are planning to operate phone contests on the lower bands, running some power can mean the difference between being heard and being frustrated. Legal limit amplifiers are expensive, and largely un-necessary. An amplifier which puts out between 600 and 800 watts will be fine for most HF operation under challenging conditions.
Choosing an amplifier can be as daunting a task as choosing a radio. And it can be every bit as costly! This is the biggest difference in the price of ham gear now as opposed to when I was last active back in the 80's. In many cases, a new amplifier can now cost more than a new radio. Back in those days, power tubes were cheap and commonly available. This is not the case today. In my opinion, one of the most important things to consider when choosing an amplifier is the cost and availability of the output devices (tubes or transistors). This will become a big deal only when you have to replace them, but eventually you will. A good choice for a first amplifier is the Ameritron AL-80B. It uses a single 3-500 tube, which are readily available new for about $200. You can find a clean, used AL-80B for around a grand, but a brand new one is only about $1500, if you want the assurance that nobody before you has ever abused it. That actually can be money well spent. Amplifiers are amazingly easy to abuse. More expensive amplifiers are loaded with protective circuitry, under the assumption that someone will try to abuse the amplifier, but of course you get what you pay for.
Getting on HF can open up a whole new world of ham radio for the ham who has been limited to VHF and UHF. Working DX can be exciting, and there can be a lot of activity on the HF bands, especially during the contest weekends. Right now, FT-8 is all the rage, but good old CW and SSB can be a lot of fun and have a long heritage of tradition on the HF bands. I say that if you are trying out HF, do not limit yourself to just one band or mode. This is a slump that is easy to fall into and may eventually result in your getting bored with your "favorite" band and/or mode. Move around, try different bands, work on your CW skills, and maybe try a contest or special event, like the 13 Colonies event, or the Museum Ships weekend. There is so much to do and so much fun to be had now on HF, and hopefully in a few years the sunspots may even come back!
Well that's all I have for now, but if you are putting an HF station on the air and have some questions, I will be glad to try and answer them for you. I don't claim to be an expert on anything but I read a lot and have a technical background, so I can usually figure things out. And I promise that any advice I give you will be worth every penny that I charge you for it! 73 and see you on the HF bands.
The Money Bands, and “all those others”
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
I was reading an article about Brian Justin, WA2ZMS, who just completed contacts on 29 ham bands. 29 ham bands? Wow! I didn’t even realize there were that many! When we operate field day, we tend to use what, like 6 bands? What are all these other bands? You probably already know. I needed a refresher. Follow along as I grab a copy of the latest US Amateur Radio Bands, and check out what these might be.
18 bands up to 1.2 GHz
Turns out there are now 18 bands up to the 1.2 GHz band, and another 11 above that. Setting those 11 bands above 1.2 GHz aside for a moment, what are these 18 other bands? And which are you equipped to operate on? Let’s check our radios, and start counting them up. Which am I missing?
I checked my radios. For many operators, like me, there’s 2 Meters, and 70 centimeters on our hand held HT or car radios. I use them when I’m traveling about town. As you know, your club, the GCARC, operates a System Fusion repeater on the 2 Meter band at 147.180 MHz from a Pitman water tower location. A 70 cm repeater can also operate out of that location. Technician privileges give you access to both of those bands. Ok, that’s 2 bands so far.
Main bands on HF
If you’re privileged to be able to play on HF, then there are the “money” bands of 80 Meters, 40 Meters, 20 Meters, 15 Meters, and 10 Meters. You can get on these popular bands with most HF radios, using reasonably sized antennas. Do I call them the “money” bands because this is where the HF action is to score points during radio contest weekends? Or is it because of this natural affliction we hams develop, where we find ourselves needing to spend money to upgrade equipment again and again, to better compete on these bands? Whatever you call these bands, that’s 5 more, for a total of 7 bands so far. What others?
WARC bands
Some HF radios have access to the “WARC” bands. There are 3 of these bands - 30, 17, and 12 Meters. Some may recall when these bands were not part of amateur radio. However, you’d have to be getting up there in age for that to be the case. These became part of amateur radio in 1979. In the United States, we’ve had privileges on the WARC bands since the early 1980’s! Counting the years since then on your fingers? Yea, let’s not and say we did. Ok, that’s 3 more bands, total of 10 bands so far.
Magic Band
Let’s count 6 Meters. Technically, 6 Meters is above the HF band, though you can get it included in some multi-band HF rigs. There are also some hand held radios that offer 6 Meters. 6 Meters is sometimes called the “magic band”. When the sunspot numbers are high (not now), I am told it can be amazing.
Most of the time though, 6 Meters is “line of sight”, similar to 2 Meters. But sometimes, often in the summer, crazy sporadic-E skip can happen, offering long distance contact opportunities with very little power required. Also, meteor scatter communications is available on this band, day and night. Some people really like 6 Meters. When 6 Meters is hopping, I’ve heard of people calling in sick to the office to take advantage of the conditions, it can be that exciting when it opens up. Trouble is, you just never know when that is going to be, or for how long!
Old Top Band
160 Meters has traditionally been called the “top band”, but really isn’t anymore. There are a couple new bands more “top” than this “top band” now, but let’s talk about them later.
160 Meters takes an effort to operate on successfully. For starters, the wavelength is long and poses some antenna challenges. Using a favorite website for reference: www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/antennas.html, you can see a half wave dipole on 160 Meters needs to be 254 feet long! Even a quarter wave vertical is difficult, without some kind of electrical shortening, as it needs to be 127 feet tall! There is also the matter of static crashes. Summer time lightning storms often cause considerable interference on the lower frequency bands, even at distance.
Still, for all its challenges, some people really like 160 Meters. They often put great effort (and money) into their stations, particularly the microphone systems, taking pride in having distinguished audio quality for those late night rag chew sessions. Ok, that’s two more bands mentioned, total of 12 so far.
Into UHF
In addition to being able to operate on 2 Meters or 70 cm, some hand held or base station radios are also capable of operating on one or more of these bands: 1.25 Meters (222 MHz), 33 cm (902 MHz), and/or 23 cm (1.2 GHz). As you may know GCARC recently installed a new BridgeCom repeater for 1.25 Meters at the Washington Township repeater location. It reportedly has great coverage even up into the Cherry Hill area. Ok, that’s 3 more bands. That’s 15 so far. Can you figure out yet what am I missing?
Channelized radio
60 Meters is one of them. Unlike other bands, this one is channelized with reduced power and other restrictions for use in the United States. Not all HF radios have this capability, and some of the older ones that do, don’t have the ability to operate on the channels currently authorized today. That’s 16. What are the other 2?
MF and LF, new bands
That exhausted the bands I was familiar with. But, it turns out there are two more. Last year, new “top” bands of 630 Meters (472 kHz, MF) and 2200 Meters (135 kHz, LF) have appeared on the ARRL’s chart of US Amateur Radio Bands, albeit with a number of restrictions. These restrictions include an effective radiated power limit of 1 Watt maximum on LF, or on MF if you are within 496 miles of Russia, and a unique requirement on either band to register first with the Utilities Technology Council. If I read this right, a power line carrier group may be able to deny your request to operate on these frequencies based on your location? I filled out the form for my QTH and submitted online tonight. I’ll let you know what happens.
If you thought there were technical challenges operating at 160 Meters, imagine 2200 Meters. A half wavelength for a dipole on 2200 Meters would be over a half mile long! No, I don’t have any equipment that can transmit on these bands. But I might be able to improvise some. And my old ICOM 7000 claims to have general purpose receive capability down to 30 kHz. So, here’s an offer. If any of you out there can transmit on these bands, and want to give a cross-band contact a try, I can give listening a try on one of these new bands, and call you back on HF. Let me know if want to give it a try!
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
I was reading an article about Brian Justin, WA2ZMS, who just completed contacts on 29 ham bands. 29 ham bands? Wow! I didn’t even realize there were that many! When we operate field day, we tend to use what, like 6 bands? What are all these other bands? You probably already know. I needed a refresher. Follow along as I grab a copy of the latest US Amateur Radio Bands, and check out what these might be.
18 bands up to 1.2 GHz
Turns out there are now 18 bands up to the 1.2 GHz band, and another 11 above that. Setting those 11 bands above 1.2 GHz aside for a moment, what are these 18 other bands? And which are you equipped to operate on? Let’s check our radios, and start counting them up. Which am I missing?
I checked my radios. For many operators, like me, there’s 2 Meters, and 70 centimeters on our hand held HT or car radios. I use them when I’m traveling about town. As you know, your club, the GCARC, operates a System Fusion repeater on the 2 Meter band at 147.180 MHz from a Pitman water tower location. A 70 cm repeater can also operate out of that location. Technician privileges give you access to both of those bands. Ok, that’s 2 bands so far.
Main bands on HF
If you’re privileged to be able to play on HF, then there are the “money” bands of 80 Meters, 40 Meters, 20 Meters, 15 Meters, and 10 Meters. You can get on these popular bands with most HF radios, using reasonably sized antennas. Do I call them the “money” bands because this is where the HF action is to score points during radio contest weekends? Or is it because of this natural affliction we hams develop, where we find ourselves needing to spend money to upgrade equipment again and again, to better compete on these bands? Whatever you call these bands, that’s 5 more, for a total of 7 bands so far. What others?
WARC bands
Some HF radios have access to the “WARC” bands. There are 3 of these bands - 30, 17, and 12 Meters. Some may recall when these bands were not part of amateur radio. However, you’d have to be getting up there in age for that to be the case. These became part of amateur radio in 1979. In the United States, we’ve had privileges on the WARC bands since the early 1980’s! Counting the years since then on your fingers? Yea, let’s not and say we did. Ok, that’s 3 more bands, total of 10 bands so far.
Magic Band
Let’s count 6 Meters. Technically, 6 Meters is above the HF band, though you can get it included in some multi-band HF rigs. There are also some hand held radios that offer 6 Meters. 6 Meters is sometimes called the “magic band”. When the sunspot numbers are high (not now), I am told it can be amazing.
Most of the time though, 6 Meters is “line of sight”, similar to 2 Meters. But sometimes, often in the summer, crazy sporadic-E skip can happen, offering long distance contact opportunities with very little power required. Also, meteor scatter communications is available on this band, day and night. Some people really like 6 Meters. When 6 Meters is hopping, I’ve heard of people calling in sick to the office to take advantage of the conditions, it can be that exciting when it opens up. Trouble is, you just never know when that is going to be, or for how long!
Old Top Band
160 Meters has traditionally been called the “top band”, but really isn’t anymore. There are a couple new bands more “top” than this “top band” now, but let’s talk about them later.
160 Meters takes an effort to operate on successfully. For starters, the wavelength is long and poses some antenna challenges. Using a favorite website for reference: www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/antennas.html, you can see a half wave dipole on 160 Meters needs to be 254 feet long! Even a quarter wave vertical is difficult, without some kind of electrical shortening, as it needs to be 127 feet tall! There is also the matter of static crashes. Summer time lightning storms often cause considerable interference on the lower frequency bands, even at distance.
Still, for all its challenges, some people really like 160 Meters. They often put great effort (and money) into their stations, particularly the microphone systems, taking pride in having distinguished audio quality for those late night rag chew sessions. Ok, that’s two more bands mentioned, total of 12 so far.
Into UHF
In addition to being able to operate on 2 Meters or 70 cm, some hand held or base station radios are also capable of operating on one or more of these bands: 1.25 Meters (222 MHz), 33 cm (902 MHz), and/or 23 cm (1.2 GHz). As you may know GCARC recently installed a new BridgeCom repeater for 1.25 Meters at the Washington Township repeater location. It reportedly has great coverage even up into the Cherry Hill area. Ok, that’s 3 more bands. That’s 15 so far. Can you figure out yet what am I missing?
Channelized radio
60 Meters is one of them. Unlike other bands, this one is channelized with reduced power and other restrictions for use in the United States. Not all HF radios have this capability, and some of the older ones that do, don’t have the ability to operate on the channels currently authorized today. That’s 16. What are the other 2?
MF and LF, new bands
That exhausted the bands I was familiar with. But, it turns out there are two more. Last year, new “top” bands of 630 Meters (472 kHz, MF) and 2200 Meters (135 kHz, LF) have appeared on the ARRL’s chart of US Amateur Radio Bands, albeit with a number of restrictions. These restrictions include an effective radiated power limit of 1 Watt maximum on LF, or on MF if you are within 496 miles of Russia, and a unique requirement on either band to register first with the Utilities Technology Council. If I read this right, a power line carrier group may be able to deny your request to operate on these frequencies based on your location? I filled out the form for my QTH and submitted online tonight. I’ll let you know what happens.
If you thought there were technical challenges operating at 160 Meters, imagine 2200 Meters. A half wavelength for a dipole on 2200 Meters would be over a half mile long! No, I don’t have any equipment that can transmit on these bands. But I might be able to improvise some. And my old ICOM 7000 claims to have general purpose receive capability down to 30 kHz. So, here’s an offer. If any of you out there can transmit on these bands, and want to give a cross-band contact a try, I can give listening a try on one of these new bands, and call you back on HF. Let me know if want to give it a try!
Why Contest?
By Tony Starr WA2FZB
In the fall of 2015, I was installing a tower and antenna system for a station that I did not yet have. I had been QRT for close to 25 years, and was on my way to getting back on the air. My good friend Tom, N2SR, had given me 40 feet of Rohn 25g tower and got me a good deal on a Mosley Classic 33 antenna, and we were in the process of installing them, when I had to give some thought to what facets of this great hobby that I would be pursuing. At the time, I did not have a working rotator, but Tom had one that needed to be rebuilt. With winter approaching, we went ahead and put the antenna up anyway, figuring that I could always get the rotor up in the spring. Since Tom is an avid contester and DXer, he suggested pointing the antenna toward Europe. I told him to point it West, since at that time, I had no interest in working DX and thought I might like to work toward my WAS. He gave me an odd look, then swung the beam around on the mast, and locked it in place with a muffler clamp.
After the holidays were over, I was thinking that maybe I should start shopping for a used HF transciever to put on the air, when a late visit from Santa (actually it was my cousin Bob, W2RAD) landed a nice clean Kenwood TS-850 in my new "shack". Bob even brought a box full of accessories, cables, and other goodies that I needed to get on the air. I scrambled to borrow a 12 volt power supply, and on January 9, 2016, WA2FZB was back on the ham bands for the first time in a quarter of a century. All of the excitement of my Novice days came rushing back to me, and I even found that in a few weeks I could still copy code poorly at 13 wpm just like I did in my youth!
It only took me six or eight weeks to find out that I really did enjoy working DX after all, and I began to think that I should have let Tom point the antenna toward Europe like he wanted to. But I discovered something else, that stirred up excitement for me even more than the thought of working DX. I heard contesting going on during the weekends, and I wanted in. By then it was late February, the weather was starting to improve, and we were just a couple of weeks away from the ARRL DX SSB contest. Before that contest date came around, I was up on that tower with a pipe wrench turning that antenna toward Europe! I made almost 275 contacts that weekend and I have never looked back. Contesting is now my primary interest within the hobby.
But why contest? Many non-contesters wonder what is the attraction, and some are actually angered by the thought of wall-to-wall signals filling the bands for an entire weekend. But let's face it, contesting is a big part of the hobby, one which has pushed the state of the art for HF radios and antenna systems for decades now. Some of the best operators are contesters, and they are operating some of the best stations around. So just what is the attraction, anyway? Have you ever wondered, or were you curious about why you might want to pursue contesting?
Boiled down to its essence, contesting is just regular ham radio in a super fast, super concentrated form. Many of the things that average hams do during the week are done by contesters on the weekends, but at much faster speeds. Remember that I thought it might be nice to work on my WAS? How about working WAS in twelve hours? I actually did this in the November Sweepstakes last year, and came within one state of doing it again this year. Have you ever wanted to work toward DXCC? Avid DX contesters regularly do it in a weekend, sometimes on more than one band. These are examples of how contesting accelerates normal ham radio pursuits.
Perhaps you have wondered how effective your station is compared to other hams in your area. Contesting gives you a way to directly measure the performance of your station, and to see how much difference certain improvements will make. From one year to the next, you may replace that old tri-bander with the latest, computer designed work of aluminum art. A large increase in your contest scores over last year will go a long way toward convincing you that it was money well spent, even if the XYL does not think so. Contesting serves as a way to measure station performance.
I got my Novice license in 1976, my General in 1977, and my Advanced Class license in 1978, but I never went for my Extra Class back then, because I could not pass the 20 wpm code test that was a requirement in those days. I did get my Extra in 2016, but of course the code requirements had long been gone by then. But I can say with fair certainty that I could pass that 20 wpm test today, if there were one. So why am I much better at CW now than I was 40 years ago? CONTESTING! Specifically, CW contesting. There is nothing that has advanced my code copying ability better than operating in CW contests. The first time after I spent a weekend operating a big CW contest, and I went back to the regular CW bands the next day, I wondered why everyone was sending so slow. Contesting is excellent high speed code practice.
I am sure that you have felt the comeraderie that is an integral part of ham radio. In contesting circles, that comeraderie is magnified, but there is a twist, that comes from the competitive part of contesting. Your adversary may represent the competition, but you need his or her cooperation in order for both of you to succeed. This builds a sort of fraternity within the fraternity of ham radio that is very special, and very real. When you become a regular member of the contesting community you will recognize what I am referring to, and you may come to quickly appreciate it. In my less than two years of active contesting, I feel that I have been welcomed by the contesting community that exists within the main hobby.
Finally, there is the big reason, the obvious one. Contesting IS FUN! You only need to try it to find out for yourself. There are many who have tried out a state QSO party who had never before had an interest in contesting, and found out that they really enjoyed it. These can be a great introduction to contesting for the beginner, though I personally would suggest the North American QSO Parties, which are held in January and August. They are just twelve hours long, and are easy for beginners to jump into.
So why not contesting? Maybe you just need to give it try. But be careful, because it can be addictive! Looking forward to hearing you in the next one. CQ CONTEST!
By Tony Starr WA2FZB
In the fall of 2015, I was installing a tower and antenna system for a station that I did not yet have. I had been QRT for close to 25 years, and was on my way to getting back on the air. My good friend Tom, N2SR, had given me 40 feet of Rohn 25g tower and got me a good deal on a Mosley Classic 33 antenna, and we were in the process of installing them, when I had to give some thought to what facets of this great hobby that I would be pursuing. At the time, I did not have a working rotator, but Tom had one that needed to be rebuilt. With winter approaching, we went ahead and put the antenna up anyway, figuring that I could always get the rotor up in the spring. Since Tom is an avid contester and DXer, he suggested pointing the antenna toward Europe. I told him to point it West, since at that time, I had no interest in working DX and thought I might like to work toward my WAS. He gave me an odd look, then swung the beam around on the mast, and locked it in place with a muffler clamp.
After the holidays were over, I was thinking that maybe I should start shopping for a used HF transciever to put on the air, when a late visit from Santa (actually it was my cousin Bob, W2RAD) landed a nice clean Kenwood TS-850 in my new "shack". Bob even brought a box full of accessories, cables, and other goodies that I needed to get on the air. I scrambled to borrow a 12 volt power supply, and on January 9, 2016, WA2FZB was back on the ham bands for the first time in a quarter of a century. All of the excitement of my Novice days came rushing back to me, and I even found that in a few weeks I could still copy code poorly at 13 wpm just like I did in my youth!
It only took me six or eight weeks to find out that I really did enjoy working DX after all, and I began to think that I should have let Tom point the antenna toward Europe like he wanted to. But I discovered something else, that stirred up excitement for me even more than the thought of working DX. I heard contesting going on during the weekends, and I wanted in. By then it was late February, the weather was starting to improve, and we were just a couple of weeks away from the ARRL DX SSB contest. Before that contest date came around, I was up on that tower with a pipe wrench turning that antenna toward Europe! I made almost 275 contacts that weekend and I have never looked back. Contesting is now my primary interest within the hobby.
But why contest? Many non-contesters wonder what is the attraction, and some are actually angered by the thought of wall-to-wall signals filling the bands for an entire weekend. But let's face it, contesting is a big part of the hobby, one which has pushed the state of the art for HF radios and antenna systems for decades now. Some of the best operators are contesters, and they are operating some of the best stations around. So just what is the attraction, anyway? Have you ever wondered, or were you curious about why you might want to pursue contesting?
Boiled down to its essence, contesting is just regular ham radio in a super fast, super concentrated form. Many of the things that average hams do during the week are done by contesters on the weekends, but at much faster speeds. Remember that I thought it might be nice to work on my WAS? How about working WAS in twelve hours? I actually did this in the November Sweepstakes last year, and came within one state of doing it again this year. Have you ever wanted to work toward DXCC? Avid DX contesters regularly do it in a weekend, sometimes on more than one band. These are examples of how contesting accelerates normal ham radio pursuits.
Perhaps you have wondered how effective your station is compared to other hams in your area. Contesting gives you a way to directly measure the performance of your station, and to see how much difference certain improvements will make. From one year to the next, you may replace that old tri-bander with the latest, computer designed work of aluminum art. A large increase in your contest scores over last year will go a long way toward convincing you that it was money well spent, even if the XYL does not think so. Contesting serves as a way to measure station performance.
I got my Novice license in 1976, my General in 1977, and my Advanced Class license in 1978, but I never went for my Extra Class back then, because I could not pass the 20 wpm code test that was a requirement in those days. I did get my Extra in 2016, but of course the code requirements had long been gone by then. But I can say with fair certainty that I could pass that 20 wpm test today, if there were one. So why am I much better at CW now than I was 40 years ago? CONTESTING! Specifically, CW contesting. There is nothing that has advanced my code copying ability better than operating in CW contests. The first time after I spent a weekend operating a big CW contest, and I went back to the regular CW bands the next day, I wondered why everyone was sending so slow. Contesting is excellent high speed code practice.
I am sure that you have felt the comeraderie that is an integral part of ham radio. In contesting circles, that comeraderie is magnified, but there is a twist, that comes from the competitive part of contesting. Your adversary may represent the competition, but you need his or her cooperation in order for both of you to succeed. This builds a sort of fraternity within the fraternity of ham radio that is very special, and very real. When you become a regular member of the contesting community you will recognize what I am referring to, and you may come to quickly appreciate it. In my less than two years of active contesting, I feel that I have been welcomed by the contesting community that exists within the main hobby.
Finally, there is the big reason, the obvious one. Contesting IS FUN! You only need to try it to find out for yourself. There are many who have tried out a state QSO party who had never before had an interest in contesting, and found out that they really enjoyed it. These can be a great introduction to contesting for the beginner, though I personally would suggest the North American QSO Parties, which are held in January and August. They are just twelve hours long, and are easy for beginners to jump into.
So why not contesting? Maybe you just need to give it try. But be careful, because it can be addictive! Looking forward to hearing you in the next one. CQ CONTEST!
John Fallows, VE6EY, of Calgary, Alberta, has published a series of articles on his website called
Noise Cancelers - RFI Survival Guide. The purpose of this information is to help hams and shortwave listeners lower their local HF noise floor and improve reception. You can view these articles at: http://play.fallows.ca/wp/series/noise-cancelers-rfi-survival-guide
Noise Cancelers - RFI Survival Guide. The purpose of this information is to help hams and shortwave listeners lower their local HF noise floor and improve reception. You can view these articles at: http://play.fallows.ca/wp/series/noise-cancelers-rfi-survival-guide
FT-8 : Under The Covers
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
How to create multiple user configurations in WSJT-X/FT8
Introduction
WSJT-X is an outstanding software program used for making digital Amateur Radio contacts, including contacts in the new FT8 digital mode.
Reference: www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt.
Here’s a quick “how to”, with examples, for configuring WSJT-X for multiple personalized configurations. This is particularly useful, for example, when you have different operators with different callsigns in the same household sharing a computer, each wanting their own customized configuration(s).
To do this, the simple steps are to clone the current configuration, switch to the cloned configuration, and then customize it. Steps to do this are detailed in this paper. To quickly switch between them, you simply use the Configurations menu to select which one you want to switch to, and the program automatically restarts into that configuration.
Details
The “configurations” menu on WSJT-X allows for you to pre-define, and switch between, multiple configurations that you can define and save ahead of time. This can be useful, for example, when there are multiple Amateur Operators that are sharing a computer, and each wants to have a pre-defined settings profile with their callsign, and other settings, that they can easily return to when the user of the program changes.
Here’s some screen shots and instructions showing how I created a new profile for a callsign W2MMD, by cloning all the default parameters that I have set up for my use.
Check Default Settings
First, start the program, and check all the default settings. Settings are found on the File->Settings pop up menu, as shown here.
WSJT-X is an outstanding software program used for making digital Amateur Radio contacts, including contacts in the new FT8 digital mode.
Reference: www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt.
Here’s a quick “how to”, with examples, for configuring WSJT-X for multiple personalized configurations. This is particularly useful, for example, when you have different operators with different callsigns in the same household sharing a computer, each wanting their own customized configuration(s).
To do this, the simple steps are to clone the current configuration, switch to the cloned configuration, and then customize it. Steps to do this are detailed in this paper. To quickly switch between them, you simply use the Configurations menu to select which one you want to switch to, and the program automatically restarts into that configuration.
Details
The “configurations” menu on WSJT-X allows for you to pre-define, and switch between, multiple configurations that you can define and save ahead of time. This can be useful, for example, when there are multiple Amateur Operators that are sharing a computer, and each wants to have a pre-defined settings profile with their callsign, and other settings, that they can easily return to when the user of the program changes.
Here’s some screen shots and instructions showing how I created a new profile for a callsign W2MMD, by cloning all the default parameters that I have set up for my use.
Check Default Settings
First, start the program, and check all the default settings. Settings are found on the File->Settings pop up menu, as shown here.
For me, from the File->Settings->General tab, the callsign and other check boxes look like this. In particular, I like these display settings as the default for all of my profiles. You customize them later for each profile you create.
Make all the adjustments you want on the General, Radio, Audio, and other settings tabs, and then press “OK” at the bottom to save them in the default profile. You will have a chance later to customize these in the new profiles you will create from this profile.
Clone new configuration
Next, check the Configurations menu. There is a “dot” next to the current configuration. From that configuration, “clone” to create a copy of the current configuration, as shown here.
After doing this, you will now end up with something like this when you go back to the Configurations menu. Note the new entry, with same name as your current entry, with the text “- Copy” added to the name.
Select the new clone (copy), and rename it. I am renaming it to W2MMD in this example. Of course, you would want to change it to a name of your choice.
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Switch to the new configuration
Next, from the same Configurations drop down, switch to this new configuration.
The result of switching to it should result in a quick restart of the software program. Then when you look at the Configurations after this quick restart, you should see the “dot” is now next to your switched to configuration on the Configurations choices.
While running in the newly cloned and renamed configuration, next we will customize it.
Customize current configuration
Next, we customize this cloned configuration that we have switched to. In this case, we need to go back to the File-Settings menu, and change the callsign to be W2MMD, and then save that by pressing OK after updating the callsign on the File->Settings->General tab.
That’s it!
Create other customized configurations like this, and then “switch to” whichever one you want to quickly change users, or operate with different settings you have defined and named as different Configurations.
Hope you find this helpful!
Jim, N2GXJ
Click the link below to download a PDF version of this article
How to create multiple user configurations in WSJT-X/FT8.PDF
D-I-Y Links
www.qsl.net/kb2umj
Michael Weldon, KB2UMJ, has some helpful DIY projects on his website
Congratulations on getting your first HF Radio! Now What?
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
Thank you Santa! And congratulations! You’ve just got your first HF radio, and no matter what your license class is, you’re anxious to attach some kind of antenna to it, at least to hear what’s happening on the “ham bands”, and to maybe push that TX button up on your authorized portion of 10 meters for the first time to see if there’s anyone out there that can hear you!
But the antenna choices are bewildering! Where to start? Vertical, horizontal, so many choices! It’s “analysis paralysis”, so much to learn, so much advise, so many technical details, all so confusing.
I just want to do something, but I don’t want to do the wrong thing, what should I do? – Help!
Well, the great news is that you’re not alone. We all went through this, and the amazing lesson we learn is that you don’t have to be perfect, that it is OK to experiment, that it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, and there are members of our club who are willing to help, if asked. Let’s step back for a moment, take a deep breath, and see what our options are.
Before you buy that “fancy” antenna, take some advice from the ARRL, and read this article http://www.arrl.org/building-simple-antennas. You’re going to encounter manufacturer claims that are, well, how to say this politely, designed to sell you their product, sometimes with wild claims. This is something that the ARRL, and us, your fellow Hams, would like to caution you about. For example, you generally won’t see claims of antenna gain in advertisements in QST magazine, because they have a strict policy that requires the manufacturer to prove it before they will publish it.
What I’m suggesting is maybe trying something simple first, while you shop around, and visit and talk with other hams for a while, to see what works best for them, and what doesn’t, before spending big money on something like an outdoor antenna system that you’re not likely to know that much about yet anyway.
So, now that I have a radio, but I don’t have an antenna yet, what would you recommend I do?
There are two suggestions, and they’re both simple.
First: As a member of the GCARC, you can be given the access and security alarm codes for our clubhouse trailer, and you can try out your new radio with both wire and beam antenna systems that we have set up out there! Also, you can get in-person help from a fellow ham on how to set up and operate that new radio. Starting in January, each month, on the first Saturday after our Wednesday general membership meeting, we’ll be having “Tech Saturdays” mornings out at the clubhouse. You can read more about this on our website on the "Tech Saturdays" page. There should be people there who can help you figure out “how does my radio work”, and help you get it on the air. So that’s my first suggestion. Make it easy on yourself. Bring your radio out for a "Tech Saturdays" morning, and with some help from other club members, see how it works with the different antennas available to try out at the clubhouse. Then after that, you can borrow the clubhouse setup whenever you want until you have something set up at home that you’d like to try and use.
Second: If you’ve tried the first suggestion, and now want to also be able to use your radio at home, you have two basic choices for your antenna: you can buy something, or build something. This being ham radio, I’d actually suggest building your first antenna, rather than buying one. But you’re welcome to buy or build as you desire. That’s part of the joy of ham radio!
So, from here on out, this article is just a recommendation for how I would suggest you would get started with your own home antenna. Others may, and probably will, have other opinions. That’s OK. I recognize there are many ways to accomplish the same goal, and this is just one of them. I’m not looking to be “flamed” by those who have different suggestions, or who might do it differently. I am just describing what worked for me, and am putting this out there for your consideration.
The recommended antenna is a really simple, inexpensive, and very forgiving design made from cut lengths of insulated wire attached in the center to a thing called a balun (which I’ll explain later). They call this antenna a multi-band or fan dipole. You don’t have to be perfect when putting it up, which makes it great for a starter antenna.
We’ll install this fan dipole up in the attic, so it is both protected from the weather, and won’t be able to be seen by prying neighbors. And we’ll build it using simple insulated wire, rather than tubing, so you might be able to save some cost by using materials that you or other club members might just have laying around. Your FCC license allows you to experiment with wire antennas for Ham radio like this, so why not have a little fun?
This antenna, is going to be in the attic you say? Yes. As described in the ARRL article http://www.arrl.org/indoor-antennas, if you have some sort of attic in your home, apartment or condo, you’re in luck. Attics are great locations for indoor antennas. They’re protected from the wind and weather, and from the prying eyes of neighbors. Let’s get something up there and try it!
When it comes to what to use to connect your radio to the antenna, don’t sweat it too much. This is HF radio, not UHF/VHF that we’re talking about. If you use a balun at the antenna as I suggest (explained later), you won’t need to use ladder line, making it very simple, and it will work just fine, to just use coax cable for the connection. Don’t worry about the precise length of coax – just buy or borrow a length long enough to get from your radio to the attic, with spare (that you can coil up in the corner somewhere).
If your radio has a built-in antenna tuner, and many new ones do, you’ll just connect the coax to the connector on the back of your radio. If it doesn’t, then connect it to the external antenna tuner you have separately attached to your HF radio. The other end goes up into the attic to connect to the balun in the center of the dipole antenna, as described next.
So what do I need to build this fan dipole?
1. A coax cable with male connectors each end, one end to attach to radio (or external tuner), and other end to attach to the bottom of the balun that will be at the center of our antenna. You run this from your radio up to the balun in the center of your attic. They typically come with connectors pre-installed, which makes it easier. The connector type should match what you need to connect to the back of your radio (or your external tuner, if one is not built into your radio), and to the balun described next.
2. A 1:1 current balun, that the antenna wire is attached to on the sides, and the coax cable connector screws into on the bottom. You hang the balun high in the center of your attic from the underside of the roof. The balun does triple duty for us as 1) a center point to attach each half of the wire antenna to, 2) a center point to attach a coax cable to, and 3) as a balanced-to-unbalanced transformer match between the wire antenna and the coax that also helps choke unwanted RF from running down the outside of the coax back into your shack. I bought one from Ham Radio Outlet in Delaware that was made by a company called RadioWavz that has threaded posts on the sides to make it easy to attach the wires to. Other choices are available.
3. One or more pairs of equal length 14 gauge insulated and stranded (not solid) wire, cut to specific lengths. You can find such at Lowes in the electrical section. I say stranded, not solid, because it is easier to work with. To make the equal length pair, you cut one piece to the full length specified, and then cut it in half, attaching each equal length half of the cut to opposite sides of the balun in the middle. My favorite web site for referencing wire antenna lengths is http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/antennas.html. To make it easy, and to allow for a tiny bit of inevitable droop when trying to make them straight and level in the attic, you can follow the directions below, as a start, for your three wire antenna lengths. The wires are slightly longer than necessary on purpose, to accommodate the droop, but also to facilitate tuning by an expert by wrap-back length shortening, rather than adding, should you so desire to do so (you shouldn’t have to, but it’s still an option).
4. Some kite string, or clothes line, or other rope to tie things off up in the attic. Being in the attic, you have the advantage of not having to worry about the wind and weather; e.g. your antenna and supports are not going to get wet so you can ignore the extra steps you’d have to take to make this antenna and its connections and supports weather-proof for hanging outdoors.
When you’re done, it might look like this:
But the antenna choices are bewildering! Where to start? Vertical, horizontal, so many choices! It’s “analysis paralysis”, so much to learn, so much advise, so many technical details, all so confusing.
I just want to do something, but I don’t want to do the wrong thing, what should I do? – Help!
Well, the great news is that you’re not alone. We all went through this, and the amazing lesson we learn is that you don’t have to be perfect, that it is OK to experiment, that it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, and there are members of our club who are willing to help, if asked. Let’s step back for a moment, take a deep breath, and see what our options are.
Before you buy that “fancy” antenna, take some advice from the ARRL, and read this article http://www.arrl.org/building-simple-antennas. You’re going to encounter manufacturer claims that are, well, how to say this politely, designed to sell you their product, sometimes with wild claims. This is something that the ARRL, and us, your fellow Hams, would like to caution you about. For example, you generally won’t see claims of antenna gain in advertisements in QST magazine, because they have a strict policy that requires the manufacturer to prove it before they will publish it.
What I’m suggesting is maybe trying something simple first, while you shop around, and visit and talk with other hams for a while, to see what works best for them, and what doesn’t, before spending big money on something like an outdoor antenna system that you’re not likely to know that much about yet anyway.
So, now that I have a radio, but I don’t have an antenna yet, what would you recommend I do?
There are two suggestions, and they’re both simple.
First: As a member of the GCARC, you can be given the access and security alarm codes for our clubhouse trailer, and you can try out your new radio with both wire and beam antenna systems that we have set up out there! Also, you can get in-person help from a fellow ham on how to set up and operate that new radio. Starting in January, each month, on the first Saturday after our Wednesday general membership meeting, we’ll be having “Tech Saturdays” mornings out at the clubhouse. You can read more about this on our website on the "Tech Saturdays" page. There should be people there who can help you figure out “how does my radio work”, and help you get it on the air. So that’s my first suggestion. Make it easy on yourself. Bring your radio out for a "Tech Saturdays" morning, and with some help from other club members, see how it works with the different antennas available to try out at the clubhouse. Then after that, you can borrow the clubhouse setup whenever you want until you have something set up at home that you’d like to try and use.
Second: If you’ve tried the first suggestion, and now want to also be able to use your radio at home, you have two basic choices for your antenna: you can buy something, or build something. This being ham radio, I’d actually suggest building your first antenna, rather than buying one. But you’re welcome to buy or build as you desire. That’s part of the joy of ham radio!
So, from here on out, this article is just a recommendation for how I would suggest you would get started with your own home antenna. Others may, and probably will, have other opinions. That’s OK. I recognize there are many ways to accomplish the same goal, and this is just one of them. I’m not looking to be “flamed” by those who have different suggestions, or who might do it differently. I am just describing what worked for me, and am putting this out there for your consideration.
The recommended antenna is a really simple, inexpensive, and very forgiving design made from cut lengths of insulated wire attached in the center to a thing called a balun (which I’ll explain later). They call this antenna a multi-band or fan dipole. You don’t have to be perfect when putting it up, which makes it great for a starter antenna.
We’ll install this fan dipole up in the attic, so it is both protected from the weather, and won’t be able to be seen by prying neighbors. And we’ll build it using simple insulated wire, rather than tubing, so you might be able to save some cost by using materials that you or other club members might just have laying around. Your FCC license allows you to experiment with wire antennas for Ham radio like this, so why not have a little fun?
This antenna, is going to be in the attic you say? Yes. As described in the ARRL article http://www.arrl.org/indoor-antennas, if you have some sort of attic in your home, apartment or condo, you’re in luck. Attics are great locations for indoor antennas. They’re protected from the wind and weather, and from the prying eyes of neighbors. Let’s get something up there and try it!
When it comes to what to use to connect your radio to the antenna, don’t sweat it too much. This is HF radio, not UHF/VHF that we’re talking about. If you use a balun at the antenna as I suggest (explained later), you won’t need to use ladder line, making it very simple, and it will work just fine, to just use coax cable for the connection. Don’t worry about the precise length of coax – just buy or borrow a length long enough to get from your radio to the attic, with spare (that you can coil up in the corner somewhere).
If your radio has a built-in antenna tuner, and many new ones do, you’ll just connect the coax to the connector on the back of your radio. If it doesn’t, then connect it to the external antenna tuner you have separately attached to your HF radio. The other end goes up into the attic to connect to the balun in the center of the dipole antenna, as described next.
So what do I need to build this fan dipole?
1. A coax cable with male connectors each end, one end to attach to radio (or external tuner), and other end to attach to the bottom of the balun that will be at the center of our antenna. You run this from your radio up to the balun in the center of your attic. They typically come with connectors pre-installed, which makes it easier. The connector type should match what you need to connect to the back of your radio (or your external tuner, if one is not built into your radio), and to the balun described next.
2. A 1:1 current balun, that the antenna wire is attached to on the sides, and the coax cable connector screws into on the bottom. You hang the balun high in the center of your attic from the underside of the roof. The balun does triple duty for us as 1) a center point to attach each half of the wire antenna to, 2) a center point to attach a coax cable to, and 3) as a balanced-to-unbalanced transformer match between the wire antenna and the coax that also helps choke unwanted RF from running down the outside of the coax back into your shack. I bought one from Ham Radio Outlet in Delaware that was made by a company called RadioWavz that has threaded posts on the sides to make it easy to attach the wires to. Other choices are available.
3. One or more pairs of equal length 14 gauge insulated and stranded (not solid) wire, cut to specific lengths. You can find such at Lowes in the electrical section. I say stranded, not solid, because it is easier to work with. To make the equal length pair, you cut one piece to the full length specified, and then cut it in half, attaching each equal length half of the cut to opposite sides of the balun in the middle. My favorite web site for referencing wire antenna lengths is http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/antennas.html. To make it easy, and to allow for a tiny bit of inevitable droop when trying to make them straight and level in the attic, you can follow the directions below, as a start, for your three wire antenna lengths. The wires are slightly longer than necessary on purpose, to accommodate the droop, but also to facilitate tuning by an expert by wrap-back length shortening, rather than adding, should you so desire to do so (you shouldn’t have to, but it’s still an option).
- For 40 Meters, that also works on 15 Meters and on 6 Meters, you don’t have to be that exact. Cut one piece approximately 67 feet long, and cut in middle to make two equal 33 feet 6 inch halves to attach to the center balun. If you just put up this one dipole length, and none of the others, this one should let you talk with stations for several hundred miles up and down the East Coast fairly well during the day, and even better in the late afternoons and early evenings.
- For 20 Meters, cut one piece 34 feet long, and cut in middle to make two 17 foot long halves to attach to the center balun. If you’re putting up just one dipole in the attic, this might be the one to put up. Whereas the higher frequencies usually give out after dark, there are usually stations on this band at all hours of the day and most of the night, particularly on 14.070 MHz which is the frequency commonly used for PSK digital communications (one of my favorites).
- For 10 Meters, be a little more precise, and cut one piece 16 feet 10 inches, and cut in middle to make two 8 feet 5 inch long halves to attach to the center balun. If you’re just putting up this dipole, this one will let you have morning Europe contacts and afternoon West Coast contacts – but only temperamentally. Temperamentally because it’s up to somewhat unpredictable solar conditions for when this band is “open”, and when it is not. It’s kind of like fishing, you never know what you’ll catch unless you try on this band. Your attic dipole is high above ground, relative to a 10M wavelength, so when the band is open, you should be able to make some long distance contacts on this band.
4. Some kite string, or clothes line, or other rope to tie things off up in the attic. Being in the attic, you have the advantage of not having to worry about the wind and weather; e.g. your antenna and supports are not going to get wet so you can ignore the extra steps you’d have to take to make this antenna and its connections and supports weather-proof for hanging outdoors.
When you’re done, it might look like this:
1:1 Current Balun
Attic Dipole
Attic Dipole String
Attic Dipole - Top View
A YouTube video showing WD0AKX constructing such an antenna can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KHzsKYsZL0. You get the idea. He put his outside. We’ll put ours in the attic. And because we put ours in the attic, we don’t have to use those spacers between the wires that he built. Like he shows early in the video, you can run the wires off in different directions, instead of using spacers, which is really easy to do in the attic. So that’s what we’ll do.
Just put the balun up near the roof in the center of your attic and run the longest wires straight as far as you can in opposite directions from each other, then angle them around to make it all fit up there. The shorter pairs of wires, run those as far as you can in a straight line in opposite directions, again with the balun in the middle, but to different tie down points at a slightly different angle than the other wire pairs you put up.
Use kite string, or rope to tie to the end of the wire (can make a small knot at the end of the wire to attach the kite string to) and stretch out and attach to a convenient roof support in that direction in your attic. For the short antenna (the 10M antenna), if you can, you might want to stretch it broadside to the direction of Europe, as shown in the picture. From where we are in NJ, when the band is open, this will improve the strength of received signals from both Europe and South America, though any direction will do. For now, it’s just important to get something up there, and get on the air! You can always experiment later.
Also note that in the video, he added a wire for 6M, but says in the video he didn’t need it (because the 40M dipole already can be used with that band and an antenna tuner). To make things simpler for our antenna, we won’t include it. I don’t think you’ll miss it. That band isn’t used much, and having more wire pairs makes it harder to attach the wire bundle to each side of the balun.
Once you have it built, and installed, you can borrow an expert’s “SWR meter” to measure how perfect it is on the different bands, but as shown in the video, with your antenna tuner, it probably won’t matter much. After that, you’re on the air, and then off to experimenting with other antenna types no doubt, like back yard verticals, and various forms of wire or yagi beams.
So that’s it! Once again, congratulations on your new radio! Hope to catch you on the air soon!
Jim Wright, N2GXJ
Replacing burnt out incandescent meter lamps with LEDs
Here is a guide to replacing burnt out meter lamps in
ham rigs, CBs, SWR meters, and linear amplifiers meters.
1. Use “flat top” LEDs as seen in the picture.
“Flat tops” have a wide angle of light dispersion, upwards of 140-180 degrees. DO NOT use typical “rounded top” LEDs, as they have a low angle 15-45 degrees of light dispersion, which creates a spot or beam effect.
“Flat tops” have a wide angle of light dispersion, upwards of 140-180 degrees. DO NOT use typical “rounded top” LEDs, as they have a low angle 15-45 degrees of light dispersion, which creates a spot or beam effect.
2. Use LEDs with several thousand “mcd” in intensity. Many of these "flat top" LEDs are available on ebay and other sources, for very low cost.
3. What are the advantages of LEDs over incandescent bulbs? The LEDs will likely never burn out and will outlast the rig, or even outlast you. In some transceivers, they also do not dim when keying up.
Installing LED based on a 13.8 VDC source:
1. A 560 ohm drop resistor must be soldered to the anode (longer lead) of the LED, then solder the resistor to the positive lead of the voltage source. The 560 ohm resistor value is a generic value that should cover all the LED color ranges.
2. Connect the cathode (shorter lead), to the negative side of the voltage source (shrink tubing may be needed for both leads).
Installing LEDs based on voltage source other than 13.8 VDC:
If you have a voltage source other than 13.8 VDC, you can use this LED Calculator to calculate the resistor that is needed for your voltage source.
You will need the LED “Typical Forward Voltage” and “Typical Forward Current”.
For “Typical Forward Current”, you can just use 20mA.
For “Typical Forward Voltage”, it varies by LED color.
Basic values for these “Flat Top” LEDs are the flowing:
Some LED color forward voltages, may vary slightly from above, but are usually available from the vendor where you purchase them from.
Voltage source should be measured at the leads that connect to the LED.
Hints:
As mentioned above, a 560 ohm resistor is a common value and good generic value for 13.8 VDC source. If you do not have a 560 ohm, you can use higher values, like a 1K ohm, at a slightly reduced intensity. Don’t lose sleep trying to find a 560 ohm, if you do not have one. The reduced intensity might not be noticeable.
Many people love the different color LEDs, because they look cool on the meter.
Some SWR meters have very small lamps. The LEDs mentioned above are based on the very common 5mm LED. If you have a meter that has a very small lamp and a 5mm will not fit, you can get the same “flat top” in a 3mm size.
Vinnie Sallustio, N4NYY
3. What are the advantages of LEDs over incandescent bulbs? The LEDs will likely never burn out and will outlast the rig, or even outlast you. In some transceivers, they also do not dim when keying up.
Installing LED based on a 13.8 VDC source:
1. A 560 ohm drop resistor must be soldered to the anode (longer lead) of the LED, then solder the resistor to the positive lead of the voltage source. The 560 ohm resistor value is a generic value that should cover all the LED color ranges.
2. Connect the cathode (shorter lead), to the negative side of the voltage source (shrink tubing may be needed for both leads).
Installing LEDs based on voltage source other than 13.8 VDC:
If you have a voltage source other than 13.8 VDC, you can use this LED Calculator to calculate the resistor that is needed for your voltage source.
You will need the LED “Typical Forward Voltage” and “Typical Forward Current”.
For “Typical Forward Current”, you can just use 20mA.
For “Typical Forward Voltage”, it varies by LED color.
Basic values for these “Flat Top” LEDs are the flowing:
- Red, yellow, orange, amber = 3.0 VDC
- Blue, green, clear white, warm white = 3.4 VDC
- Pink, Purple = 3.2 VDC
Some LED color forward voltages, may vary slightly from above, but are usually available from the vendor where you purchase them from.
Voltage source should be measured at the leads that connect to the LED.
Hints:
As mentioned above, a 560 ohm resistor is a common value and good generic value for 13.8 VDC source. If you do not have a 560 ohm, you can use higher values, like a 1K ohm, at a slightly reduced intensity. Don’t lose sleep trying to find a 560 ohm, if you do not have one. The reduced intensity might not be noticeable.
Many people love the different color LEDs, because they look cool on the meter.
- Blue seems to be especially popular.
- Ice white seems to best bring out the colors of the meter.
- Do not use clear white. You will not like it.
- Warm white is best if you are a purist and use vintage rigs. Warm white LEDs are as close to replicating the “incandescent” color of typical light bulbs, as you can get. They also look much better in vintage equipment.
Some SWR meters have very small lamps. The LEDs mentioned above are based on the very common 5mm LED. If you have a meter that has a very small lamp and a 5mm will not fit, you can get the same “flat top” in a 3mm size.
Vinnie Sallustio, N4NYY