Yep, it is confirmed now for sure. Compulsive Antenna Disorder has haunted me since I was first licensed and ran a coax fed 80 meter dipole on multiple bands without a tuner. The first time the symptoms were noticed by my family and friends was when I got a couple OO tickets for out of band harmonics. Hmmmm… what’s up with that? So a bit of reading and the antenna tweaking began and that’s when it all started.
Soon thereafter I tried to load up a nifty pin from my Junior Prom Boutonnière that reminded me of a triple stacked halo for 1296 Mc (MHz for the newer ones amongst us). Then it was the handheld yagis for 432 Mc that we used with some military surplus gear that used dynamos so we could chase tornadoes. (We thought if it bounced off the moon, it should bounce off of a tornado!) The saucer sled that became a parabolic for listening to satellite telemetry and on it goes… Compulsive Antenna Disorder has had a firm grip on me for some time now.
Am I dreaming? Thanks wiki images!
As a QRP operator, I am always looking for more antenna power. I know that somewhere out there simply MUST be a silver bullet, that magic QRM and pileup busting antenna that makes my 2 watts output sound like a full gallon.
I can say one thing for sure, I know a lot of non-silver bullet antennas, as I have a box full of them.
But they still make a few QSO’s at times and I’m having fun along with a bit of frustration and disappointment as I deal with my CAD affliction.
I’m told that much like telegraph key collectivitis there is no known cure or relief. I share in your grief brothers and sisters…
72,
Kelly K4UPG PB #173
Nice weather and an open schedule allowed for some radio time this weekend. The QRP ARCI Fall QSO Party made some buzz so I loaded up the gear and headed out by the lake. I put up an 88ft doublet in an inverted vee. I shoot a line over a tree limb at about 40ft and use that for the center and have two 17ft Crappie Poles that I use for end supports. That allows me to reorient the antenna to suit the conditions.
Ground Mount Closeup
One of the things I threw together is a simple mount for the crappie poles. I use a 2ft piece of PVC with a couple bolts inserted at right angles to one another at the base to keep the pole from going all the way through to the ground. The PVC is attached to a 3ft piece of aluminum angle iron that with 3 stainless steel hose clamps.
Crappie Pole End Supports
The poles are pretty limber and take a bit of a bend but do a good job of handling the 24 gauge teflon wire I use. As you can see in the pictures, the mounts do the job and don’t cost as much as commercial counterparts.
So it was a good day and I made a few contacts, enjoyed the outdoors and had a nice picnic lunch with my XYL down by the lake between QSO’s. The bands were pretty decent and I gave points to 20 of the more serious contestants out there.
p.s. The Polar Bears will be out and on the air next weekend. Give a listen, hear?
The Biggest Bird in the Pond
On my morning walk yesterday, I had quite a treat. Sure wish I had taken the camera along. On the shore of the flood control pond that flows out into the golf course, were 4 fine Florida water birds. It is not common to see them bunched together like this. A Great Blue Heron, a Little Blue Heron, a Great Egret and a Comorant were lined up in a space of about 8-10 feet. There was a good bit of shoving and jockeying for position and they were working down the bank fishing in the same small spot.
Cormorant is like a living submarine or scuba diver
Made me think of the pileups a DX station creates… The comorant had a distinct advantage as the only real swimmer and diver of the bunch. It ranged up and down the bank picking off small fingerlings and bullying the other birds by swimming right up to their skinny legs and surfacing. Reminded me of some of the pileup busters I’ve observed from time to time.
At the same time, the little guy, the Little Blue Heron, and the regal looking, very white and tall Great Heron were left to glean around the edges and pick off the fish that were panic striken and confused by the other birds fishing in the midst. This reminded me of all the contests where I have to dodge the big birds and pick off what I can around the edges.
Funny thing is there are tens of thousands of fish all along the bank, not just where these birds were bunched up. What is it about us that piles us up and forces such fierce competition? Hmmm?
Yep, I am a devoted CPG (Contest Point Giver), who had a nice morning walk and got to see a great outdoors show for free. That is why I love operating QRP portable. Being outside and enjoying the free shows only adds to the enjoyment of the hobby and the friendships made on the air.
Tall White Bird is really quite skittish
This little Blue Heron really gets around fast
Wow! Great way to bring together a lot of ham radio ops on a Saturday using all sorts of technology! Way to go! QRPSPOTS.COM is normally used by QRP ops to spot each other when we are out operating portable or to alert others of band openings. It was ALIVE with reports and updates from all over the USA and even a few DX ops adding input too! In addition, several QRP reflectors were buzzing with updates and info. What a great community effort this turned out! Congrats to all and thanks to QRP ARCI for helping get the word out.
Iowa High Altitude Balloon Project
One of the 4 States QRP bunch, Terry WA0ITP, provided the 20m beacon again and has some great info on his informative website.
But for me, the coolest thing was listening in on the streaming webcast of VE3EN and his wonderful IC-7700. Sure wish I had thought of recording a bit or doing a screenshot to share here. But what a treat to listen in and hear the beacon’s signal right up until touchdown. Thanks Kevin for a fun way to eavesdrop on this event since the lawn mowing crew took over my condo’s yard and didn’t allow me to put an antenna out today. There is a ton of info and creative website construction on Kevin’s website and it is worth spending some time looking at the solar cycle data.
Congrats to the team for a successful event today and for bringing so many hams together for a good learning experience and something out of the ordinary. Well done W0OTM, well done indeed!
The QRP-L reflector has been buzzin’ with the news and chatter (positive and some negative btw) about a new project to design and build a new transceiver for QRP HF use. YAHOO!
K8IQY Style Test Setup
What I love the most about this is that the QRP community is able to contribute ideas, resources and participate much like the Open Source software community operates. This could really be a fun project for our Central Florida QRP group. After all, we are not that far from Diz W8DIZ who is facilitating and coordinating this project.
If you like to build, experiment and try some QRP operation with a new rig… you should tune in and join the fun.
This is the last week to vote in the poll on my blog for the best US QTH for ham radio… Here’s the standings as of Sunday at 2100 EDT:
You can cast your vote by following this link!
POLL RESULTS SO FAR: West Virginia is in the lead for best Ham Radio QTH in the USA… One more week of voting… Have you voted yet? Here’s the link to vote!
Last weekend I played in the QRP Afield event and had fun with fellow Polar Bear QRP Club members on the air. It was a great time. Once again, the antenna tweak won out and under the influence of a great blog post by Polar Bear #20 VA3SIE, Martin in Ontario about the 88ft Doublet, I caved in and put one together the night before the event. Oops, I did it again! But this time I had excellent results and the antenna worked as advertised. LESSON: Sometimes it pays to follow your heart and not your head.
Civil Defense Logo
I also remembered how I learned a lot as a young teen aged ham via the Civil Defense program. Remember that time?
Watching a weather report about tornadoes reminded me of a great learning experience. The Palm Sunday Tornadoes of 1965 hit the counties north and east of my home in Elwood, IN. At only 15 yrs old, I was the assistant emergency coordinator and ran the 6 meter emergency communications net on Sundays. Our county and city Civil Defense teams had setup equipment and were ready for disasters and those tornadoes reeked havoc on our area.
Path of the Palm Sunday Tornadoes
Our teams rolled out the emergency vans, and the adults helped this young ham handle traffic for the state police and other government emergency responders. The old yellow CD Gonset Goonie Bird rig is still something I remember fondly. I loved running that thing!
LESSON: Give the young hams some responsibility and empower them. They will be there when the time comes and will never forget how older folks treated them as peers and gave them an opportunity to do something important. I bet that kind of opportunity will still attract young people to our great hobby. We need them! They need us!
The Yellow Goonie Bird
As a bypass survivor, each morning when possible, I go for a brisk walk. We are blessed to live in a nice development in Orlando which has a bit of lakefront and also has some irrigation and flood prevention ponds. This water attracts a good selection of wildlife which makes it fun to be outside and exercising even though the heat and humidity are often both above the 90 mark.
We have ducks, baby ducks, coots, turtles, snakes, eagles, hawks, osprey, sand hill cranes, storks, cormorant, anhinga, raccoon, possum, squirrels, armadillos, feral cats, foxes, geckos, lizards, frogs, toads and all sorts of other neat critters to entertain us at various times of the year. This morning I spent some time watching the water birds fishing on all the new fingerlings from this year’s hatch of bass, bream and tillapia that gather in the grass along the water’s edge.
Learning S & P from a Heron
Today a heron demonstrated how to do catch fish and I realized that the heron could teach me some things about operating QRP style search and pounce.
The heron has a particular style… they spread their wings like this great photo demonstrates so well (thanks Chris Harshaw and http://www.wikimedia.org). So what’s that got to do with ham radio? Like a karate master who learns from the world around him, a good QRP op can learn from the birds! The heron shades the target with its wings to take the glare off the water so it can see better. It also causes the fish to become confused and they can pick off the loner or easiest target.
Same thing with QRP… we need to spread our wings by tuning around a bit more agressively and listening for the ones we can snag. Not always the strongest, but a signal that is decent and an op that genuinely wants to make a contact. When we find that contact we need to pounce on it and not waste time.
Yes, I learned a bit from watching that heron this morning. He caught quite a few fish in a short time using his form of search and pounce. That heron was quick and moved from spot to spot gingerly and didn’t miss his target very often. No wonder he’s grown so large! I want to be more like that heron when I am on the air.
Still time to cast your vote in the poll for the best ham radio location in the USA.
Spent my birthday participating (casually) in the Straight Key Century Club Weekend Sprint. My Lake Fredrica neighborhood site was where I set up my shelter and 3 antennas. I had a 40m dipole fed with twinlead up 40 ft and running E-W. An End Fed Halfwave for 20m was nearly vertical suspended by a nearby tree. A twinlead 44 ft doublet on my 20 ft Jackite with the ends at 16 feet was setup running N-S to give me a bit of a mini-smorgasbord of antenna choices. Since it was really sunny, I hooked up my ACME GC100 Solar Charger and VW Solar Panel.
Bands were decent with 40m quiet and some DX coming through early from Eu stations. Nice to hear that again. 20m came alive and was pretty much the go to band for the majority of the day. I did check 15m a couple times but did not hear much and no one replied to my CQ’s.
In the middle of a QSO, my Jackite pole decided to collapse but I was able to finish the QSO with one end of the dipole about 4 feet above the ground. hi hi
The highlight of the day was my last QSO with EA3NO, Lluis in Spain. As the special station for the sprint there was a lot of competition but Lluis hung in there with my weak signal and pulled me out of the crowd after a couple attempts. THANK YOU FOR THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT Lluis!
Still wondering what a CPG is? Contest Point Giver! I am a really casual contester. Really the only reason I participate is that contests offer a fairly good opportunity to make some QSO’s. When you are QRP you have to do a lot of listening, plus pounce and search, but serious contesters will dig out weak signals to make the QSO’s so it is fun. I enjoy giving out points and reading the mail on ops that are faster than my cw comfort zone. Good practice, eh?
Here’s some photos from the day. Enjoy!
Kelly K4UPG PB #173 SKCC #5415
Had a great time setting up the C Pole antenna in a tree suspended configuration. My good friend and cohort, Jim Diggs, K4AHO came by with his AIM 4170 Antenna Analyzer and we were ready to tune the antenna and get a feel for it.
LESSON: A good analyzer makes tuning an antenna fast, simple and accurate! The AIM 4170 gave us a TON of info (most of it going over my head) and let us see how the C Pole was doing in several areas. Take a look at this output! (Click on the image for a larger version)
K4UPG C Pole Scan Results
LESSON: I followed Niel’s directions, but did not have a small plastic coffee container so used a Quart Coke bottle instead. So I call it a Coke Choke and it seems to work well. Here’s a photo to show it off!
Coke Choke Ready for Duty
I think this one is a keeper. Goes up easily, hears well and loads nicely too. I made a few brief contacts and called it a day, but look forward to more C Pole action in the days ahead.
p.s. Don’t forget to vote in the Ideal Ham Radio QTH poll on the blog!
If there were no limits (job, family, taxes, spouse, etc.) on where you could set up your ideal ham shack here in the USA, where would you go?
Think for a minute where the propagation, weather and other conditions create the ideal spot to operate. Then leave your vote in the poll on my blog and write a comment if you’d like to let us know why…
Nice to dream a bit, isn’t it?
p.s. Sorry and deepest apologies to the great state of Arizona… must be AZ Brain Freeze at work, it is on the bottom of the list until I figure out how to move it up higher in the software.
Orlando, FL btw
