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Last summer I built myself a Cobwebb antenna and was fairly pleased with the results. I did think it was a bit heavy and was looking to repeat the build with some lighter weight wire until I came across this article from a well-known antenna buff, G3TXQ. It looked like just the ticket so I copied the design and low and behold after a few evening work I finished it off. Here it is during the tuning phase of work which I completed over the weekend (which by the way is as simple as tuning any dipole).

By the way the tropical weather (read blue sky) in St Bees is a welcome change from the recent flooding. I doubt it’ll last though!

You can see the usual antenna laying down in the background, which is a Hustler 6-BTV vertical which has suffered at the hands of the strong winds and salt air we get here. Once I had assembled both the antenna’s I was able to make a bit of a comparison between the two. The vertical is a good S point down on the Cobwebb on 20m, 17m and 15m and about the same on 12m and 10m (at that height!). To be fair it doesn’t have the 17m stub so that’s a bit of a poor comparison. I did managed to get it a little higher with the fishing pole but need to work on the mounting point and ‘environmental protection’ that it’ll need to be used here. Either that or it’ll go into the loft with the 40m dipole that’s up there at the moment.

For some reason I really enjoy these antennas, either to build or use but Michael, ZS1RJQ who I’m in regular contact with over email has built a fair few more than me. His are far more robust than mine but between us we’ve discussed the hardware side plenty of times and before long we’ll end up with an optimised lightweight design. This one is so far the most compact and well worth a tinker if you’re into that. Thanks to G3TXQ for the original design.

With Halloween coming up shortly maybe I’ll put a spider on it!

Last year my employer gave me one of those opportunities that are hard to turn down.  After completing 9 years of distance learning to get my degree and masters they offered me the chance to do another masters. Oh dear. Nice but not more study. Trouble is, this kind of thing takes up a lot of your time.

So it’s going to be another 8 or 9 months of intense study and assignments interspersed with family, cycle training, work and ham radio. I still plan on optimising my Cobwebb antenna, setting up the QRP QRSS/WSPR beacon and attempting to get on air. By the end of this I should either have a degree in time management or failed in everything.

On the bright side I should be out of the books in time for next years Es season at the very least.

The September 6 and 10 short form report has been compiled by Martin Harrison, G3USF and is available in the usual place

It seems that most of us hams make a lifelong commitment to learning. Mainly about technical stuff to do with the hobby but occasionally about yourself. Yesterday I learnt that designing a simple PCB for my shack clock  was going to take longer than a couple of hours.

Starting at the beginning I did the usual Googling about to find the right piece of software that would “easily” and “simply” turn my ideas into reality (I’m paraphrasing the marketing blurb but you know the kind of thing). I must be in a minority but this isn’t simple or easy. My shack clock is simple a radio controlled clock that receives a signal from the MSF 60KHz transmitter in Anthorn, Cumbria. No more than 30 miles from the house. An Arduino microprocessor converts the signal from the receiver into a simple LCD display. Currently the clock runs from a USB cable into the Arduino and into a heap of cables and wires on the desk. It has a certain aesthetic quality but not one you’d particularly call ‘3 year old boy proof’ (Sam likes to pull the wires out).

So downloading the freeware version of Eagle and firing it up, running through a bunch of tutorials and within a few short hours I had a schematic up on the screen. Even after wrestling about with some of the vast array of included libraries and checking of specs of things on various websites and ‘guessing’ my way through I think the schematic looks about right.

For this part of the project the Arduino had been replaced with the barebones microprocessor from Hobbytronics. Switching to the board layout gives a complete mess of wires and components that need shifting round. I now realise that this isn’t going to be a quick design. Normally at this point I’d share a picture of the work in progress. This time I will keep it to myself, until I can stop the board looking like a, well I don’t really know what it looks like but I know it isn’t a PCB yet.

Onwards and upwards!

I found this on a scrap piece of paper at the club last night. Being a bit thick and not knowing what it was for certain I asked a few people and the response was fairly consistent.

‘Its a…errr…y’know…..that you know used to do as kits for err’

Obviously I wasn’t the only one who was a little stuck. Well I don’t know what it is exactly, but I can have a few guesses – I’ll nail my colours to the mast and suggest it is a current meter of sorts. Anyone else care to join in the guesswork with more confidence? It took me long enough to find out what brass treblet tube is!

The kit building is carrying on at my garage before the cold weather comes and means that it’ll be less than appealing to go in there. This time it is a seemingly simple kit from Hans Summers, G0UPL called the Ultimate QRSS kit. Ultimate because presumably the kit does more than QRSS, however the kit is essentially a QRP (~150mW) beacon transmitter for QRSS and other modes, the attraction for me is that it also generates the tones for WSPR and as well as offering the QRP transmitter it also has the ability to generate just the audio for use with another transceiver. I was drawn to it because it offers the opportunity for a little bit of experimentation. Although things haven’t quite gone as smoothly as I’d hoped for.

The list of features for such a price is quite impressive. This is taken directly from Hans Summers’ website (http://www.hanssummers.com/qrsskitmm.html). Which is well worth a visit if not for this kit.

The kit supports the following modes:

– QRSS mode (plain on/off keyed slow CW)

– FSK/CW mode (frequency shift keyed slow CW)

– DFCW mode (dual frequency CW)

– WSPR mode (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter)

– Slow-Hellschreiber (frequency shifted slow-Hell)

– Full-speed Hellshreiber

– Half-speed ("DX") Hellshreiber

– CW (plain CW)

– Customisable FSK patterns

Other features:

– 24-character LCD + two-button user interface

– User-programmable (callsign, message, speed, FSK, mode, etc.), settings stored in EEPROM

– GPS interface, for locking the frequency in slow-speed modes

– On-chip generation of WSPR encoded message (no PC required)

– WSPR maidenhead locator can be generated from GPS-derived latitude/longitude

– Selectable “frame” size, for stacked QRSS reception

– Plain CW callsign identifier at selectable interval

– Produces 150mW RF output, or AF output for driving an SSB transceiver

– Higher output power by additional PA transistor and/or higher PA supply voltage

My 30m version has been sat on the shelf whilst the good weather (ahem!) was continuing. This came to head over the weekend when I warmed up the soldering iron and started piecing it all together. The kit took a few hours to build and I would image that a skilled builder would have it all together much quicker than I could with the excellent instructions.

Unfortunately on powering up things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. It only seems to power when it fancies it and certainly doesn’t generate the tones as you might expect although I am receiving a carrier roughly in the right area. The other small issue is that the LED doesn’t appear to do anything visual, this may be a design feature but seems a little bit odd to me.

All these faults are almost certainly a result of my work, not the kit although it didn’t help having to scratch off the solder mask from the coil connections. I think the fault finding will take longer than the building in this instance but with a bit of luck it will involve some learning and there is no harm in that.

Still where’s the fun in it working first time?

Martin Harrison, G3USF has collated a couple more 6 and 10 reports which he’s passed on to me. They are available at the usual place (here). Any feedback is always welcome so please don’t hesitate in getting in contact if you would like to add anything.