When radio amateurs get ready to put an HF station on the air, they often have questions about what antenna to use. The good news is that there are many options to choose from. The bad news is that there are too many options to choose from. It can be overwhelming. This post describes an antenna I just installed that is easy to put up and works well.

Having 30-foot tall pine trees on our property, my usual approach for HF antennas is “wires in the trees.” I have several ropes strung up over these tall trees so that I can raise and lower wire antennas as needed. These ropes were installed using a slingshot to launch a fishing line over the top of the tree, and then pull up a lightweight rope.

End Fed Long Wire

The antenna is the EFLW-1K from MyAntennas.com, which is an End Fed Long Wire Antenna. (This should not be confused with an End Fed Half Wave antenna.) This antenna is intentionally cut to not be a resonant length on any of the bands. The 9:1 UNUN transforms the high impedance at the end of the wire down to something closer to 50 ohms. The match is not perfect so an antenna tuner is required to cover all of the bands. MyAntennas offers this antenna with different lengths of wire, with longer wires required to support the lower HF bands. I purchased the 53-foot version but decided to shorten the wire. My interest is working 20 meters and higher and I wanted the antenna to be mostly vertical, so I shortened the wire to about 30 feet. The MyAntennas products are good but any 9:1 UNUN on the end of a wire will work.

An endfed antenna like this needs some kind of counterpoise to balance out the antenna operation. Many people have written about this and there are many different approaches. The MyAntenna UNUN has a connector intended to support adding a short length of counterpoise wire. A decent length of coaxial cable lying on the ground can function as this counterpoise and that’s what I decided to use. I have a 50-foot length of LMR 400 connected to this antenna, lying on the ground.

I also added an inline isolation transformer to minimize the common mode currents getting back to the transceiver. I don’t know that this is required but I had one available so I used it. The antenna has 50 feet of LMR coax to the inline transformer and then another 25 feet of RG-8X to the transceiver. The internal antenna tuner in my Icom IC-7610 handles this antenna quite well, tuning up on 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m. This means I can instantly switch between the bands and be ready to go.

I’ve been running SSB, FT8 and FT4 on this antenna, working many stations in all regions: Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, North and South America. Conditions are great and I keep telling newer folks: now is the time to be on HF! This basic antenna is a great way to get on the air and work some DX.

73 Bob K0NR

The post An Easy HF Antenna appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

The Technician license is your gateway to the worldwide excitement of Amateur Radio, and the very best emergency communications capability available! This is the entry-level class for people who do not currently have an amateur (ham) radio license.

The Tri-Lakes Monument Radio Association (Monument, CO) is introducing a new approach to teaching the Technician Level ham radio license class. We have completely overhauled the delivery format of our Tech Class to make good use of both in-person and online training methods. The biggest change is that most of the core material will be delivered to the student via bite-sized online videos, ebook sections, and additional content from Ham Radio School. This dramatically increases the flexibility on how and when the student views this material, eliminating long, all-day classroom sessions. We will have three live Zoom sessions along the way to review the material and answer any questions you might have.

We understand that in-person training is extremely valuable for certain types of activities. Accordingly, we will have an in-person kickoff session (Feb 17) for the instructors to meet the students and show them how ham radio equipment is used. The licensing exam session (Mar 9) is another in-person event. Finally, after you receive your new license, we will have an in-person Get On The Air event (Mar 16) where you will make your first radio contact. To help guide you through this process, an experienced radio ham will connect with you, monitor your progress, and help you through the class.

The cost of the class is $50 ($40 for anyone under 18 years old), which includes everything you need for the class. A non-expiring subscription to the Ham Radio School Technician resources is included. We used to require you to have a printed copy of the Ham Radio School Technician book, but that same material will be delivered to you online as an ebook. Proceeds from this class go to support the Tri-Lakes Monument Radio Association, a non-profit organization.

You still need to pay a $35 license fee directly to the FCC after passing the license exam.

More details are in the attached flyer.

To register, go here:
https://w0tlm.com/radio-classes/tech-registration

You can probably tell I am excited about the new format for this class. It will make it easier on the instructors to deliver the material AND easier for the students to learn it. If you have questions, let me know!

Bob K0NR
[email protected]

The post All New Technician License Class – Monument, CO appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Like being given a 'free' dog...

A BIG Project!

(from The Communicator - August 2013)

Three years ago I received a free tower and rotator. I’ll write about the rotator in another instalment but I’ve since discovered that some ‘free’ ham gear is like being given a free dog… you have to be aware of the hidden costs.

I had never had a tower but always wanted one. I’d been satisfied with my Carolina Windom, an off-centre fed dipole at 25 feet off the ground, that let me use most HF bands right up to 80m. It served me well, and still does but greater involvement in contesting and the desire to move up to a more directional antenna encouraged me to make the move.

Fortunately I have a wife who is also a ham, though not particularly active, but she knows the thrill I get when working a new country or breaking through a pile-up. She was supportive in my quest. Coincidentally I also had to replace the deck on our 30 year-old house. That provided another incentive to get the project started and find the right location. Our old laundry line was accessible from the deck at a corner of the house. The new deck, with glass panels around it would no longer allow this so the new tower would have to do double-duty as the anchor for the clothesline as well. I decided that it would be a light-duty tower as I didn’t have the space for a full-size tower, and I wanted to keep peace with my neighbours.

I spread the word among my fellow club members that I was looking. Pretty soon an offer came in of five ten-foot sections of light duty tower. I picked them up and it was immediately evident that some work would be needed before they would be safe and usable. Thick rust had eaten though much off the galvanized surface. Several of the cross-member welds had broken and one section was noticeably bent. I knew my wife wouldn’t be pleased if I attempted to place that within view.

Over the next several days I spent time washing down my new acquisition, which had evidently spent time behind someone’s shed, judging by the weeds, caked mud and dead critters in and outside the tubing. I also spent some Internet time researching whether I could revitalize this tower and how to go about it.

My daughter-in-law manages a paint store and was able to provide me with some technical advice on surface preparation and coatings. I knew I would have to paint the sections for my wife to accept them right outside her kitchen window. Colour would also be a factor.

I bought two brass wire wheels and some emery paper and set to work to clean off as much loose rust as I could with my power drill. It worked well and a day later I was done. Based on my Internet findings, and helpful reviews by previous users, I tried three products to tackle the remaining rust. From left to right on the adjoining photo they were Permatex brand ‘Rust Dissolving Gel’, ‘Evapo-Rust’ by Rust-stop Canada, and Rust Check brand ‘Rust Converter’. All were applied according to the provided directions and they performed their intended function. The gel, being thicker, clung to the parts better but was much slower and required a lot of re-coating to keep working. The other two products were thinner and more difficult to keep in place, but they produced faster results. If these were small pieces that could be submerged it would be no contest, but keeping to a short section at a time and using a paint brush to keep the area wet with solution clearly showed the Evapo-Rust product to be the most suitable, and the fastest. It also appears to be the most environmentally friendly of the three, though I wouldn't recommend doing this job on your lawn, as I started to do. Yes, the grass did eventually grow back.

The surface was now free of rust and, after another scrub, was ready for inspection. I looked closely at each crosstie and at every weld. Suspicious ones were marked. Several were obviously cracked or already split. With the assistance of Fred Orsetti VE7IO, the welds were repaired. I was ready for paint!

I would have used an oil based primer and top-coat but my expert advised me against it and she was correct. According to the product sheets for such coatings, it is not recommended that you use an oil based product on galvanized surfaces. The paint will release and peel off after a time—and I didn’t fancy the thought of doing this again in a couple of years. There are special coatings available in a spray can specifically for galvanized metal but they are quite expensive with small coverage, exacerbated by the necessity to get inside and out and into all the nooks and crannies around the welds. I decided a brush was the better applicator for that job.

We, (read-in wife-approval mandatory) decided the least noticeable colour on our wooded lot would be a camouflage green. As a result of my ‘colour-Googling’ I had actually suggested a multi-colour camo paint scheme but that was vetoed as being too ‘military looking’, and so the appropriate latex primer and top-coat were tinted. It took exactly one litre each of primer and top coat to paint the five sections twice, with extra coatings on the welds. I used an air sprayer on the legs for the final coat.

Next came even tougher work. I had to remove a section of my cement patio to make the appropriate foundation and dig a big hole. There were brackets available that could be surface mounted but I’m a ‘belt and suspenders’ kind of guy and I wanted this thing in a block of concrete. If guys are not used, the tower manufacturer recommends fastening a section to the house as high up as possible, in my case that was just near the top of the 2nd section. I visited my local scrap yard and purchased some heavy-duty angle aluminium by the pound. I cut pieces to make an equilateral triangle and bolted one to the top plate of the house, running two arms to adjacent tower legs where they were secured by U-bolts. It’s steady as a rock. I used stainless steel hardware for all the section to section connectors in case I ever want (or have to) take it apart. That time is approaching as I have completed a rebuild of a rotator and HF Yagi that will go up in the spring.

It has now been two years plus and the tower shows no signs of either rust or paint failure. It was a lot of effort but I’m pleased I did it. Even with my Carolina Windom centred at the top of the tower, much higher than before, I’m getting much more activity across all the bands.

The sections above the roof blend in nicely with the trees. The final touch was to place flower baskets on the rungs at each level. We now refer to it as the ‘Tower of Flower’ and surprise… the neighbours even say it looks good.

 ~ John VE7TI

Special Event Week: Dec 24-Dec 31, 2023

The 1st annual Olivia Digital Mode on HF Winter QSO Party, celebrating 20 years of Olivia.

The Olivia Digital DXers Club (we’re on ClubLog!) is holding the first annual Winter Olivia Digital Mode on HF QSO Party, starting at 00:00 UTC, 24 December 2023, and ending at 23:59 UTC, 31 December, 2023.

Minimum logging requirements:  Callsign worked, Band (or Frequency), Mode (I.e., Olivia 8/250, or other variations), Time QSO Started.  You can log more than that, but for the sake of the certificate, please send at least the minimum information per QSO, to NW7US (email is on QRZ profile).  Logs can be any common method, from an .ADI file, to a screen shot.

Full details are on our website:
https://OliviaDigitalMode.org

Olivia, a Multi-Frequency Shift Keying (MFSK) radioteletype digital mode, is an amateur radioteletype protocol designed to work in difficult (low signal-to-noise ratio plus multipath) propagation conditions on shortwave radio (i.e., high-frequency, or HF) bands. The typical Olivia signal is decoded when the amplitude of the noise is over ten times that of the digital signal!

Here is an introduction to the Olivia digital mode:

73 de NW7US

Olivia is the digital communications mode on shortwave (high frequency sub band, or, HF) for amateur radio operators who want more than the “Check Propagation” FT8 mode. This video is an introduction that was presented to the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society ( https://www.rars.org/ ) on December 12, 2023, presented by Tomas Hood, NW7US

Olivia information can be found, here:
https://OliviaDigitalMode.org

Olivia, a Multi-Frequency Shift Keying (MFSK) radioteletype digital mode, is an amateur radioteletype protocol designed to work in difficult (low signal-to-noise ratio plus multipath) propagation conditions on shortwave radio (i.e., high-frequency, or HF) bands. The typical Olivia signal is decoded when the amplitude of the noise is over ten times that of the digital signal! It is commonly used by amateur radio operators to reliably transmit ASCII characters over noisy channels (slices of high-frequency spectrum — i.e., frequencies from 3 MHz to 30 MHz; HF) exhibiting significant fading and propagation phasing.

The Olivia digital modes are commonly referred to by the number of tones and the bandwidth used (in Hz). Therefore, it is common to express the Olivia digital mode as Olivia X/Y (or, alternatively, Olivia Y/X ), where X refers to the number of different audio tones transmitted, and Y refers to the bandwidth in Hertz over which these signals are spread. Examples of common Olivia modes are, 8/250 (meaning, 8 tones/250-Hertz bandwidth), 16/500, and, 32/1000.

The protocol was developed at the end of 2003 by Pawel Jalocha. The first on-the-air tests were performed by two radio amateurs, Fred OH/DK4ZC and Les VK2DSG, on the Europe-Australia propagation path in the 20-meter shortwave radio amateur band. The tests proved that the Olivia protocol (or, digital mode) works well and can allow regular intercontinental radio contacts with as little as one-watt RF power (when propagation is highly-favorable). Since 2005, Olivia has become a standard for digital data transfer under white noise, fading and multipath, flutter (polar path) and auroral conditions.

Olivia can perform nearly as good as the very popular WSJT mode, FT8, and better than FT4.

See you on the waterfall!

73 de NW7US

Closing out 2023, here are the top five blog posts at k0nr.com during the year. Some people may see this as a lazy way of creating one more blog post for the year without much effort and they would be right. These posts are the top five viewed during the year but may have been written earlier than that.

Top Five Blog Posts

Leading the list is this blog post…a perennial favorite that seems to make the top five each year. This particular article is tuned for Colorado but also provides a link to an article covering the topic for the USA.

Choose Your 2m Frequency Wisely

Moving up to second place, this post explains how the FCC rules get in the way of having one radio that does everything.

One Radio To Rule Them All (Ham, GMRS, FRS, MURS)?

In third place, this is another popular article that provides an introduction to 2m SSB operating.

Getting Started on 2m SSB

This article that announced the North America Adventure Frequency continues to get much attention.

North America Adventure Frequency: 146.58 MHz

This article talks about the many things you can do on the 2-meter ham band, beyond just FM.

The 2 Meter Band: Much More Than FM

Editors Choice

Just for good measure, I am including one more post that I think is notable.

How’s That North America Adventure Frequency Working?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

73 Bob K0NR

The post Top Five K0NR Blog Posts for 2023 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

SOME INFORMAL THOUGHTS ON WORKING CW DX

Recently, I came across some questions another amateur radio operator posed to a group of CW enthusiasts. Since I have an interest in Morse code, I thought I would explore these questions:

— begin quote —

1. When chasing some particular CW DX station needed for my DXCC punch-list, what are some things(s) that one can do to improve one’s chances of snagging that DX contact amidst a congested pileup? Is it truly the luck of the draw or roll of the dice? Or are there some time tested methods, less than obvious, that the experienced CW DX chasers have used that seem to improve one’s chances of snagging the DX contact? Yes, I’m aware that there are many variables to consider. I’m just looking for some general suggestions to improve my odds of success based on the experience of others.

2. If, let’s say, a DX station appends “UP 1” or “QSX 2” to his CQ call or just “UP” appears in a DX cluster spot listing, what is considered an acceptable amount of “UP”? I’m amazed sometimes at the amount of “UP” that I hear. LOL. Does a hefty amount of “UP” actually improve one’s chances? What does the DX op expect?

3. After a DX station sends their callsign how long should one wait to reply with one’s callsign? I hear stations respond immediately. But sometimes I hear others wait just a “bit”, and then respond to DX. And sometimes when the DX station is responding to a chosen station, other callers are STILL calling the DX op. What do most DX operators expect with regard to the response of a reply? Immediate? One-Mississippi …?

4. I hear stations reply to DX with their callsign once. Others sometimes twice. If I send my callsign twice I run the risk that the DX station has already begun his reply back to me with my sig-report while I’m still in the midst of sending my 2nd callsign reply. So … I should send my call just once?

— end quote–

Great questions!  And, the answers translate over to working DX pileups on voice, too.

Here are some of my off-the-cuff remarks, based on my limited experience DXing since 1990:
(I am an avid DXer, with 8BDXCC, etc.)

1. Listen, Listen, Listen: The DX station typically does work split – the DX station on, say, 14.023 MHz, and the DX station is listening anywhere from 14.028 to 14.033 (up 5 to 10). You first, of course, need to listen to the DX station, but, also to hear the stations that are calling the DX station! The trick is to be able to hear some of the stations that are piling up on the DX, and to determine if the DX is working a station, then tunes up a little, or down a little, from the frequency on which the last caller was chosen.

Once you know this, you want to position your signal so that the DX operator tunes to or very near where you are transmitting your signal. If the DX station does not call you but continues in the same tuning direction, you reposition your transmit frequency (always in the pileup window) and try again. If you do not know where the DX station is listening next, and especially if you cannot HEAR the DX station, you are calling blind and are in for a long effort.

If you have a way to see the waterfall at and around the DX frequency, you can often see the general spread of “UP” where the callers congregate. When listening (and, let me tell you, listening is key) to the DX station, watch the waterfall for the responding caller (the station in the pile-up calling the DX), as sometimes it is very obvious who is answering the DX. Watch this exchange for a number of new callers – and get a sense of HOW the DX operator is moving through the pile-up. Anticipate where the DX might listen next. Choose that “next frequency in the pattern of movement” and use that as your calling frequency.

2. Timing your call: this takes a bit of effort. I typically listen to my chosen transmit frequency, trying to call never at the exact same time as others, on or near my calling frequency.

3. I always send my callsign TWICE… something like this:

DX: DX1ABC UP
ME: NW7US NW7US
DX: NW7US 5NN
ME: R R NW7US 5NN TU
DX: NW7US TU, DX1ABC UP

There are some fine CW-oriented DXing books, PDFs, and websites that talk about this. For instance:

http://sota-dl.bplaced.net/articles/cw_chasing_tips_for_newcomers.pdf

https://www.cadxa.org/getting-started-in-dxing.html

I hope this personal observation of mine about working a Morse code pileup is helpful in some way.

73 de NW7US
https://NW7US.us

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