AmateurRadio.com

Just a bit more tidy

Today I took the chance to clean up the radio desk a bit, now that the LP-100A has been removed from the desk and sold I had a chance to rearrange things. I find it so funny that I remove one coax jumper at a time, then move a device  and re-attach the coax jumper and having done this to about 4 radio devices somehow I still end up with something going not where it should. I then have to trouble shoot things to get them back to "normal". Well things are working again and the shack/roll top desk is a little more organized. It was now time to get on the radio and see what was happening out there. I started out on 17m and came across W1AW/5 calling CQ I decided to drop my K3's power down to 500mW's and see how I did. I was able to snag him on the first call which meant it was a 2,211 miles per watt contact!
I then slipped over to 15m and came across V5/DK1CE calling CQ he was running split and it's not very often I try the split thing. It was only once before I was able to make a contact running split. I gave him a go and with about 2 repeats I was able to get into Namibia with 5 watts! I was thrilled to not only make a contact operating split but also to have my MFJ 1788 loop antenna with 5 watts make the trip.  
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at ve9kk@hotmail.com.

A shot of the unit

The Telepost LP-100A has been sitting on my desk for to long doing nothing so it's time to sell it and make some ham bucks! I built it myself and it was sent back to Telepost and Larry gave it a check over and calibrated it. For full information on the unit follow this link LP-100A
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at ve9kk@hotmail.com.

I've managed to complete my new 630m loading coil / variometer combination but will need to wait for the completion of my impedance matching transformer before I can test it out on the antenna. From earlier tests on 475kHz, it seems that my inverted 'L' needs about 190uH for resonance on 630m so just a small loading coil was needed. The built in variometer will allow the system to be tuned to resonance easily, without the need for playing with taps. Once I had started to wind the main coil, I decided to put on a few more turns than I had originally planned, reasoning that it would be easier to remove turns if less inductance was needed than it would be to add more turns if I fell short.     My matching transformer will be similar to the one used on my 2200m system for the past several years. Construction details may be found on the GW4ALG web site. This method of matching, rather than tapping up from the grounded end of the loading coil to find the correct impedance match, is much easier to use and readily allows for changes to be made as the seasons change from winter (wet) to summer (dry).

Source: http://www.alg.myzen.co.uk/radio/136/ant_xformer.htm

 

Source: http://www.alg.myzen.co.uk/radio/136/ant_xformer.htm

To avoid core saturation at 1kW, my 2200m transformer was wound on two pieces of 'street ferrite', a phrase coined by VE7TIL  to describe the abundance of these free flyback cores often to be found in discarded TV's and computer monitors. The ferrite usually has a very high permeability and works well in this application as well as for switching FET amplifier output transformers...and, the price is right!  

Source:  http://leoricksimon.blogspot.ca/2007/05/flyback-driver.html

The challenge is removing the core from its encapsulated shroud without damaging the core. Once you get the hang of it, it is fairly easy to do, but you must work carefully with the brittle ferrite. With the proliferation of LED TV's and monitors, this source of free cores will not be around  much longer so grab them while you can ....this ferrite is just too good to throw away!
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at ve7sl@shaw.ca.

Some things are better left alone, have you ever had an "are you kidding me" moment! I just went through one that had me take a 2nd and 3rd look along with a refresh button push and a prayer. What caused this frenzee you ask.........it all started with cleaning and good intentions. This evening I was relaxing in bed after an 11 day work shift. Before I drifted off (looking back drifting off would had been a great plan) I wanted to catch up on some blog reading. Having done that and also noticing I had some blogs I follow that have had no activity for over a year I felt it time to delete them......wrong feeling!! Well I ventured into my blog layout page then next to the "blogs I follow" gadget. Once there you have a view of all followed blogs and its here you can delete them or change URL's and so on.  It's kinda idiot proof.............unless you are an idiot!!! So I proceeded to delete my first stale blog once done I returned back to my blog to see if it was removed......it was ALONG WITH ALL BLOGS I FOLLOW!! Ok bloggers out there is there a way to undo this?? To all of you I follow I have not bounced you from the blog on purpose but by having a brain fart.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at ve9kk@hotmail.com.

Today I received a very nice email from Ofcom. It was my NoV for my echolink node.

MB7IAH

Whilst I won’t be able to get it up and running this weekend because we have guests I hope to have everything up, running and ready for use early next week.

There is a restriction of 1.6w TX output using the 1/2w dipole (vertically polarised) but I’m keen to get the thing up and running. Eventually It’ll all be on the RPi but for now it might be quicker to install onto one of the old netbooks and to use that as a way of optimising audio and tx settings before going headless. There are a few restrictions on its use but they are perfectly sensible and being able to be unattended is a real bonus.

Exciting times. Here’s hoping it’ll get used by more than just me.

Alex Hill, G7KSE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, UK. Contact him at g7kse@yahoo.co.uk.

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at w2lj@arrl.net.