Poor Mans Antenna Analyser

The poor mans antenna analyser was brought to my attention by Dave M0GGK. i had been looking for something like this for a long time.

It was designed by Andre, GM3VLB and his article is really interesting reading. He gives full details of how you can build one yourself. I have one built and am in the process of calibrating the meter.

I decided to buy one ready built from Andre and he still has a few more available but he says when they are gone, they are gone :-) he got the beautiful 50ua meters at a good price but there are no more available from that source.

I ordered one from him and it arrived a few days later, i must say it is beautifully made and is a great asset in my shack. Now i don’t have to rely on guess work anymore when building and setting up a new antenna.

check out Andre’s website http://www.gm3vlb.com/general/poor_mans_antenna_analyser.htm

HB-1a 3 band QRP rig

The HB-1a is a small 3 band QRP CW rig made in China. It was produced as a kit but today the HB-1A is offered as a complete product (batteries not included) using professional assembly with Surface Mounted Technology. The cost seems to be in line with most other rigs offering similar features, power output, multi-bands and of course, size. The current pricing including freight direct from the manufacturer represents a bargain when compared to other units offering similar features.

The digital display offers power output, RIT, storage frequencies as well as short-wave radio receiver functions.

This is an ideal transceiver for the CW enthusiast who likes to set up a station at impromptu locations. A picnic bench in a park with the antenna wire thrown in to the closest tree, a remote camp-site, long nature walks are just a few thoughts. The unit does not include an internal antenna tuner.

The current drain is of a low-power design and allows approximately 50-75 mA on receive. The manufacturer rates the unit, using 2200 mA rechargeable cells at 2 watts output power at 15-20 hours with receive and send ratio of 2:1.

I had to replace the 100 ohm trim pot in the driver stage on this one as it was broken. I set the output to 4 watts on 40m and it was also 4 watts on 30m, on 20m it was about 31/2 watts. The pa transistor is heat sinked against the case but it was standing in free air on this one so i fixed that, used a mica washer and plenty of heatsink paste.

Output seems fairly steady and got clean reports, my power meter is not very accurate so i think i’ll make new one!

Paper clip paddle!

I could not resist making one of these, i first saw one somwhere on the internet and thought thats a good idea, but never got round to making one. Then the latest SPRAT arrived and there was one in there so out came the soldering iron and a few paper clips and one was made. I must say that for what it is it works really well, better than i thought it would. I will be using one for portable operating from now on, weighs hardly anything.

Home made Miracle/ wonder whip antenna

I have read about the Miracle whip and wonder whip antennas and decided to take a closer look at them. I remember reading an article about the Miracle whip in Radcom, it turned out it was June 2006.

I found M1IOS website with his take on the antenna and it was his article i had read. http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/m1ios/html/wonder%20whip.htm

So i decided to make one and give it a try, i used a ferrite torroid that i had handy but it is not the correct type which should be an FT140-43 or one of the ones bought from the RSGB. With the one i used i don’t get the full coverage of the one M1IOS made but mine does cover 30meters to 2 mtrs.I got the telescopic from Maplin and also the 12 way switches, the torroid is a bit fiddly and takes a while to wind but it is worth it.I set up in Moses Gate Country Park, which is in the Bolton area of Lancashire in the North West of England.I attached the miracle whip to the back of the SWR/Power meter and used a short patch lead to connect to the FT817.First i tried the M/whip on tx on the bands and found it was a goo match on 30 - 2 meters :-)So i then set it back on 30mtrs and tuned around, in the country park it is away from buildings etc so the noise was niceand low, not showing at all on the S meter.I listened around but the few QSO's i could hear were not about to end so i moved up to20 meters, 1:1 SWR no problem, some good strong signals heard and i then had a 2 way qrp qso with Thomas, DL1DRA/QRP/Pwho was running 5 watts from an FT817 :-) 559 both ways. I then got a QRZ from a UA3 station and then i changed bands to 17m.I worked SP6PZG in Poland and he gave me 559,Then i worked DL6FAX and got 569.Next i moved to 15 meters SWR 1:1 but no signals on there so moved to 12m again 1:1 swr but no signals so i then moved to 10m again swr 1:1 but there was strong signals across 10 meters and i worked EA5BS and then SM4DDE who gave me 579 and asked for details of the antenna so i described it as a 1.3meter telescopic whip with a switched loading coil wound on a torroid, he said it was doing really great :-). Next i changed to 6 meters and that also had some signals on it and SWR was about 1.7:1 and i worked EA1FF and he gave me 599 very strong signals both ways. So it was a very pleasant and enjoyable couple of hours and i am more than pleased with the results of using the homemade miracle whip :-)

28/JUNE/2010

I took the FT817 with me and the home made miracle whip antenna when i went for a walk before meeting Charlotte from school.

I walked in the open heathland which is set aside by Salford council to walk on and i found a spot where some rocks were and a nice small flat topped one was used to set up the rig and antenna. I tested the antenna on 20-6mtrs and found i could get a low swr on them all. Nothing much on the bands as they were not good but i heard a strong signal on 20m and called him. F6ENI he came straight back to me and we had a chat for about 10 minutes, he was 599 and gave me a 569 but during the several overs he said my signal was peaking S9 at times. not bad for 2 watts and a small whip antenna.

Royal Signals Amateur Radio Society- May test

I have been taking part in the annual anniversary test which runs for the whole of May each year.  The object is to work as many members of the society as you can. This year has been hard again with poor conditions. I don’t think i did so well but have managed to work 31 members, mostly in the UK but one in Spain and one in Australia so i was especially pleased with VK6PG on 20 meters.

Antennas have been my indoor magloops and on one occasion a 132ft doublet i strung out at the club one weds night.

The VK6PG though was worked on my indoor “Baby Zilla” magloop

Seen here on the right. It is mounted N/S in my roofspace and is giving a good account of itself. VK6PG said i was as strong as most of the UK stations he had worked and said that condx were poor so that made the QSO with Alan even more pleasing. The rig used was the FT840 and i was running 50 watts.

Portable with FT817ND

I like portable operating and so when i get the chance i will take to the hills :-)

Here is a short video of the FT817ND set up in a portable location and using the small PAC-12 antenna. This antenna is great for backpacking as it splits down to just 12 inches but is almost 9 feet high when assembled. Mine is for 40 / 20 meters but it can be made to operate 80-10mtrs with the appropriate loading coils.

 

New half wave end fed wire tuner for FT817nd

Here is a photo of my new half wave end fed wire tuner, i made it for use with my FT817nd, it will fit direct onto the SO239 socket on the rear of the rig. It will tune a half wave end fed wire on 40,30,20,17,15 and 12 meters. It has a built in LED SWR bridge, using a super bright led, which can be seen easily even in direct sunlight, a must for portable operating. The 4K7 resistor you see across the terminals was used to test the tuning range, 4k7 being an approx of a half wave end fed.

QRSS

I have been setting up Argo for QRSS reception again.I used the FT817ND and inverted V doublet,FT817 set to 10.139.66.

Here is one of the first screen shots taken from Argo.

I set the calibration in argo to 10139650, the FT817ND is set in dig mode and the dial set to 10.139.66

Tak Tenna

I I I I I H Have been building a Tak Tenna with my good friend Frank MW1RES, it is an 80 meter version
and i believe one of the proto types.
Construction was fairly straight forward and we did get some help from Ian G0PLX when we were winding the coils, see the photo, Ian looks at the completed Tak Tenna and admires our handiwork :-)
Frank set the taps for the feed point as per the instructions but as the antenna was indoors it was not the best place to do this.
Later we put it on a 12 foot pole outside and did it again. The SWR was about just a shade under 2:1 and we could have got it much lower if we had carried on checking.
Frank then fed the Tak Tenna into his home made transmatch and the atu easily brought the swr down to 1:1. Then just for fun we tried other bands, leaving the taps where they were and with the transmatch we could get 1:1 on 40,30,20, 17 and 15 meters, we could also get a low swr on 12 and 10 but it was not as easy to tune.
I think for a small footprint and using an atu the Tak Tenna could prove very useful for some one who is short on space. Thanks for asking me to help Frank, enjoyed it very much.

small end fed wire tuner for the FT817nd.

This is my small atu /end fed wire tuner i built to use with the FT817nd. I wanted something nice and small to take with the FT817nd when out portable and i didn’t want something to big. The design is taken from Steve AA5TB’s web site. He ahs lots of interesting information on using the half wave end fed tuner.

This is a good choice for portable operating as no counterpoise wire or ground is needed with a half wave wire. It’s light and fits in the rucksack easily. If there are plenty of trees where you operate then just get the far end up as high as you can. If like me you find yourself on top of a hill/mountain with no trees handy then i use a 5mtr telescopic fishing pole. This is quite light and just straps to the back of my pack or you could use it as a walking pole !!

here is the link to Steve’s interesting web site.

http://www.aa5tb.com/

FT817ND

I now have an FT817ND in the shack, just finding my feet with it at the moment. Lots to remember with the menu driven kittle rig.

First impressions are it is awesome for it’s size, I have just bought some nimh 2300mah batteries to put into the alkaline battery tray that was in it. I did hot get the nicad pack so bought these much better nimh type. As the FT817 battery tray comes with it if you put nicads or nimh types in it they will not charge. I found the mod on the internet that instructs to snip the green wire on the battery tray connector, did this and now the batteries charge up. see the mod at this link. http://www.pd7bz.com/radioprogs/FT817/FT817.htm#1940

Lots of other mods can be found at this link http://www.pd7bz.com/radioprogs/FT817/FT817.htm

FT817ND on top of the old Sommerkamp ts280fm.

Also had a nice QSO on 80mtrs with the FT817 using and old Himound BK-100 bug key, the bug key is bigger than the FT817 :-)

Baby Zilla is about to take it’s place in it’s new home

Baby Zilla will be taking it’s place in it’s new home over the next week.

It will be up in my roofspace and ready to be cut loose on the HF bands. I have added a new feed loop made from RG213 coax in place of the wire loop you see in the photo above. It just needs some final tweaking and then it’s ready to go.

I can’t wait to try it out using my latest additions to the shack ! a couple of Heathkits, the old but favourite of mine HW-7 and the last model they sold the HW-9. I picked these up a couple of weeks ago, the HW-7 is working OK, it has a modified reciever and RIT, The HW-9 needs some attention but i have had some QSO’s with it on 80 mtrs. 10 mtrs is not working and it does need some other jobs doing before it is fully operational.

The box on top of the HW-9 is my home made BLT tuner, it is a great little ATU.

Octopus Tester.

This circuit dates back to at least 1935 and is a simple cheap adapter that converts just about any oscilloscope into a component tester. It causes a component's current vs. voltage characteristics to be displayed on an oscilloscope's screen. The name "Octopus" is attributed to a Marine Corporal who reinvented it in 1968 while working working on Tactical Navigation Systems at NAS Newriver, NC. He called it "The Octopus" "...because the first one was so messy with wires sticking out all over the place,..."

I made mine using an old 6v heater transformer, I was surprised just how  well it works. I can see it being one of the most useful bits of test gear in my shack.

Here are some photos of the traces on the scope.

this one shows a 4.7uf capacitor which gives an oval shape, depending on the size of the cap it could be a circle, the one here shows a 1uf cap .  This line shows a 1k resistor

and this one a 10k resistor.

A vertical line shows a dead short, there are other shapes for diodes, zenors and it is a great transistor checker. Also makes it easy to ckeck FET’s and Mosfets.

160 meter rock loop

I just finished making a 160 meter rockloop. It is made with 2 inch wide copper foil that is pinned/hot glued to the shack wall !

It is tuned by a 3 gang variable capacitor culled from an old broadcast receiver. Overall capacitance is around 1600pf. The feed is via a toroid matching tr ansformer with 40 turns and a 5 turn link connected to the loop.

The swr on 160 meters is 1.1:1 and running 10 watts I have worked over a 1000 miles, best DX so far being HA5JI.

Using wspr at 3 watts signals have been heard all over western Europe and the UK.

Baby Zilla completed and operational.

I have now finished building Baby Zilla, the magnetic loop is working just fine.  The feed loop is a simple wire loop instead of the half faraday loop I have used in the past. Much easier to set up and results seem the same.

The loop is approx 1/5th the size of the main loop and the shape can be altered to get the required SWR. The finished loop has an SWR of 1:1 on 20,17 and 15mtrs, on 12 and 10mtrs it is a little higher but still less than1.4:1.

 here it is in the radio club shack hanging from one of the wooden roof beams. This weekend I will be installing the magnetic loop in my roofspace at home. It will replace the old Capco magloop that i re-built last year. That will probably be sold to the highest bidder :-)

All credit for the construction of Baby Zilla  must go to Gary 2E0TIG who made the loop and cut out all the bits for the butterfly capacitor, I had the easy job of just assembling it.

SO THANKS GARY

There are lots more photo’s of Baby Zilla’s construction on my web site, click on this link to go and look at them.

Baby Zilla at G4KKI

Magnetic Loop 1st proper QSO

I had the first proper QSO using “Baby Zilla” this evening. I took it to the radio club I go to and Ian G0PLX helped me to set up and get the feed loop adjusted properly. We hung it from a large wooden beam inside the club which is an old barn. The SWR on 20,17, 15 mtrs was 1:1 but on 12 and 10mtr it was over 2:1. So I adjusted the shape of the feed loop and got the SWR down to 1.7:1 on 10mtrs, checked 12mtrs and it was 1.3:1. We then re-checked 20,17 and 15mtrs and they were still 1:1.

The white wire you see in the photo on the right is the power feed to the capacitor motor. Moving this has no effect on the SWR.

Tuned to 14.060 and heard IK8SCR calling CQ so gave him a call and he came straight back to me. 579 report both ways, he was using an FT817 at 5 watts and I also had to FT840 at 5 watts. His antenna was a Vertical.

Close up of the butterfly capacitor

The butterfly capacitor is now assembled and covers 17pf-180pf this covers 20 –10mtrs very nicely with “Baby Zilla”

The feedloop used is now a simple wire loop 1/5th the size of the main loop and the SWR is fine across all bands covered.

New Magnetic loop "Baby Zilla"

I have now added a 6:1 slow motion drive and a motor to the magloop, also Gary 2E0TIG sent me a wire coupling loop that he has used with his loop. I got the SWR down to 1:1 on 14,18, 21 mhz but on 24 and 28 can’t get it below 2. So more experimenting to do yet. On 20 and 17m it is working great and I had a couple of QSO’s into Russia with it sat on the bench.

Gary 2E0TIG made me this fantastic 900mm loop from 75mm aluminium. He made a bigger one sometime ago which got nicknamed Loop Zilla, this one he has named Baby Zilla. It should perform great on 20-10mtr.
So watch this space as it takes shape, it will be used with a butterfly capacitor, also made by Gary, he sent me the parts which I assembled.well actually my granddaughter Charlotte put most of it together for me. That was the easy part, Thanks Gary.
Took "baby Zilla" to the club tonight and drilled the mounting holes for the variable cap, that will be fitted tomorrow and a photo posted to the blog. I have the motor also ready for mounting but first I will get the swr set correctly and then finally fit the motor.
The variable cap is now fitted and I made a makeshift coupling loop. It tunes nicely from 18 - 30 mhz just shy of 14mhz so I need to add more plates to the capacitor. I got an SWR of less than 1.3:1 across 18-30mhz. Tuned it up on 18.082.3 and sent CQ TEST a couple of time followed by de G4KKI K and was most surprized and pleased when Alex UU5JL came back to me. 579 both ways. Here are a couple more pics of it as is. Will be a better finished job when all sorted.

20 mtr EH antenna

I decided to take another look at my 20 mtr EH antenna and so I got it out of the cupboard I had put it in. The coax was just soldered to the source/feed loop and hanging down from inside the

EH tube. I took that off and added a BNC socket to finish the job off.

It looks much better and is easier to take anywhere with the coax now being carried seperately.

I thought it might have upset the SWR but when I plugged in the coax and connected it to the rig

the SWR was still 1:1 at 14.040, rising to 1.8:1 at plus or minus 30khz.

I will admit that the little EH antenna is not the most efficient antenna going but it does work and if you can't put up an outside antenna and the misses objects to anything big then the EH will still get you some QSO's .

Poldhu. Cornwall, Marconi centre

Well I'm back from my holiday in Cornwall, had a great time and it was made special by my
visit to Poldhu. I set my portable qrp station up in the remains of the Marconi transmitter/engine room. Bands were not so good but I had 4 QSO's al qrp - qrp on 14.060. I then visited the Marconi centre and operated as GB2GM from one of the radio rooms. I'll post a full report with many more photo's as sson as I get the chance.
I have now added a slideshow of my day at Poldhu, view it here
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/g4kki.william/newquay%202009/newquay%202009.html