Copasetic Flow

I mentioned earlier that Project TouCans is back on the air. It's also on the air with a stronger signal than it had two weeks ago. The difference? That's it! That's the whole thing. Notice that the wire, which is coming apart and needs to be replaced, is wrapped onto the insulator with only about two or three inches of itself. For the last several weeks, I've been wrapping it with between six and seven inches of itself. Going back to the shorter wrap immediately led to more signal! I guess resonant dipole antennas are really resonant!

Washi tape has been protecting the connections on the back yard ham radio half wave dipole for the last few weeks, and I'm a little stunned. Noticing that one of the POTA antenna setups had started to look a litttle grungy a few weeks back, I resolved to do tape wraps on all antenna connections moving forward. I didn't have electrical tape the last time I worked on the backyard dipole, so I'd used washi tape instead because I had it, and why not combine my two niche interests, ham radio, and stationery? It turned out to have been a good choice. When I hauled the antenna in for a connector switch this morning, (having nothing to do with the washi tape, and everything to do with low-balling my BNC barrel budget, more on that later), I discovered that the washi tape had become a very hard to remove shell that had protected the wires quite nicely. Consequently, after changing out the male BNC to banana connector for a female—ridding the antenna of the need for a barrel connecto...

 There are more radio stations than I thought at UC Berkeley. To be specific, there's two. Yesterday, the KD0FNR Rockmite was seen by both of them: the first piece of evidence that changing the conductor diameter of the half wave dipole had a measurable effect. As it  turns out, changing the dipole conductor width led to more questions than answers & also better propagation... maybe. The aerial wires for the Rockmite's dipole have always seemed somewhat vanishingly small to me. I don't have an exact size right now, but if I had to guess, I'd go with them being 24 AWG or about 02 inches in diameter. They're signle stranded wires that break at the BNC to banana plug adapter about once a week, gradually shortening the antenna and raising its resonant frequency. Out of a suspicion (vague recolection from EM class?) that a higher diameter wire would result in better power output, and some vaguely supporting research materials, I swapped out the single strand wires fo...

 For reals! The little ham radio was suspended between two trees that used to support the antenna and the radio, but today supported the antenna AND the radio. Results were mixed. The radio worked, the antenna and connections held steady. The signals were smaller compared to signals from the inverted vee at the home station. The up close picture highlights that the wires didn't sag much under the weight of the radio, and with  that tension, they held fine with no issues. As a final note, there was significantly less noise at the park location.

 Today, I learned about whole wave dipole antennas and their impedance problem; details I suspected about the novel The Natural; the nicest radio club I've come across so far, the North American QRP CW Club Full-wave dipoles First, lets talk about full-wave dipole antennas. Spoiler, do not  run out and build one without reading to the end, I almost did. It turns out that while the things offer some gain, they have this impedance issue which is... i nfinite impedance at the feedpoint !!! In other words, oh my goodness will your power reflect back into your transmitter without a matching network. Why was I reading about the cursed things? Well, that takes us to this ARRL article on QRP  (From April 1984 QST, p 52). The article suggested that what I really wanted was a full wave dipole: You know? If I had the resources to build an antenna tower, I'd probably also have resources and patience to build the impedance matching network so really it's a matter of resources that inf...

I was back up on Sourdough Trail with the Rockmite 20 on Wednesday. The weather was gorgeous and as long as the sun was out it was warm enough to shed a few layers. I ran into a few dove as I hiked up out to the end of the ridge, but the resident moose must have been hiding out. I hung the dipole between two trees at the point of a ridge line that points off to the East at an altitude of 10,200 feet. The antenna was oriented just a little bit to the northeast due to the positioning and availability of suitable trees for antenna supports. View Larger Map KD0FNR station location and antenna orientation Antenna support After CQing for awhile, I was rewarded with a callback from KB8AP in Central Point, OR who provided me with an RST report of 439 while I could read him at 239, RST reports being rather subjective things with the Rockmite since it has no S meter. After we chatted for a bit, I CQ'ed again and immediately heard back from KC8ITC in the opposite direction, Saline, Michig...