46 and counting…

Looking back at the posts I’ve made since starting this blog, it’s plain to me that the majority of them relate to some aspect of amateur radio. I suspect this is in part a seasonal thing because I certianly don’t forsee much by way of portable operations in the dead of winter.

I am sure that over time a balance will be struck and other aspects of my life will consume more space here. I know there are many things I do intend writing here that I never get around to. Maybe I need to make time for more of those day to day entries.

Dean Blog, Life... blog

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was hoping to work YS1G on CW (morse code) this week for an all time new one in the form of El Salvador. It’s looking very much like that will be a lot more difficult than I expected.

I have so far heard them on 17m late into my evening and on 40m early my morning. I’ve not yet heard them fully readable and there is deep fading on their signal. At best they are peaking 475 on my random wire antenna but only for a few seconds at a time. Most of the time they are inaudible down in the noise.

I will listen in a few more late evenings in the hope propagation peaks on one of those nights. Early mornings are more difficult but I might get one last chance early morning on Saturday the 23rd when they report that they will be on air ‘early GMT’ before packing up to head back to the UK.

I’ll keep fingers crossed but for now my expectations are revised to a ‘nice if it happens’ rather than the ‘expecting to work them’ of previous weeks.

Dean Amateur Radio, Life... antenna, morse code, propagation, YS1G

I think it was John Lennon who said that time you enjoyed wasting wasn’t wasted time. I subscribe to that view entirely but this past weekend was just time wasted and certainly wasn’t very enjoyable.

First of all the weather was terrible…then it was lovely…then it was terrible again…and so on and so on, all weekend. Alternating sunny spells and showers (of varying intensity), all to an almost meticulous hourly cycle. Very difficult to make any plans when trying to get out and operate some portable amateur radio.

Then the technology (or my understanding thereof) let me down. A new doublet antenna I had high hopes for didn’t seem to work very well at all (see ‘An inconclusive test’ below). Time will tell if the new z-match tuner (SEM TranZmatch) will prove to have been a worthwhile purchase.

Then on Sunday, when despite the weather I did get out portable with my 17m vertical dipole (one of the Par End-Fedz), I heard what would have been two all time new ones in the form of Madagascar and St Helena but both stations were buried beneath serious pile-ups with no hope of a QSO in the time I had available. Oh well - another time maybe.

Maybe on reflection I’ll consider it mostly wasted weekend. I did at least get a few contacts in the log and I did learn a little bit about doublet antennas and balanced feedlines. I’m sure I’ll have better luck as the weather improves through the summer and I’m able to spend more time out and about with the portable station and maybe, just maybe, that doublet will come good after all.

Dean Amateur Radio, Life... doublet, portable, propagation, SEM TranZmatch, vertical, weather, z-match

Not quite what I was expecting or hoping for. I’d read a lot about how well a 44ft doublet antenna worked when fed with a balanced line. Unfortunately my little test this afternoon left me a bit disappointed because I certainly didn’t see the kind of performance I expected. I’d taken the time to construct what I thought was a pretty well made antenna. I’d got the right kind of feed line and I’d found myself a good balanced tuner in the form of the SEM TranZmatch (pictured). I was hoping for great things. For one reason or another though the antenna was very difficult to tune on all but 17m.

SEM TranZmatch

I tried all the bands that the antenna is designed for with the exception of 40m. This includes all of 10m, 12m, 15m, 17m and 20m. I wasn’t able to try 40m due to time contraints and some pretty grotty weather (see yesterdays post).

Using a Yaesu FT-857, my transceiver of choice for portable work, I connected the radio to the TranZmatch with a separate SWR meter in line, connected the antenna to the TranZmatch with 20m of 300 ohm ladder line and set about 17m which wasn’t in great shape but did seem to have the usual early afternoon clutch of Asian stations (including VR2XMT, Charlie, coming in loud & clear as usual).

I tuned the TranZmatch for maximum noise on receive and then tweaked it with a bit of RF - quick & simple and a low SWR <1.2:1 across the band. I tried to reply to a few CQ calls but either wasn’t heard or just wasn’t getting out. I didn’t hang around trying to work stations though because this was primarily a test of the antenna/feedline/tuner combination so I moved on to see what 20m was like.

It was at this time that I got the first inkling that all wasn’t quite as I’d hoped. Getting a good match on 20m was really difficult and the lowest SWR possible was no better than 2:1. Now I know this isn’t terrible but I was hoping that the TranZmatch would do better. Maybe I was expecting too much because the same was then true on 15m, 12m and 10m. All of these bands had very sharp tuning and a minimum SWR no lower than 2:1.

I have a few questions in my own mind as to where the problem might lie. Is the feeder a ‘bad’ length - at twenty metres long it’s a full wave on 20m and might just present an extreme mismatch to the tuner. This doesn’t explain why other bands should be just as difficult to tune. The doublet wasn’t level - it was in an inverted-V configuration and the included angle was probably a bit small at around 100 degrees - 120 degrees is recommended. There was a lot of ’spare’ feedline just lying on the ground, loosely coiled - is it better to trim the feedline to prevent this?

For now the jury is out and I have more work to do before deciding one way or the other whether or not I’ll adopt the 44ft doublet as one of my regular portable antennas. And it’s just started raining again!

Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures antenna, doublet, FT-857, ladder line, portable, SEM TranZmatch, SWR, weather, z-match

Just wondering why whenever you make plans for the weekend the weather always seems to conspire to be wet & miserable for those few precious days off work!

I made plans for this weekend a long time ago, rash I know given the British climate. Now it seems I’ll be lucky to avoid the showers forecast for much of central England across both Saturday and Sunday.

Oh to live somewhere a bit warmer with a more predictable climate!

Dean Life..., Totally random trivia, weather

A work colleague of mine with whom I share some musical tastes recently asked me if I had anything by ‘Cold Chisel’, a band I had never even heard of. I told him that no, I didn’t, but intrigued as to what kind of music they might play, I looked them up and listened to a few songs. I was very impressed!

It turns out that ‘Cold Chisel’ were a big name act in Australia & New Zealand in the late 70’s and early 80’s and their lead vocalist Jimmy Barnes on leaving the group in 1984 achieved wider success with a string of successful albums and collaborations with the likes of INXS, Tina Turner, Joe Cocker and John Farnham.

‘Cold Chisel’ don’t fall into any particular musical genre rather they incorporate elements of rock, blues, rock’n'roll and pop. I’d recommend you check out their greatest hits album ‘The Very Best of Cold Chisel’ - even though the songs are now approaching 30 years old they really are worth a listen.

Dean Music Cold Chisel, Jimmy Barnes

I have recently been considering a number of antenna options for portable operating - something I seem to spend a lot of time doing since getting the ‘portable’ bug earlier this year.

From an article titled ‘My Top Five Backyard Multi-Band Wire HF Antennas’ by L. B. Cebik (W4RNL) I have selected the ‘broadside doublet’ as my next little project. Being a balanced antenna and requiring a balanced feed line I have also been exploring suitable antenna matching units and have decided that an old Z-match design should work well.

With that in mind I found an ad for an old SEM Transmatch unit and called the seller to do a deal. To my surprise he told me he’d send me the unit immediately and suggested I ‘pop a cheque in the post when it arrives’. Not at all what I was expecting from a commercial dealer and to be honest, a refreshing change from kind of sellers often found on eBay where nothing happens until your money is firmly in their hands (so to speak).

I am now looking forward to receiving the tuner and experimenting with a 44ft long doublet fed with 300 ohm ladder line. All I need now is a bit of decent weather…or is that too much to ask?

Dean Amateur Radio, Life..., Totally random antenna, Cebik, doublet, eBay, ladder line, portable, SEM TranZmatch, W4RNL, z-match

Buddistick mount

Piggot’s Bottom, approximately 52° 42′ 56″ north, 1° 54′ 7″ west. Locator square IO92BR. This is where I setup the Buddistick for a bit of 17m operating. Just don’t ask me to find it again! Let me explain. I set out to operate from a spot I’ve used before not far from home. The problem was that today those playing fields were in use and the small carpark was full. This meant I had to find another spot to operate from. I set off with no particular destination in mind and after driving around for some 20 minutes I found myself at Piggot’s Bottom, a small wood about 6 or 7 miles northwest of Lichfield. I found the spot entirely by chance and will have to pore over a map in order to ever find it again.

As you can see from the pictures of todays outing (see my Portable Amateur Radio gallery) the spot I chose is in a lovely little clearing set into a corner of the wood. Using the supplied Buddistick mount plus the vertical antenna clamp in my ‘Deluxe’ package I attached the antenna to the rear hatch on the car (see picture on this page and linked gallery page). This placed the feedpoint about 6ft above the ground. The elevated radial wire was taken away horizontally and tied-off to a convenient tree. This tuned up great on 17m with SWR < 1.2:1 across the SSB portion of the band.

Conditions weren’t great on 17m today but there was decent propagation down into the Mediterranean region with SV9CVY (Mike on the island of Crete) loud at 59+ runnning a good pile-up of mostly EU stations with a few US stations. I eventually got through the pile and got a good 59 report. I was pleased to make the contact because he did seem to have lots of loud stations calling him and it took a bit of persistence and some guile to get the contact.

I also got good reports from 9H1DE (Roly in Malta who was 59 with me) who gave me 58, 9A0CI (Fred on EU-090) who gave me 58, 1B1AB (Soyer in Turkish North Cyprus) who gave me 59 and Flavio & Marco (IW0HKH and IW0GEQ), both in Rome who gave me 55 and 57 respectively.

The catch of the day though was HV0A (Francesco) in the Vatican City. I was tuning across the band as he was calling CQ (59+) and I got him on the second call. It wasn’t too long before he was buried under a huge pile-up as more and more stations all tried for a contact, by which time I was smiling broadly with him already in my log. This was my second contact with HV0A having previously also working him on 20m SSB for what was at that time my 100th country. The QSL card for that contact is on the QSL Europe gallery page.

It was an enjoyable few hours on 17m and another good performance from the Buddistick antenna which continues to impress. I will certainly find my way back to Piggot’s Bottom to operate from there again.

Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures antenna, Buddistick, G0RIF, HV0A, portable, propagation, QSL, vertical

The QSL card arrived today and a very nice card it is, befitting the dxpedition itself which was a slick, well run affair. I was very pleased with my 30m CW contact because prior to the night I made the contact I’d struggled to hear them at all. Add to that the huge pile-ups I was convinced I’d never get through. But, on the night of the 22nd February 2009, they were much louder so I set about making a few calls, trying to find my way through the pile-up. Half an hour later they were in the log.

The very smart K5D QSL card

I’ve had some good successes on morse code over the past year or two with VP6DX and K5D as two contacts of note. I next hope to work El Salvador for an all time new one later this month when a British team will be operating exclusively on CW as YS1G. Fingers crossed there is some decent propagation come the time.

Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures dxpedition, K5D, morse code, propagation, QSL

This was a question recently put to me by my partner. It’s a question I couldn’t really give a straight answer to.

Is there anybody out there? Does anyone ever read any of what is written here? The honest answer is that I really don’t know. I certainly don’t write with an audience in mind or with any thought as to who might read what I write. I write for myself in the same way someone might keep a paper diary - to look back on and to remember people, places and experiences of the past.

Like the tree that falls in the forest when no one is there to hear it - the question then asked is ‘does it make a sound?’ - if what I write here is never read by anyone…did I ever write it…and does it really matter?

To be honest I’m not at all sure it does matter but to anyone who does pass this way I say ‘hello and welcome…and thank you’!

Dean Blog, Life... blog, trivia