More stuff to fiddle with

M0RVB December 19, 2022

Armed with the LF converter I have been experimenting with antennas for the low side of things. There is far too much electronic hash in the house for any hope of receiving things so I now have a couple of antenna options to try outdoors. Given the radios are all upstairs and there is no easy cable route to the workshop where the antennas can go this means a remote SDR. There is already Ethernet in the garage where the QO100 transceiver was so experiments can begin.

Anyway, here are the new fiddleables... an IP35 mini whip from eBay seller radio.el32 complete with bias tee:

This comes as the two PCBs - antenna and bias tee - plus 3 BNC sockets. The metal box was sourced from eBay and the waterproof plastic housing from Amazon. It's a lot bigger than is needed but should be fine.

And a 'loop antenna amplifier' (LAA++) and bias tee from Cross Country Wireless:

All being well the first test will be of the IP35 antenna once mounted on a wooden pole. The LAA++ will take me a little longer as I need to make a loop for it.

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M0RVB December 30, 2017

First experiments with the FTM100DE

Well I got up relatively early and cut 35 foot of WF103 and soldered a PL259 on one end. The hole in the ceiling above the radios won't take the width of a plug but will - just as it turned out - take the cable. It now has one run of RG213 and three of WF103 and an RG58 and I reckon nothing else is going up that way now. My little Antex iron had no chance against the copper in the WF103 so I had to drag the reflow machine in from the workshop, overkill but it made a good joint. Got the co-linear set up and mounted and the VNA said 1.2 SWR on 2m (it only goes to 180MHz). The radio was easy to install and is smaller than I'd imagined (but then I'd not taken any notice of the stated dimensions). I put the SWR meter inline and it agreed with the 1.2 SWR on 2m and said the same for 70cm. The first thing the rig did was tell me that the micro SD card I fitted is bust so its in the bin. Another one worked fine. Mind you, I should have realised…

M0RVB May 28, 2017

More bits of wet string...

...well actually aluminium. I finally cut down an old 'fm' radio dipole to 2m and quietly ran yet another run of WF103 into the loft. So the Trio TR-9130 I got a few weeks ago finally has an aerial. SWR is not bad at 1.2 or so on the VNA. It's mounted horizontally as I got the transceiver in the hope of one day finding some 2m SSB... well it's been 3 hours, nothing yet! Impatient! Anyway it worked fine for the local RSGB News this morning, and to hear someone asking if 145.5 was in use but with no callsign... This also means I finally have a use for the KW520 SWR/power meter. However, it would not register any power on the 20W setting on the 140-525MHz range but did on the 1.8-200MHz range (both of course cover 2m). I took the lid off, discovered it would be rather difficult to get at the switches to check them so put it back together. Of course it now works fine. Perhaps the initial swearing at it actually worked. The Trio causes some QRM on the speakers of one of our PCs - actually in the room below the dipole. But…

M0RVB March 18, 2017

More digital

I had my first BPSK-63 QSO today. I like these modes, just set the rig to 14.070 and follow the matrix-like display... with no audio to annoy the wife. Mind you, as yet I have had no success having a CQ answered. I've sent plenty but currently the rather poor drive from the PC results in very little RF power. I hope to rectify that next week. There is a lot of RTTY about with the BARTG contest. Plenty of decodes but I've not joined in because I am not up to entering. Once the contest ends I'll have a good sniff for RTTY. Pity I don't have a nice old clattery Creed 7E to do it properly... but that is probably a step too far as I am still only a lodger in the spare room (aka study, aka shack) and may well be turfed out into the shed!