Radio, railways, stuff...

I’ve been planning for a while now to put up an antenna in the garden, but where is the question. I have a 20m wire and 9:1 unun to set up somewhere - ideally I’ll run this up the garden but that goes under the phone line, or actually the end of the wire would be under it. What stopped me was the impending changes for EMF as the unun would be mounted outside pretty close to our bedroom window. So, for a laugh I got another unun to experiment with (yes I know I can make one but the ferrite I had is lost in the workshop moves). Looking at the ‘ideal wire length’ chart 36 feet comes close enough to the distance between the bedroom/shack and the hedge so I cut 36 feet of bell wire and launched it across the utility room towards the workshop as a measure. Tied to the bedroom window reached almost to the far side of the workshop. I reckon I can attach a pole there and attach the unun to the wall outside the shack - there is a convenient airbrick nearby. But, for a laugh I attached said bell wire to the unun, hung the unun on the window handle, ran about 6m of RG58 across to the tuner and tuned it up. The YT-1200 actually managed it right down to 80m (the loft fan dipole will not go longer that 40m). But the FT450D was very unhappy trying to feed power in to any band under 20m. A string of clip-on ferrites cured that and I managed to be heard on FT8 in Eire and Germany on 80m plus managing FT8 contacts on 40m and 30m. It is deaf - no surprises there. The bell wire is not taught so it almost touches the garage roof on the way down. A proper bit of wire stretched up may be better and I have a reel so more fiddling may be had yet. The icing on this experiment was being heard, FT8 again in Finland on 60m and later managed an exchange with a French station - my first ever anything on 60m. Oh, yes, and I have that ‘Hold Tx Freq’ checked so it doesn’t stray outside our limits… worth remembering that because had it tracked up to the French station it would be out of our rage. The downside is its getting very cold in the shack with the window open! 

Work on the Creed 75 is slow at present and not helped by the fact the workshop is a mess since I moved all the valves in there and thus had to relocate all the other junk. Having recently reminded myself that 1/4 watt resistors do not generally like being expected to sink 3 to 4W (!) I have some decent resistors to ensure the PSU gives the required 20mA. So I have 80-0-80V from the PSU attached to the 444, I have 20mA (actually 23), the 75 types to itself locally, which is mechanical, but does not receive correctly. I am generating code from the TDMS but Y comes out as Z and most other code combinations are unrelated to reality. I wondered if this was the result of the typehead not lifting correctly but Y and Z are on the same level. The ‘scope shows a reasonable waveform coming out of the TDMS. So, currently I have two teleprinters and neither one reliably prints out what is sent to it. Nor do they talk any sense to each other. I can accept that with the 444 as I still need to strip it down but the 75 is all functional mechanically. The code combinations ‘sound’ reasonable too (if you’ve never heard a teleprinter you won’t know what I mean here) as with the motor off the clacking sound seems reasonable for the codes being sent by the TDMS. Very unscientific I know but it backs up what the ‘scope shows. Some adjustment needed then… but really as I have yet to have any baseline in any of this it is a bit of a moving target. The TDMS will not send just one character but in theory, and with the motor off, given it sends the same character continually it should set the selectors correctly for me to examine them to see if Y as sent really is Y as received. That’s the next step, only the bench the teleprinters are on is too crowded to work on them.

While viewing the UKuG webcast last night I lost the RHS sound in the headphones. Fiddling with the wire made no difference. The headphones in question are plugged into an audio mixer that connects the radios and PCs. Checking the speakers which are on a different output from the mixer showed the same issue, LHS sound only. As I wanted to watch the webcast I unplugged the headphones and plugged them directly into the MacBook, restoring the audio. Today, I pulled the mixer out and checked all the plugs. Checking audio from the FT450D showed it, too was only LHS. Hmmm. Figuring out it was probably time to take the mixer apart as fiddling with the pan and level knobs and main slider made no difference I caught one of the push buttons and heard a crackle. Pressing this a couple of times solved the issue. I do like these faults, just fiddle with everything and swear at it to fix. Brings back memories of the house TV in ancient times that would sometimes need a good thump! Very scientific... Now, do I bother finding the switch cleaner or leave it well alone and hope I remember which switch to abuse next time...