Kiwi SNR with the High-Z Amp

I am still testing. For now: SNR is much better compared to the old coupling with the 1:48.

The big benefit I see is the reception in the VLF area. That was nearly deaf before. I had to attenuate the signal by guesstimated 10db (still waiting for my SMA-attenuator to arrive. 

The amp is not designed to be used on a 22m wire but works really well for my use case :)

KiWi's new preamp arrived!

 

The High Z Antenna Amplifier 
arrived today and I am really excited to try this thing out. It is designed for the vertical antenna I plan to use anytime soon.

For now I will try it on the wire. Stay tuned for results and thanks to the guys from Cross Country Wireless for the fast delivery!

A new antenna for the home shack - HyEndFed

I still have limited space for antennas. But I needed a replacement for the magnetic loop antenna.

Using FT8 to check the Antenna

On our last portable activity we used a HyEndFed antenna with impressive results. So I decided to buy one that fits into the garden. It is the 40-20-10m band version for 200w PEP.

The antenna is now mounted 5m above ground. Of cause that's way too low but it's the only way to install it here. The installation is easy. The SWR was ok out of the box. I shortened the wire a little and thats it. You see the results down below. SWR is good enough for now. I know it could be tune better if one takes a little more time for that. I had to shorten the wire before the coil a little and keep it a little longer after the coil to get the SWR right on 40m. 

In any event, the antenna works really good for only 12m lenght. I love it. 

How do these endfed antennas work? Have a look at the following links  - They explain it really well.

https://pa3hho.wordpress.com/end-fed-antennes/multiany-band-end-fed-english/

https://buildthings.wordpress.com/ham-radio-end-fed-antenna-80m-40m-20-m-15m-10m-164-matching-network-balun/

And this is where I bought mine from. I sure would buy it again since it's nicely built and looks rock solid. https://www.hyendcompany.nl/

10m SWR - could use a little tweaking but works fine already

12m SWR - The antenna is not made for 12m but works with the internal tuner

15m - not working

17m - not working

20m - working well enough

30m - not working :(

40m - working - I cut a little too short

80m - not working

160m - tunenable but not efficient 

CQ WAG - Worked All Germany - Contest 2018

DG7LAN did work his first contest from beginning to the end. That was something. Ok, I have to admit that I slept in between. But just for 1 hour ;) I worked from the rear seat of my Jeep as I often do. The setup was the following:

• ICOM 7300
• Notebook with N1MM (love it)
• manual VCI ATU (mainly to switch between the antennas)
• Kelemen dipol for 80m/40m/20m 35m over ground
• 40m inverted L with automatic tuner (worked well for 80/40 locals)
• Hanuta and CocaCola

There was a total of 881Qs and a claimed score of 216258. But I am sure there are a few 0 scores in the log since I did CW for the first time in contest and most likely messed up some of the exchanges ;) I don't care, room to improve.

My antennas were supported by some really huge trees. Thanks to mother nature! On the pictures you see the dipole with the support point for the inverted L. 

Unfortunately I had to work LOW POWER since I didn't manage to get my 'new' Ameritron AL811H running in time. 

Conclusions:

• N1MM rocks!
• The IC7300 does well in crouded environment and on busy band
• If you put out a strong signal and have a nice run, there is always the one guy that tries to interfere. Thank god, most guys just push a carrier or CW for a few minutes and then move on. Thats easily eliminated by the notch in the 'IF' path. 
• It's ok to sleep an hour at night. The bands got really quiet and there were only stations I worked before. That was close past midnight. 

Bad picture of the dipol

Bad picture of the dipol - hard to see

As one can see, I did some CW in the last 3 hours and had a great run. Many OPs were really patient and some even slew down a little. I love it. 

Upcoming weekend: CQ WW SSB! CU!

DG7LAN/mm

Some of you may ask:

What does DG7LAN/mm mean. 

Thats me, cruising with my small 27 foot yacht playing HAM Radio

Locations include the river Elbe, north sea, baltic sea. 
I really enjoyed doing CW in the last days. Thank you guys for all the nice contacts and thanks for being patient and not minding me asking 'AGN' and 'AGN' :D

The rig used is the ICOM IC 7300, 9m of wire and a chinese automatic tuner CG 3000. I usually don't run more than 100 Watts - that drains batterys fast enough and I simply don't want to let the engine run for hours to recharge. 

I am already looking forward to the upcoming weekend to meet you guys on the air. 
73s, Andy

Anchorage @ Pagensand Island

The IC7300, key, Coke, JTDX :)

Extended 'radial' in the water

Anchorage for the night

Portable in St.Peter Ording

Yesterday we (Martin, DL8LBY and I) went out for some portable activity. The first stop was at a (closed for maintenance - ignored) view tower. We had to climb some fences to get there and eventually we went upstairs. Martin mounted the portable antenna and we managed to tune on 20m with the Yaesu FT817. Just after the 2nd CQ call the local authorities showed up and we had to leave the tower. Welcome to Germany. 

Simple 20 minute DIY magnetic loop for FT8

This is what happened yesterday evening: I made a magnetic loop out of old coax. I was really excited to know if magnetic loops really work so I made a quick test setup. It looks crap, is built crap and most probably can perform much better If built from appropriate material. But thats what we found here. 

• 3m Coax RG213
• 1m Coax RG58
• some SO/PL 259
• wooden sticks, ca 80cm long
• tie straps
• end caps for the stick (not really needed but love to play with the 3d printer ;) )

Nothing more. That costs less than 10 bucks and 30 minutes of time.

all the pieces I had to cut off during the tuning process

The tuning was an easy task. I first tuned to 30m by cutting pieces from the RG58 which is my capacitor in this case. After 5 minutes I had an SWR of 1:1.3 on 30m FT8 frequency. I tried to make a contact, increased power to 10 watts...20 watts...30 watts...BAM -> bad SWR. I went back to the balcony. What happened? The end of the RG58 melted and made a shortcut. NOTE: Never leave the end of the coax open. It has to be insulated.  

The cap - cable was now too short for 30m so I decided to tune for 20m. Did that, tried 50 watts, went back to 25 watts to be safe. 

SWR on 20m 14.07 :) FT8ed!

I was even able to work a couple stations, but the band was already in a bad shape since it was night time. 

Conclusion: It may be worth to go through the build process of a good magnetic loop and invest into a good capacitor. I am sure, these things could perform well. Mine was only on the balcony, 50cm away from the wall and did already work better than other balcony-things I've tried. 

'Finished' (ugly) antenna - thank god it's dark!!

By the way: This link helped me -> https://www.nonstopsystems.com/radio/frank_radio_antenna_magloop.htm

Mobile antenna: C-Whip Monoband for 20m and 17m

My new mobile antennas arrived today:

The C-whip monoband antenna. 

I ordered 2 of them: One for 20m and one for 17m. The antennas look like the "hamstick" or "buddystick". They are 2.6m long, regardless for which band. I mounted the antennas on the 3/8 mount of the Jeep and made a measurement with the Rigexpert. After a few minutes I was able to tune both antennas to the following SWR:

 
The SWR is way better on the c-whips than on my Outback 1899. I didn't make a direct 1 on 1 comparison with the old antenna but I made a couple of QSOs and got nice reports from everyone. I should get the 15m and the 10m as well. :)

Playing with the Outback 1899 Multiband Mobile Antenna

If you are - like I was - looking for a cheap solution to be hf-ready on the ham bands you may come across this antenna:

It's the Outback 1899. Designed for 80,40,20,15,10 and 6m. Power rated for 120 watt pep.
Sells for around 50 bucks. Great!

When I first bought the Outback, I only had a magnetic mount on the Jeep. At first sight the antenna was much too short, resonating always to high for the chosen bands, no matter which one. 

1st problem: Antenna length 

The top part of the antenna was too short to tune the antenna on the ham bands. Since this is not much of a deal I changed the top part to a slightly longer welding rod. The result: The SWR was ok on 10 to 20m, medium on 40m and crap on 80m. At this time I thought that could be a problem of the ground connection of the mag mount. 

Finally I managed to install an old Wilson antenna mount. Felt bad to drill a hole in my Jeep though. What must be, must be. 

I was optimistic that the SWR would be better now.

Let me share the results with you

All measurements made with the Rigexpert AA-55ZOOM

10m band

We have a nice SWR 1.13:1 in the 10m band but still below 2:1 on 28500. I consider this to be ok for me. 

15m band

1.16:1 on 21210 kHz and below 1.5:1 for the whole band. Great!

20m band

1.72:1 on 14175kHz, near 2:1 at the edges - usable but not great

40m band

2.1:1 at 7020kHz, not good. I have to use the tuner an the whole band.

80m band

just bad. bad. dips @2750kHz with 3.1:1. bad.

6m band

I don´t make use of the 6m band but for the sake of completeness, here comes the measurement

This doesn't even come close :(

Conclusion

I am sure that there are better pieces of the Outback 1899 around. At least my model doesn't work as promised by the manufacturer. The model of a friend works slightly better but far away from 1.5:1 on all bands. 

Since 6m and 80m bands are really out of tune (antenna too long) but the other bands are in tune, I suspect the coils to be incorrectly tune at the factory. For 50 bucks I still do like the antenna since I use 15m and 20m most of the time.