WD9N Radio

    Up to now, I had fed most of my antennas directly with coax.  Doing eSSB I wanted to keep as much common mode (RF) out of the shack and help keep the RF on the antenna where it belongs anyway.  I suppose it is good engineering to do this anyway, so I started looking into ways of doing this. The 1:1 choke is the device, but there are different ways to achieve this.  The infamous "ugly balun" (Or is it really an unun?) is one way.  It requires no additional parts, just wind the coax at the antenna on a form.  12 turns of RG-8 on a 5 inch form is about 18μH at 160m. That means just over 15 1/2 feet of coax is used to make the choke.  With prices usually running about $1.20/ft, that's around $20 in feedline and you still need the PVC form and end caps to make a nice choke that will last.  My estimates as of January 2022 put that at about $30.  It is also a considerable amount of weight at the center of an antenna.  200ohm of impedan...

  The dual bander in my truck started to make some racket from the fan and I was told I had noise on TX.  So, I figured it was the fan going out as it had audible noise to indicate that.  It turned out the noise on TX was another issue, the infamous Kenwood audio tick, a new mic cord fixes that. I did a quick look around the web and found a nice fan from Noctua.  Noctua is known for high end, silent fans for computers and other applications.  Sure enough they have one that is a near direct replacement for the fan on the V71.  The is the Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX.  ~$14 as of this writing.   This fan does have to have the leads cut and soldered to the connector from the original fan.  That is a simple operation for anyone who has basic soldering skills.  And if you don't, maybe you could practice a bit and tackle this project.  Just leave enough "tail" on everything you cut so that you can cut again and re-solder if necessary. Remove the c...

I haven't been able to regain access to my old blog, wd9n.blogspot.com, so I'm just going to create a new one.  I am not making any promises of regular posting, just when I get time or a topic of discussion comes up that I want to share information about. I would like to create posts that inspire others to experiment with radio, maybe that is eSSB, portable operations, mobile HF...who knows.  That is the wonder of the hobbie, it can take you many directions. Solar powered portable from my wall tent is one of the most enjoyable ways to operate, but I find I love eSSB from the home QTH.  When I am not on 3.630 I am usually running around 20m working POTA.  I have almost got all 50 states on 20m phone just working POTA stations.  This has been done with 100w on what I call a junk pile 1/4 wave vertical that my grandson(5) and I have built from scrap parts.  What fun! That's it for now, more to come in the future and hope to hear you on the air. David, WD9N