WD9N Radio

One nice  spring day in 2019, my grandson and I went outside for a walk around the property.  I happened to notice a piece of aluminum tubing I had lying beside a shed.  On further investigation I realized it was half of a 20m beam element that another ham had left behind after a field day.  It had been a half wave dipole for the event and he told me to just keep it. I asked my grandson, 6yr old at the time if I remember correctly, if he would like to help me build an antenna.  His reply was a curious, "What's an antenna papa?".  So, we had the unforgettable experience of building a ground mounted 1/4 wave 20m vertical together. A few days ago I got the idea to add more bands to this antenna.  I did some digging around and found some wire, purchased a few pvc fittings and hose clamps, and started putting additional 1/4 wave elements for 17m, 15m, 12m, and 10m.  I know, some of those bands are going to be very inefficient ground mounted, but what t...

 I finally installed FLDigi on the new computer and got to play around with some PSK31.   For those who don't know it is a phase sift keyed digital mode.  Below are some screenshots of the FLDigi software and what the signal looks like on SmartSDR.      I have always enjoyed the QSO's on PSK.  Many operators are rather short with a quick exchange of station info, operator info, and signal report.  Sometimes you will see ragchews in progress.  If you don't mind reading and typing everything, you might give it a try. It is easy to setup, especially on the Flex 6300 with DAX handling the audio in and out of the rig and computer.  I started PSK when it was rather new with older analog rigs.  I remember using an old Radioshack HTX-10 10m transceiver for 10m PSK back when the band was good.  If I only knew then, I would have logged all those contacts.  Thanks to LOTW now I keep rather good logs of most contacts, using N1MM+...

    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