Ham Radio Photo Gallery

Grant Bingeman, KM5KG

This is my friendly Neighborhood Homeowners Association version of the ever-popular HamStick antenna, explaining what they really mean by covenants. This particular model does not have a base insulator, and would have required a shunt feed arrangement. As you can see, the top-loading method is rather unique. It probably would have worked okay on six meters, the magic band. The point is, next time the neighbors invite you to a luau, make sure what's at stake before you accept. Read the fine print!

Apologies to the Lakeview Company, www.hamstick.com

I actually have several real hamstick antennas I use atop an aluminum plate on my van's roof. I have been accused by some hams at the other end of a QSO of using hundreds of Watts fixed-station, when I was simply operating mobile SSB QRP with a good ground plane and a matched antenna. I used the aluminum plate for two reasons - first, I was concerned about the thin steel of the roof flexing and eventually ripping from low-cycle fatigue with the antenna vibrating in the wind stream, and second, I was concerned about RF power losses in the steel. Yes I did have to add an L network under the roof to match the antenna impedance to 50 Ohms, because of the lower input resistance caused by the better ground.

And here is what I looked like before the chanting started, at the ripe old age of 50, in the Spring of 2000. The electro-magnetic radiation has not yet visibly affected the aging process, although I must admit that I have lost a thumb to a table saw, a liver and gall bladder to PSC (Walter Payton's nemesis), a thyroid gland to an over-active immune system, and the pancreas, kidneys, spleen and intestines are definitely on the brink. Minor inconveniences really, compared to climbing a 300 foot tall radio broadcast tower in a hail storm, or attending a meeting of my Homeowners Association. You think I'm kidding? Actually I had a liver transplant five years ago, but was out of the hospital in a few days. A second liver transplant would be a piece of cake.

The picnic table below depicts operating QRP SSB from the island of Tinian in the near Saipan and Guam in the Pacific on a day off from installation of the IBB Voice of Free China HF site in January 1999. Note the battery and solar panels propped against the suitcase. The transceiver is an older MFJ9420 cranked down to about one Watt output. The antenna was a 20 meter-band half-wave dipole with balun at a cliff edge overlooking the ocean. Overall height was about 50 feet above the ocean. Strong propagation into Japan, the Phillippines, etc. The suitcase contained some lunch, an SWR meter, impedance meter, camera, several RF adapters, cables, calculator, multi-meter, etc, in addition to the equipment seen on the table.

By the way, Tinian and Saipan in the Marquesas Islands are actually part of the United States, and have a status similar to that of Guam. Tinian is not too far from Guam, and is the Westernmost outpost of the United States. I was tempted to load the QRP rig into one of the huge curtain arrays at the IBB site, but never got around to it. Too many 500 kW transmitters in the neighborhood, just itching to fry my little transceiver. This picnic bench is right across from the new and only Casino on the island - it is the nicest hotel outside of Saipan, and charges a very reasonable rate to government employees and contractors.

Here is a view of one of the many Telefunken HF curtain arrays at the other end of the island. Looking up from beneath is not the place to be when the transmitter is operating! You can see the reflector panel behind the horizontal dipole array (top of photo). Note that this array is stacked six high and four wide, an HRS 4/6/0.5 (this photo does not show the full antenna). The vertical wire pairs are the balanced feeders. The azimuthal bearing of this antenna's pattern can be slewed +/- 15 and +/- 30 degrees to either side using the motorized slew switch, which selects various feeder lengths thereby changing the relative phase of the currents in the dipoles. This particular slew switch is part of a fiber-optic network of industrial computers controlled and monitored from the main control room at the site. I wrote the custom C code for the industrial computers, and programmed the main computer, a rack-mounted PC in the transmitter control room, using National Instruments' LabView 5.1.

Many broadcast engineers are also ham radio operators. The author (dark glasses, seated) during a luncheon a few years ago near Puebla, Mexico after presenting a paper on multiplexed hot-guy-wire directional array design. Puebla is one of the prettiest, cleanest cities in the world, not over-populated like some of its neighbors. The hospitality of the Mexican broadcast professionals is without compare. There is a strong family emphasis in the culture, and many wives and children attend these professional conferences. My wife, Ruth has been to many.

See www.qsl.net/km5kg

and Continental Electronics' site, http://www.contelec.com