July 1999 Volume 2 Number 7

July Meeting is a QSL/QSO Party!

By John Robertsen KA0OSC

The Meeting is Saturday the 3^rd and this month we'd like everyone to bring in their favorite QSL card(s) and/or your favorite QSO story to talk about. We will also have a very short discussion about making your own QSL cards and some tips to help in this pursuit. Join us for a fun time and of course, as always, bring stuff for general show and tell too. See ya Saturday.

73

1999 Field Day Reflections

From Les Bearl, N0PPF President

Well, fellow QRP'ers. We finally had good weather for field day and we also had some good operators. Had good chili too. (my wife made it, I had to say that. Ha! Ha!) Thanks to everyone that helped. We had 13 members' sign in during the day. For a while we had at least 10 people there at one time.

Mert and I both agree, working field day with 5 watts is a real challenge. They just won't come back to you. Too many other fish. I had more luck the second day when there weren't so many others on the bands. I worked 5 stations that I had spent 10-15 minutes trying to work the day before. Craig worked Australia about 1:30 am, on 5 watts. I wish I had been awake for that one.

Lessons learned; Computers consume lots of power. We have never had problems with battery power till this year. The 486 I brought was a big drain on the battery and it gave out about 3 am. Mert switched to my radio but logging was a problem. We switched the batteries at 4 am. Next year we will have to have a back up battery.

Thanks to all that helped out to make this the best Field Day the MNQRP has ever had.

From Jim N0UR

Not much to tell you about my FD. I went down to my parent's farm near Ellendale MN and set up in the old barn. I worked 1B/Batt single op. Kept the setup simple, only one antenna, a G5RV with a 450-ohm feedline and tuner. I think I will put up a better antenna on 80 meters next time, not much luck on 80, maybe too much QRN. The IC-735 worked like a champ, and brought my Ten Tec transverter for 6 meters and had fun in the morning before the contest when six was wide open.

Conditions were good, it was fun to get on 10 meters and work a bunch. I even made a few 15 minute excursions to the phone bands and worked the easy ones on Sunday

My first hour was one of my slowest for some reason, but finally got into a grove and ended up with my best score yet.

Sounds like the club had a good showing and even stayed on for the duration. I was able to work about 19 of the 24 hours, and was glad when it ended.

From Craig, AA0ZZ

Field Day 1999 with the MN QRP group was a great experience for me. I operated the HF station for several hours on Saturday and early Sunday morning. I operated most on 20 meters, but we did make quite a few 15 meter contacts on Saturday afternoon . 20 meters was still open when I left at 2 AM Sunday morning. (It probably stayed open all night.)

John, KA0OSC stopped back at about 9:00 with his wife. We had a very enjoyable chat. A nice break.

Tried 40 for a while at about 10:30 PM Saturday but found it quite noisy and very crowded. Lots of fresh stations to contact, but was getting stepped on by the "big guns". Static crashes were very uncomfortable, so I went back to 20 where it was relatively quiet.

I have to tell you about one experience. It was about 1:45 AM Sunday morning. It was starting to get a little cold, since I was still dressed in my shorts and tee shirt, appropriate for the warm Saturday afternoon weather. However, at about 12:00, the breeze started to blow through the screen tent. I dug around and found a jacket that Les had left there. It sure felt good. About this time it also was getting dark in the screen tent because the main lantern had run out of fuel. There I was, huddled over the keyboard and radio with only the dim light of the battery operated fluorescent lamp. I was starting to get a little sleepy, with nothing but endless "beeps" in my headphones for hours at a time. I was still working stations quite regularly but starting to find more "DUPEs" across the band.

Then I ran across a station calling CQ, and he was not a Field Day station. I got his call: a VK3 station. Australia is coming in! I thought I would take a minor excursion from the "massive point gathering" and gave him a call. He came right back to me and we had a great chat. Name was Roy, and he was located near Melbourne. I had to really concentrate, because he was really clipping along, at about 35 wpm. It did wake me up! He was really impressed that I was only using 5 watts and a ground mounted vertical antenna. After a while QRM on his end started to cover me up, so we signed. It was 2 AM. Just as I was saying 73, Mert showed up to relieve me. What a nice way to end my 1999 field day experience.

By the way, my Internet site pointer for the day is www.howstuffworks.com. Take a look at this interesting site about a wide variety of subjects.

73

From Claton KA0GKC

I was only at the FD site for setup and teardown. I really had to put some time in around the homestead with some honey-dos. Setup went really well. For antennas we put up Bill, N0BSN's mini-G5RV and Larry KB0R's R-7 vertical. We used my newly acquired screen tent I was lucky enough to find at a garage sale for ten bucks. Tim Gordish, KB9LGJ from Gibbon MN came up and setup to operate digital and I think phone too out of his VW camper using a J-pole for two meters and Bill's Hamstick dipole for 20 meters. About this time I had to leave. Later I learned that Tim snagged the ARRL Field Day message for 100 bonus points! I also heard that Les N0PPF was working some six meters with a six meter mobile mag-mount on a sheet of metal. I also think Les worked some ten-meter Novice phone as well. Saturday evening I was keeping my eye on the radar. There was a line of thunderstorms moving in from the west. It looked like this year was going to be the same as the last two! But the QRP gods were shining on us this year. As I kept checking the progress of this line of storms and it started to weaken just west of our location. Sure enough a hole appeared in the line and this hole pasted right over the site. Thunder to the north and south, but just a little rain shower at the site was reported. Our jinx had been broken and we were able to operate straight through the night! When I returned for teardown about noon on Sunday Larry was there still plugging away since early morning. Les had been there the whole time and looked beat. And the ever-present Bill was on hand. I heard that Craig AA0ZZ worked the evening shift until 2:00am and Mert took over the late shift. There were also a number of other members that visited the site. during this outing. Everyone had fun and thanks go to all those that came out to make this the best Field Day MNQRP has had yet.

73

The El Sublimado signal injector

Bob Liesenfeld, WBØPOQ

A friend of mine likes to smoke cigars. I noticed that some of his "finer" smokes came in a cool metallic tube, which he disposed of after enjoying the tobacco. I asked if I could have one for an electronic project. Although he gave me a strange look, he gave me the cylinder.

This tube is about 8" long and about 3/4" in diameter. "Hmm.." thought I, " I bet a couple of AA size batteries would fit in here nicely" And so was born the El Sublimado signal injector! First, I built up the circuit in fig 1 on a breadboard and tested it on 3VDC to be sure it would work. It is a phase shift oscillator that, with the components given, will produce a clean sine wave of around 900Hz. The 47K and 2.1K resistors comprise a pad that reduces the output to around 100mVp-p.

Then the circuit was duplicated on a 1/2" x 1" piece of single sided PC board using dead-bug construction. A medium sized nail serves as the probe tip, see fig 2. Next, I wired 2 Radio Shack # 270-401 AA battery holders in series and loaded in 2 AA batteries.

A Radio Shack #275-1547 momentary NO switch serves as the on/off switch. The circuit board is wrapped in a paper sleeve, inserted in the tube, followed by the two battery holders. A wire is soldered to the inside surface of the tube from the ground foil of the circuit board. The switch is installed in the end of the cap of the tube. See fig 3 for the layout. It all fits nicely!

To use, just connect the ground clip to the chassis of the unit to be tested, and probe the input to a suspect stage with the nail. Moving from stage to stage will allow identifying a defective stage.

You might even call this unit a "smoke test" :-) 73

My New Link Coupled Tuner

By Steve Jacobs, KI0CL

As a frequent reader of LB Cebik's antenna web page, I have learned about the many benefits of Link-Coupled balanced feed antenna tuners. Because of this I have kept a keen eye out for just such a unit. My search ended the other day at the Amateur Radio Consignment Center. The unit I found was an Antec UT-1, priced at $75.00 and because of a payment for some consignment gear I sold through the shop, out of pocket was much less.

The beauty in this unit lies in several design features.

The very large chassis box is made entirely of 1/4" Plexiglas to preserve circuit Q. -The matching and tuning balanced circuit capacitors are high quality E.F. Johnson units rated at an incredible 4500 Volts! (I promise not to utilize their capacity) -The main/link coupling coils are made from heavy gauge, silver plated B&W coil stock.

My personal favorite aspect of this tuner is the way in which the operator facilitates a band change. The whole main/link coil is mounted to the rear of a hinged front panel. The user pulls on a knob and tilts the coil out of the unit and changes the tap settings. When the coil unit is placed back in the tuner, four fingers make contact and the coil is back in the circuit.

Last week I removed about 50 feet of RG-8 feedline that met a 34-foot section of 450-Ohm ladder line that fed my G5RV. I replaced it all with 450-Ohm window line. With the new tuner and ladder line I notice a significant peak in received signal strength. Band changing is a real pain but the added efficiency is the trade off. Although I believe this company is out of business, and the unit to be fairly rare, keep your eyes pealed for an Antec UT-1, I think that it will be money well spent.

For more information on Link Coupled tuners see L.B. Cebik's web page at: http://funnelweb.utcc.utk.edu/~cebik/radio.html

73

*** Events and Happenings around July ***
By Mike Stapp, KE0WW
We can’t show them if we don’t know them!
Please send in upcoming events to the Mike Stapp KE0WW calendar editor.