Why he's my Jim, not my Elmer By Steven J. Meyers, W0AZ |
How
many of you have heard this one: “Vertical antennas yep, they're just dandy.
They radiate equally poorly in all directions." Like a lot of information
that is liberally shared on
the Amateur Radio bands, that just isn't so.
Many
Hams either lack the financial resources or choose for other reasons not to
erect towers festooned with Yagis in their yards. In many cases, a neighborhood
association that has restrictive antenna covenants will see a tower with a Yagi
as an eyesore, but will accept a low profile vertical antenna as a
"reasonable accommodation." On small lots, where there is
insufficient room for an effective horizontal wire antenna it's usually
possible to put up a self-supporting vertical. This is especially true on the
low bands, particularly so on 160 Meters where horizontal wires require acres of real estate (and tall
supports if you're not blessed with hundred-foot trees).
For
years, I've used mostly horizon wires -- coax-fed resonant dipoles and random
doublets fed with ladder line; then, our radio club acquired a commercially
made vertical antenna, a Cushcraft R-7. It was available to club members who
wanted to borrow it and I jumped at the chance. It was a revelation, Although
my random doublet usually outperformed the vertical, there were times when the
vertical was much better than the long wire. I decided I'd to find a way to get
a vertical antenna permanently added to my antenna farm.
My
chance came when a friend who was moving decided to lighten the load in the
moving truck by getting rid of a lot of' radio-related stuff he wasn't using.
Among the assorted flotsam and jetsam that had accumulated in his garage over
the years was a pile of aluminum pieces that had once been a trap vertical.
Most
of the tubing was there, along with some of the huge air-wound coils and high
voltage capacitors that had once been traps. I took the parts home, thanked my
friend, but quietly wondered even as I unloaded the parts into my garage if
this mess of pipe, aluminum straps, capacitors and coils would become just
another pile of junk until I, like my friend finally disposed of it. Had I
acquired an albatross or an antenna?
My
Ham radio projects often fester. I rarely approach them directly, efficiently,
simply. I get an idea, sometimes hair brained -- like the five-band, resonant
dipole I wanted to assemble, or from multi conductor ribbon wire (which I would
have to buy) often recommended in the antenna books. Another antenna project
involved some surplus 12 gauge insulated solid wire I'd scored for free, and a
mess of PVC pipe I'd bought for next to nothing. I saw the wire and pipe in the
garage one day. Next day, the pieces started assembling themselves in my head.
Finally, after a few more days of festering, I started to make the thing. That
antenna which took a few afternoons to assemble looked like a giant net for
catching low flying birds. The dozen or so PVC insulators that separated the
many dipoles glistened in the sun, the top wire that supported the mess sagged
under the tremendous weight of all that wire, and as if the ugliness of the
thing wasn't enough of a letdown, it didn't work very well. The mortal blow was
struck, as it often is, by my appliance operator, Ham XYL (she won’t be
offended by this description she's rather proud of it) who said with all the
simplicity my antenna project lacked, "No way!"
Fortunately,
the festering that finally resulted in a vertical antenna made from the parts
my friend had given me met a better fate, It began with a drawing in the ARRL
Antenna Book". There, on page 7-12 of the 16th edition was a simple
schematic, and an article that told you how to make a multi band. base-loaded
vertical. The antenna described there, needed a length of tapered tubing, a
coil, some alligator clips for taps, a variable capacitor and some kind of
mount. The variable capacitor, the author said would make the thing easier to
tune but was not absolutely necessary
I
took a closer look at the pile, I had 21 feet of tapered tubing, and another 3
ft section with a fiberglass insulator riveted into its end. I could easily
drill a few holes in the largest piece of tubing I had (a piece which,
conveniently, fit perfectly over the fiberglass insulator). The result would be
roughly 24 feet of nicely tapered tubing with an insulated gap, about 3 feet
off the ground. I could span the gap with the largest coil in the pile (17
turns of what looked like #2 aluminum wire spaced about 1 ½ turns to the inch),
and play with the taps to see if I could match it to any of the Ham bands. I
had a 5 foot section of steel antenna mast I wasn't using that I could pound
into the ground to make a mount, all that green #12 wire (that hadn't worked so
well for the multi-band dipole) to use for radials, and plenty of coax. I
realized that all I needed to get this thing up were a couple of alligator
clips large enough to grip the coil, some clamps to fasten the antenna base to
the mount, and a ground rod to safely ground the vertical and provide a
convenient tie point for the radials. I went to the hardware store, spent a few
bucks -- I was now off and running
The
antenna went up pretty quickly. I laid 4-25 foot radials on top of the ground
and the antenna was 60 feet away from the back door to my shack. The afternoon
after I raised the antenna I ran back and forth between the shack and the
vertical, sending "QRLT” at low power, identifying myself, reading the SWR
and moving the taps around. Afternoon became evening, then pitch-black night. I
finished my testing and adjusting with a flashlight.
When
it was all over I'd found a match on a few bands, but not all. I'd worn a
groove in the lawn along the now familiar path to the antenna, and I'd worked a
Ham on 40 Meters CW who said my signal was better on the vertical than the
doublet.
Now,
what is it we Hams do when we reach the point where we've used up the books we
own, tinkered and experimented until we are at our wits end, but still find
ourselves not quite where we want to be? Assuming we're lucky enough to have
one, we call our Elmer.
"Hi
Jim!"
"Steve?"
"Yep,
me again. Jim, I need help." I could almost see him smiling, hear him
thinking, "So what else is new?"
"I
finally cobbled together an antenna out of all those parts Ben gave me. I
worked a guy in California on 40 with it, and I think it's going to work pretty
well, but I've got a few problems," I explained that I was having
difficulty finding matches on all the bands. I laughed about all the trips I'd
made between the antenna and the shack."
"You
know. Steve, the club has an antenna analyzer you can borrow. And I think I've
got a variable cap you can use across that coil. It'll sure make tuning that
antenna a whole lot easier. If you've got enough inductance in that coil to
load it on 40, you should be in good shape for the higher bands too."
We
had lunch the next day and Jim handed me a gorgeous variable, an E.F. Johnson
capacitor with wide spaces between the plates. He also handed me a skirted knob
calibrated from 0-I00 over 180 degrees that carried the National logo. It, too,
was beautiful.
"I
had this knob on that homebrew transmitter that was in the picture I showed
you. Remember? Jimmy was in the high chair next to the radio and the whole
shack fit inside a desk with a folding lid? When I took that rig apart, I put
this knob in a parts box. I probably won't ever use it. Why don't you rig some
kind of bracket for that cap, and put a pointer on it to read the skirt. You
might even want to number the turns on that coil. That way you'll be able to
quickly reset the antenna for different bands. Take the cap and the knob home
and try 'em."
The
next day I rigged a bracket and a dial indicator for the capacitor. While I was
at it, I put down four more radials. The variable capacitor made tuning the
antenna a snap. Although I still couldn't match the vertical on 30 Meters (the
SWR was dropping rapidly with a particular pair of tap settings when I ran out
of capacitance), I quickly found tap points and dial settings for all the other
bands between 40 and 10 Meters.
The
antenna analyzer allowed me to sit on a stool and change the taps and the cap
without filling the airwaves with unnecessary radiation. The neighbors who
probably thought I'd gone completely bonkers when they saw me running back and
forth both during the day and later that night when they saw my flashlight beam
bobbing through the yard, had gone back to thinking me, once again, merely a
harmless eccentric as they watched me sit on the stool fiddling with that tall
piece of aluminum tubing stuck in the ground. The next day I covered the
exposed coil and capacitor with a snap-lid plastic box. Even my XYL thought it
was kind of attractive.
Jim
came over a few days later to see my creation. He thought it was pretty nifty.
When I told him about the problem I'd had finding a match on 30 Meters he asked
if I had any high voltage capacitors I could put across that variable that
might help me find a match for 30. I found a 67 pF cap that had been part of
one of the disassembled traps, added a pair of alligator clips to the leads,
clipped it across the variable, and soon had a match for 30. We went into the
shack and listened to the new antenna for a while, compared it with the
doublet, and pronounced it a huge success. When Jim left, he was smiling.
I
re -discovered, in the process of putting up this antenna, you don't always
need a clear idea where you are going when you start a project. Sometimes, it's
better to just start and see where it takes you. Many Hams who are intimidated
by the idea of homebrewing buy what few projects they attempt as commercial
kits. All the parts are there, it’s neat and tidy. If things are done according
to the instruction manual, the project will work As a result, they miss out on
the fun of not knowing if the darn thing will ever work the joy of making
something that is a journey, an uncertainty, from the start. Often, these
experimental projects don't work out. Often we find ourselves carefully
disassembling them and putting the parts back in our junk boxes. But when they
do work, there's no feeling quite like it.
For the few months the new vertical antenna has been bending with the
wind in my backyard, I’ve used it in preference to my older doublet. That's the
way we are with new things. I've found that it seems to hear the coast-to-coast
friends I have a weekly roundtable With better than the doublet. I've worked
about l5 new countries with it. Sometimes I just peek out the shack window and
stare at it.
In the future:
if you hear me referring to my Jim instead of my Elmer, you'll know why.
KN
Reprinted
from the March 2002 issue of WORLDRADIO
HAM RADIO UNIVERSITY
By
Bob Wexelbaum, W2ILP
Ham
Radio University (HRU) is an educational forum that is run by the ARRL NYC-Long Island Section. It is not a HamFest or flea market. Its
purpose is to be a day of education for
hams and non hams on the many phases of
ham activities and communication modes. This is the fourth year that HRU has been running.
This
time it will be at a new location at a 45 acre private school in Oyster Bay. Although it is being sponsored
this year by LIMARC, it is the joint
effort of over 20 clubs of the NLI section, including Grumman.
There
will be a special event station and a VE session as well as many demonstrations and technical lectures for
beginners as well as for experienced
hams.
The
date is: Sunday, January 19, 2003, starting at 8:00 AM.
The
place is: The East Woods School, 31 Yellow Cote Road, Oyster Bay, NY.
Talk-in:
W2VL 146.850-600 136.5 PL and 147.210 +600
Admission
is open to all - donation $2 per person.
Refreshments
will be available at this all day event.
For
more information contact: George Tranos N2GA, ARRL NLI Section Manager (631)
286-7562
E-mail:
[email protected]
The above information has been provided by Bob Wexelbaum, W2ILP
If
you have any questions regarding this please reply by E-mail to: [email protected]
Vy
73,Bob Wexelbaum, W2ILP
Error Messages
Sent in by
PAUL CHRISTIE, AB2KU
Here
are 16 actual error messages seen on the computer screens in
Japan, where they are written in Haiku. Aren't these better than "your
computer has performed an illegal operation"?
The
Web site you seek Cannot be located, but Countless more exist.
--------------------------------------------
Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.
-----------------------------------------------
Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on. You ask far too much.
------------------------------------------------
Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams.
-------------------------------------------------
Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.
-------------------------------------------------
Your file was so big. It might be very useful. But now it is gone.
-------------------------------------------
Stay the patient course. Of little worth is your ire. The network is down.
-------------------------------------------------
A crash reduces Your expensive computer To a simple stone.
-------------------------------------------------
Three things are certain: Death, taxes and lost data. Guess which has occurred.
-------------------------------------------------
You step in the stream, But the water has moved on. This page is not here.
-------------------------------------------------
Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, But we never will.
------------------------------------------------
Having been erased, The document you're seeking Must now be retyped.
-------------------------------------------------
Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. Both are blank
GRUMMAN AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
MINUTES OF GENERAL MEETING – 12/18/02
By Pete, N2PYV
The
meeting was called to order by Pat at 5:44 p.m.
All
present introduced themselves.
TREASURER'S REPORT –
Tom, KC2HNN
Finances
continue to be in good shape.
REPEATER REPORT –
Gordon, KB2UB
Gordon
and Pat have the new hard-line feeder line for the Bethpage Repeater that was
provided by Bill, N2NFI. When trying to install it, the cable that raises the
tower broke, allowing it to drop a couple of feet. This has jammed the tower
and it will require repair. The repeater will be off the air until it can be
repaired. They are trying to get help from N/G Facilities Department to replace
the cable.
The
site for the Hauppaugue Repeater has been sold. According to newspaper
articles, the new owner will remove the tower and replace it with a shorter
one. There is an article in the contract of sale that says that GARC shall have
the right to use and maintain communications on the tower at no cost. It is not
clear if the tower is replaced that this clause will apply. It is not even
certain that the new owner will erect a new tower.
NET REPORT –
Zack, WB2PUE
Zack
reported that the Sunday Morning 40-Meter Net was good, but no one was heard on
the Wednesday Noon 20-Meter Net.
VE REPORT –
Bob, W2ILP
There
were six applicants and seven VE’s present. One applicant failed and five
passed the Technician exam. One of those who passed the Technician exam also
passed the General and Extra exam but failed the code test. One of those who
passed the Technician exam previously held a Novice license and was upgraded to
Technician; thus there were four new hams with Technician licenses as a result
of this session.
Bob
also reported that he has received a letter from W5YI stating that the fee to
take exams next year will be $12.00.
No
Activity
Dawn
Felix-Canales, KC2KPP, Technician, was approved as a Sustaining Member
Our
annual Holiday Party that was held in the UL cafeteria was great. Thanks to
Bill, N2SFT for making the arrangements.