Ham Radio Help Desk

Confusion exists for what group is in charge of the Ohio QSO Party.

See the post on QSOPARTY.COM for more details.

Thanks.

Type “J-Pole” into any search engine and you will see dozens of not hundreds plans to build your very own J-Pole antenna. Many are variations on the tried and true 1/2 wave design with the 1/4 wave stub at the bottom. Be it a plumber’s delight with copper pipe or ladder line heaven using a trimmed up 450 ohm feed line, many folks have successfully created their own J-Pole antenna with a surprising variety of materials.

However, there appears to be some kind of mystical attraction to the 5/8 wave radiator. Several of the J-Pole designs attempt to make the radiator 5/8 wave in length and adjust the phasing stub to make for a good match.

Let’s compare the two approaches using the models available from the late Larry Cebik’s NEC collection. Here are the contenders each using 3/8 inch diameter copper pipe…
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OK so I decided to buy the base K2 kit and build it along with my son.

Choosing Elecraft is a no brainer, but any of the other kit manufacturers would be fine also. The point it to give a young man an opportunity to see something start from a box of parts and become a higher level assembly.

We are also considering the Elecraft KX1 as a good starter kit. We have already built several of the other smaller Elecraft kits.

Here is a summary of our current situation…

• I have read the various FAQs, tips, etc.
• I am not new to kit building.
• We have a good soldering station.
• If the K2 works out well we will use it on CW for a while and then add
  enhancements: SSB first then others (perhaps DSP, 160M, 60M-Xvrter,
  100Watts)…
• Are there tools or tips I am missing before I drop the coin?

The summary of the very helpful answers are…
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While planning for a ham radio hike into the mountains to support the Appalachian Trail Golden Packet exercise, I asked my club members for ideas about a good portable 2 meter antenna.

One response included a link to this web page showcasing a collinear J-Pole antenna using two 5/8ths wave antenna elements.
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Most everyone knows about the Amateur Data Interchange Format otherwise known as ADIF.

ADIF has revolutionized the way our QSO data can be transferred between different applications.

One problem came up on the N3FJP Software Users forum concerning the export of Field Day QSOs from the N3FJP Field Day software to eQSL. During the discussion it became apparent the ADIF format “mode” variable does not offer values compatible with the Field Day QSO requirements.
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Our Field Day in Virginia was pretty decent this year. We had plenty of visitors responding to our newspaper notice. Several folks took a turn at the Get On The Air (GOTA) station.

However, we always forget some obvious items every year.

The lessons learned from sunshine related issues are obvious. We forgot ways to shade them again this year because we got so busy with other preparation details.

Here are a few lessons learned from our Field Day written in the form of system requirements.

1. The network routers shall be set to one fixed speed rather than auto-negotiate the speed to keep the network connections more seamless.
2. The network routers should have their speed set to the minimum speed of 1 Mbps to provide the best sensitivity (this is plenty fast enough for the meager network needs with the N3FJP software).
3. The network routers should have their RF output power set to below the maximum (250 mW for the Linksys WRT54G running DD-WRT) if the Field Day site is hot
4. All network nodes shall use static IP addresses.
5. Network nodes shall not use DHCP addresses.
6. The Network shall not use domain or host names.
7. The radios shall be protected from direct sunshine at all times.
8. The computers shall be protected from direct sunshine at all times.

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