Ham Radio Help Desk

A fellow club member is preparing to put up a big 160 meter horizontal loop antenna. Nice. We have discussed many options and conclude ladder line is the best approach to connect the loop to the operating point.

He went shopping online only to find many vendors are low in stock of many items including the 400ish ohm windowed ladder line. We both agree making our own is a viable option.

So here is a photographic step by step we took in 2005 to construct the spreaders of our ladder line fed dipole antenna we use for Field Days, JOTA and other events requiring a simple antenna.

Since our antenna is used for various events it is not in the weather long. We opted to use wood spaces soaked in paraffin.
(more…)

I just came back from helping prep a ham station for a Camporee coinciding with the world wide Jamboree on the Air (JOTA) event.

They have just two antennas: a two meter omni and a ladder line fed 135 foot dipole. The dipole is inverted V style atop 12 sections of 48 inch aluminum military mast. The top of the antenna is about 54 feet AGL. Coupled with a good balanced tuner, this thing can work quite well on most of the bands.

The first contact from Virginia was with Japan on 20 meters phone. Not too shabby for such a simple antenna.

Tomorrow we will give it the big test. I know it will work fine because it has already proven its worth during many field days.

If the only antenna you have it a ladder line fed dipole, put it up and go for it.

I was chatting with a club member this weekend. He told me about a digital slow scan tv modulation mode designed for use in the HF bands on a typical SSB bandwidth.

I know about analog slow scan television and have heard about many binary transfer methods for HF. This was the first time I heard something coined “Digital Slow Scan TV.” The program is called Easypal and can be found easily via a web search.

There appears to be a dedicated team behind this program which suggests a healthy development effort.

Indeed, after downloading the program and installing it on a Windows XP system, I was using it in no time. My friend was on the local repeater at the time and guided me through appropriate default options to use.
(more…)

A Lighthouse QSO Party organized in the traditional QSO Party theme sounds fun, but would anyone care?

There is nothing like combining aspects of Field Day with a QSO Party style contest. Or is there?

Visit QSOParty.com for discussion about the creation of a new QSO Party.