(an MP3 of my QSO is
loading and will play in a few seconds, you will hear the DX working
me about 20 seconds in, the silences are when i was transmitting.)
Many of you know that several of the local Chautauqua County area hams were teamed up in a casual effort in the CQWW contest. I used my trusty simple dipole that I made during a snow storm last winter. My R7 Vertical came down in a wind storm and the next day we had heavy snow, I wanted to get back on the air quickly, so I made a dipole for 20M made out of old scraps of aluminum tubing that I had laying around.( I did not have time to go to the store to by some wire!). 20 minutes later, I had used the bow and arrow to shoot some line and rope up in to a pine tree at about 35 feet. I hoisted the antenna and was shocked to find a good SWR. The antenna served me well for basic HF QSOs during the winter.
I intended to replace it with something better in the Spring, but never got around to it. Alas , the high wind storm of late October 2006 brought it down. I had actually loosened the rope that held it up so that the wind would not cause damage. The 60 MPH gusts "lowered:" the dipole and bend it a little , no serious damage. There were some large limbs from the 60 foot pine laying on my back lawn, so I decided not to try and fix it , too dangerous. It was about 7 feet from the ground , I worked a station from Germany, Ecuador, and California with it just 7 foot off the ground!
Just dangling a few feet above ground but still worked Europe! (the trampoline became my work bench!
I had been toying with the idea of building the KJ5VW Mini Wire Yagi by Gary Hanson, so I figured the time was right. (see (http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~hansongr/Miniyagi.htm for full details). This antenna uses eight 4 foot 5/8th wood dowels held together with small sections of PVC pipe, I built it for less than $30.00 and that included $7.00 for buying a wood rasp to whittle the dowels just enough so they would fit inside 1/2 inch PVC pipe. I managed to get most of it built in the couple of evening hours after the wind storm subsided. I ran in to a snag in figuring out the boom/element face plate, so emailed Gary for info and decided to wait a day or two.
Gary responded quickly but the weather, family commitments, and having to work for a living, interfered with my hopes to get it up in the air soon. Two weeks later, I had enough day light time to finish the job but ran in to another problem. Gary uses a traditional mast with his antenna, I was using it via suspending it from a piece of rope dangling of a tree limb. It was very light and easy to '"haul" up the tree, but it began to twist and tip and it became a vertical Yagi rather than a horizontal one. I needed to figure out a way to stop it from twisting and tipping.
While I had it up in the air , I decided to get the antenna resonant. This antenna is a MINI-Yagi, it is only 16 feet wide . It uses inductance coils to shorten the length. This was the first time I had built an antenna with coils. I wrapped #22 hook-up wire 32 times around the PVC pipe sections. When I tested the SWR , it was very high, at least 5:1: over the entire 20M band. I was worried I had screwed something up, maybe I had made the coils wrong ? . The rain came again and I had to wait a whole week to try improve the SWR.
I noticed that the SWR dipped slightly below 5:1 at around 13.5 MHZ, so I assume I just needed to chop a few inches off. When the good weather returned, I chopped three inches of either end of the driven element and got a fairly good SWR. A few more slight trims and I had an SWR below 1.5 from 14.000 to 14.300 , very good for a wire antenna! It is a perfect 1:1 at my target frequency of 14.070, I modified the reflector accordingly.
More rain! So I had to wait a few days to work on a guying system to keep it horizontal , and the rope for turning the beam when required. . This Sunday (November 12) I managed to complete it and hoist it in the air. I have some trees around , but the "beam" is pretty clear and unobstructed to the West and North. Europe requires my Yagi to be pointed toward the pine tree branches and trunk.. I am no yet sure how this impacts the radiation pattern of the antenna.
I am not certain how well it's directional properties perform...yet. I'll need to have another ham over and listen to the signals while I turn the Yagi out in the back yard. WWV on 15 MHZ came up two S-units but there I am not sure if that was the beam or improving propagation to the west. I moved the beam towards the north east for European DX. I heard plenty but I also heard the west coast of the USA fairly well, so I need to further check the ability to reject signals from the back of the Yagi.
As I turned the dial, I heard a fairly strong signal from the Canary islands. He called QRZ, I gave my call and he answered first time. He gave me "5-9" but was giving everyone "5-9". I told him I was just testing a home brewed Yagi, he answered "it is working well Andy" and then he went on to work others. At least I know the antenna works (running barefoot) The Canary Islands are a beam heading of 83 degrees from my location. I aimed the beam with my rope for about 60 degrees, I'm not sure of the expected beam width but I'll take the African island for my first contact with the beam.
Just after I finished working him, my DX Cluster alarm sounded. A country I need on 20 meters had been "spotted". A quick click on the 'spot" and I heard a station say "..QRZ". . I answered with Kilo-Three Uniform-Kilo, and he came back with : "the Canadian with Uniform Kilo". He was mixing my call with a VE station that was also in the pile up. He then asked for the "Uniform Kilo" and responded to my call. You can right click here to save and hear QSO. The brief quiet parts of the audio are where I am saying my callsign and giving a signal report. I let the recording run a few seconds longer so you can hear the pile-up that was calling him.
So, while I still need to test the antenna to see how directional it is, I can say it has worked three QSOs so far, all answered on the first call:
EC8ADW Pedro in the Canary Islands (Africa, Zone 33) 3612 Miles , beat 2-3 others calling him.
3XM6JR Serge in Guinea (Africa, Zone 35 ) 4537 miles , beat a moderate size pile-up.
HC2FN Juan in Ecuador (South America, Zone 10) 3051 miles, answered first attempt.
Of course, HC2FN is at 180 degrees, so I still need to do more testing of the patterns I can expect from the antenna.
It is early yet, but a "new one" on 20M for the second QSO with the antenna , and beating several others, is an encouraging start. I can get this antenna up another 20 feet if I get some more coax. I'll keep you informed.
Here are a couple of pictures. It looks more dense with trees than it really is. It is hard to get good photographs to show the antenna but will work on some better ones.
So, it is finally up in the air as of this afternoon.
Many of you know that several of the local Chautauqua County area hams were teamed up in a casual effort in the CQWW contest. I used my trusty simple dipole that I made during a snow storm last winter. My R7 Vertical came down in a wind storm and the next day we had heavy snow, I wanted to get back on the air quickly, so I made a dipole for 20M made out of old scraps of aluminum tubing that I had laying around.( I did not have time to go to the store to by some wire!). 20 minutes later, I had used the bow and arrow to shoot some line and rope up in to a pine tree at about 35 feet. I hoisted the antenna and was shocked to find a good SWR. The antenna served me well for basic HF QSOs during the winter.
I intended to replace it with something better in the Spring, but never got around to it. Alas , the high wind storm of late October 2006 brought it down. I had actually loosened the rope that held it up so that the wind would not cause damage. The 60 MPH gusts "lowered:" the dipole and bend it a little , no serious damage. There were some large limbs from the 60 foot pine laying on my back lawn, so I decided not to try and fix it , too dangerous. It was about 7 feet from the ground , I worked a station from Germany, Ecuador, and California with it just 7 foot off the ground!
Just dangling a few feet above ground but still worked Europe! (the trampoline became my work bench!
I had been toying with the idea of building the KJ5VW Mini Wire Yagi by Gary Hanson, so I figured the time was right. (see (http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~hansongr/Miniyagi.htm for full details). This antenna uses eight 4 foot 5/8th wood dowels held together with small sections of PVC pipe, I built it for less than $30.00 and that included $7.00 for buying a wood rasp to whittle the dowels just enough so they would fit inside 1/2 inch PVC pipe. I managed to get most of it built in the couple of evening hours after the wind storm subsided. I ran in to a snag in figuring out the boom/element face plate, so emailed Gary for info and decided to wait a day or two.
Gary responded quickly but the weather, family commitments, and having to work for a living, interfered with my hopes to get it up in the air soon. Two weeks later, I had enough day light time to finish the job but ran in to another problem. Gary uses a traditional mast with his antenna, I was using it via suspending it from a piece of rope dangling of a tree limb. It was very light and easy to '"haul" up the tree, but it began to twist and tip and it became a vertical Yagi rather than a horizontal one. I needed to figure out a way to stop it from twisting and tipping.
While I had it up in the air , I decided to get the antenna resonant. This antenna is a MINI-Yagi, it is only 16 feet wide . It uses inductance coils to shorten the length. This was the first time I had built an antenna with coils. I wrapped #22 hook-up wire 32 times around the PVC pipe sections. When I tested the SWR , it was very high, at least 5:1: over the entire 20M band. I was worried I had screwed something up, maybe I had made the coils wrong ? . The rain came again and I had to wait a whole week to try improve the SWR.
I noticed that the SWR dipped slightly below 5:1 at around 13.5 MHZ, so I assume I just needed to chop a few inches off. When the good weather returned, I chopped three inches of either end of the driven element and got a fairly good SWR. A few more slight trims and I had an SWR below 1.5 from 14.000 to 14.300 , very good for a wire antenna! It is a perfect 1:1 at my target frequency of 14.070, I modified the reflector accordingly.
More rain! So I had to wait a few days to work on a guying system to keep it horizontal , and the rope for turning the beam when required. . This Sunday (November 12) I managed to complete it and hoist it in the air. I have some trees around , but the "beam" is pretty clear and unobstructed to the West and North. Europe requires my Yagi to be pointed toward the pine tree branches and trunk.. I am no yet sure how this impacts the radiation pattern of the antenna.
I am not certain how well it's directional properties perform...yet. I'll need to have another ham over and listen to the signals while I turn the Yagi out in the back yard. WWV on 15 MHZ came up two S-units but there I am not sure if that was the beam or improving propagation to the west. I moved the beam towards the north east for European DX. I heard plenty but I also heard the west coast of the USA fairly well, so I need to further check the ability to reject signals from the back of the Yagi.
As I turned the dial, I heard a fairly strong signal from the Canary islands. He called QRZ, I gave my call and he answered first time. He gave me "5-9" but was giving everyone "5-9". I told him I was just testing a home brewed Yagi, he answered "it is working well Andy" and then he went on to work others. At least I know the antenna works (running barefoot) The Canary Islands are a beam heading of 83 degrees from my location. I aimed the beam with my rope for about 60 degrees, I'm not sure of the expected beam width but I'll take the African island for my first contact with the beam.
Just after I finished working him, my DX Cluster alarm sounded. A country I need on 20 meters had been "spotted". A quick click on the 'spot" and I heard a station say "..QRZ". . I answered with Kilo-Three Uniform-Kilo, and he came back with : "the Canadian with Uniform Kilo". He was mixing my call with a VE station that was also in the pile up. He then asked for the "Uniform Kilo" and responded to my call. You can right click here to save and hear QSO. The brief quiet parts of the audio are where I am saying my callsign and giving a signal report. I let the recording run a few seconds longer so you can hear the pile-up that was calling him.
So, while I still need to test the antenna to see how directional it is, I can say it has worked three QSOs so far, all answered on the first call:
EC8ADW Pedro in the Canary Islands (Africa, Zone 33) 3612 Miles , beat 2-3 others calling him.
3XM6JR Serge in Guinea (Africa, Zone 35 ) 4537 miles , beat a moderate size pile-up.
HC2FN Juan in Ecuador (South America, Zone 10) 3051 miles, answered first attempt.
Of course, HC2FN is at 180 degrees, so I still need to do more testing of the patterns I can expect from the antenna.
It is early yet, but a "new one" on 20M for the second QSO with the antenna , and beating several others, is an encouraging start. I can get this antenna up another 20 feet if I get some more coax. I'll keep you informed.
Here are a couple of pictures. It looks more dense with trees than it really is. It is hard to get good photographs to show the antenna but will work on some better ones.
So, it is finally up in the air as of this afternoon.