This guy makes some great videos - especially for us newbies who don't quite grasp some of the things that we read in a book. Often times, a short video can take the place of a large book. In this video, End Fed Half Wave antennas are discussed and the construction of UNUN's. It's very interesting and well put together.
Skip to 4:50 to avoid the initial rant on contesting 😃
All the old boys know that antenna tuners don't tune antennas, but I hear a lot of the newer operators (and even some intermediates) boasting about the effectiveness of their antennas once they've installed a good antenna tuner.
Well I know that's not the case and I know that my half-size G5RV is a pretty poor antenna even though my ATU can "tune" it on almost any band and give me a 1:1 SWR reading.
The fact that my radio (and ATU) are showing me figures indicating a near perfect match, makes no real difference to the actual resonance of my antenna - the antenna remains as good or as bad as it was before the ATU was installed. My radio 'thinks' it's putting out 10W and none is reflected, but in actual fact, MOST of it might be reflected and I might only be getting 1W out.
That's why I don't expect good results using my G5RV (which also happens to be located in a terrible position and height at my QTH). I use it (and the ATU) because I have no option. I cannot erect anything better, so I have to accept the limitations of the antenna and just do the best I can with it.
Sure, I have managed to get some great QRP results when the conditions have been exceptional. And the G5RV is in all fairness not that bad on 20 & 40 but it's all a compromise and I'm not fooling myself that having a 1.0:1 SWR reading through the tuner is turning my poor antenna into a good one.
The only way to get good and effective results is to use an antenna that is already resonant on the frequency you wish to operate on. For me, that means installing a temporary resonant antenna at weekends such as the SotaBeams 20/40 linked dipole on a telescopic mast in the back garden. The results are great, but at the end of the weekend (or holidays), it has to be dropped back down to avoid objections from the neighbours and landlord and I have to go back to using the G5RV and accept the fact that although I have a 1.0:1 reading, I am in some cases barely getting out!
So, if you're one of those new operators who doesn't quite understand this, take a look at this great video which explains it further.
14th SEPTEMBER 2019 I forgot to post about this event! Mind you, there was some mix-up because our club had arranged the POTA event at a local pub and upon arrival, we realised the special event was actually supposed to be Churches On The Air! 😂 Ah well, we had a good time and spent a pleasant day playing radio.
I recently found out about the "Reverse Beacon Net" whereby a number of people across the world act as "Spotters", listening out for CW transmissions across the bands and then posting a Signal Report on a website which you can then access to see how far you got. I thought that was a pretty fine idea, so I registered and then did some transmitting. Oops! Hold on though - I haven't learned Morse Code (apart from my callsign) so what do I do? Well first of all I borrowed a key from a friend and made crude attempts to send "CQ CQ CQ, THIS IS QRP STATION M7MCQ" Needless to say, that didn't work out too well, so I reduced it to "CQ TEST M7MCQ" and tried that. It still sounded attrocious even to my untrained ears, so I looked in the FT-DX3000 Owners Manual and found that I could type in up to five messages and have the radio do the sending for me!! Not only does the radio send the message out in CW but it also allows you to decide the send-speed. Excellent!! So I tried it and got some responses on the RBN webpage within seconds.
Initially, I wasn't doing too well getting noticed (10W) so I decided to jump to the frequency of the most recent spot report and then I got responses, so there's a tip for you!
I'm only writing this post to help out other DR-735 owners. When I got my DR-735, I programmed in all the local repeaters using my ERW7 USB Lead and Clone Software. Everything was ok. But then some months later, I went to make some changes to the stored memories and struggled to get the PC to recognise the Radio. I had got the FTDI Driver installed and the radio showed up as COM-19 in the Device Manager, but every time I tried to read or write to the radio I got an ERROR. I tried all sorts including installing everything onto a different computer - to no avail. It then dawned on me that I might have the lead plugged into SP2 port instead of SP1. I looked and saw that the lead was plugged into SP1. So after a bit more head-scratching, I wondered if it mattered that I had an external speaker connected to SP2 - it did!! As soon as I disconnected the SP2 lead, the programming software began to work again. D'oh!
So, in summary, when programming the Alinco DR-735E, plug the programming lead into SP1 and make sure SP2 socket has nothing plugged in it.
Being new to this hobby, I am perhaps a bit "over keen" on getting contacts logged and confirmed. I fully understand and accept that many operators do not choose to keep a log - that's fine - there's no licence requirement to keep a log (not in the UK anyway). So putting the over-eagerness to one side, I don't think it's too much to expect Special Event Stations to respond. But in my experience, not only do Special Event Stations not respond, most of them don't even use QRZ's Logging system! Now I'm not daft enough to think that every operator in the world will choose the same LogBook as me, but I do expect Special Event Stations to provide a path for QRZ-Loggers to log their QSO's alongside the62,000,000+ QRZ records!! I think it's fair to say that most operators turn to QRZ.com to see who they're talking to and I don't think it unfair to expectto find an SES or Club callsign to be found registered there and to provide pertinent information regarding the Special Event or Club. But what I have found is that some SES don't even register their callsign on QRZ ahead of the event - some register, but opt out of the Logging option. A few do register and opt into the Logging but then don't respond to confirmation requests - they're probably the worst of them all. Here's two examples of Special Events - BIWOTA 2019 and LOTA 2019...
You can see here that despite me participating in their events, only 15% responded to my request for a confirmation - and that's after me pestering via email!! Over half of them don't even bother participating in QRZ logging so I can't even request a confirmation!
In the next event, only 1 person confirmed the contact with me. The vast majority of SES operators didn't participate in QRZ Logging, therefore denying me any chance to get a confirmed contact.
Surely if you are a Special Event Station and you register your callsign with QRZ, you should activate the Logging option too. Evein if you normally use something like LOTW, it only takes a few minutes to set up a QRZ log and have it automatically port over the adif to QRZ.
Or am I talking rubbish? I am after all, new to this.
I wanted a single place to locate my QSL CARDS and decided to use this post to do it but then another operator (PE4BAS) pointed out to me that he posts his on a separate blog altogether which I thought was a great idea.
The QSL BLOG is >here< and each card contains the callsign below it in 'text' so that it is searchable.
