6M SLIM JIM

WHAT A PALAVER!

In readiness for a local 6M Net, yesterday I decided to have a go at making a 6M SLIM JIM and the Chairman of Bolton Wireless Club, Glenn Bates (G6HFF) very kindly gave me a length of 450 ohm ladder line to go with his construction diagram (originally designed by G4OAN).

The cable was about 5M long and the construction diagram showed an overall length of 4.3M, so I had a little spare. First job was to do the cutting with a sharp knife and a pair of sidecutters. Once that was done, I soldered a connector close to the recommended FeedPoint.

With hindsight, I can now see that I should have hung back on the soldering, but hey-ho, you live and learn. I cut the 80mm gap on the right side of the ladder line and then hoisted the thing up on top of a 7M telescopic mast.

Sadly, the SWR on the radio back in the shack was not very good. Even the MFJ-993B tuner struggled to tune it, so it was a bit of a fail despite following the dimensions to the letter!

I tried it on 20M and immediately got two good contacts - one in Bulgaria and Italy, receiving a 53 and a 56 using 10W.

So today I returned to the project and after borrowing an MFJ Antenna Analyser from my friend Bob (G0FRL), the job was made a hell of a lot easier! Having said that, I still felt like antenna building was similar to black magic!!

YES I KNOW that this is an extremely simple antenna build, but it drove me absolutely nuts trying to find that sweet-spot. Just as I thought I was getting closer, the reading jumped in completely the opposite direction. 

In the end, I realised that I needed to stop taking measurements at the feedpoint and take them instead from the end of the coax in the shack.

After much messing around moving the FeedPoint up and down, I eventually found a 1.1:1 match and ran some tests on the radio. It felt more like luck than anything else. All was well. At last!

I was very happy with the results at the end of the day and was glad I'd done it - until I passed a mirror and saw how this simple project had aged me.

Oh well, being a glutton for punishment, I decided to make a 1/4 Wave vertical with downward sweeping radials. It worked fine but offered no advantage over the SlimJim, so I packed it up and threw it in my rucksack.

73, M7MCQ.

WSPR RESULTS QTRWAVE

RESULTS OF WSPR TESTS ON NEW ANTENNA

I ran WSPR today using 5W and the new DIY Quarter Wave Vertical antenna just to see how it performed. It did pretty good considering its position at the back of the house.

It reached into China and Japan (twice), not to mention Anchorage, Alaska...

DIY Qtr-Wave Vertical (20M)

JESUS CONTACTS ME AT EASTER!

Being an atheist, I never thought I'd be making contact with Jesus, not even at Easter, but sure enough, he turned up right at the end of my hour of testing a new antenna!

Having been on "LOCKDOWN" for a couple of weeks, I started to worry about the future in terms of whether there's going to be a company to go back to and I awoke this morning from a dream where the bailiffs were banging on my door to take away my beloved radio gear!! 

Anyway, I ended up getting out of bed at 05:30am and sat at the 7610 with a cup of coffee. There was an atrocious amount of noise on the bands - and little else - apart from some Europeans on 80M & 160M looking for Stateside contacts only, so I switched off and flicked through some emails on my tablet.

It was then that I stumbled upon a message from Richard Newstead from SotaBeams (G3CWI) about making my own 20M QuarterWave Vertical.

I've been meaning to do this for months and just never got around to it. I guess I didn't really believe it was going to be worth the effort considering I've already got a great 20/40 Dipole, a half-size G5RV and a superb EFHW.

Anyway, in a bid to brush off the dark emotions of coronavirus, lockdown and the end of the feckin world, I forced myself to gather together all the bits I would need to complete the project.

I had a reel of antenna-wire which I purchased from SotaBeams (virtually any wire will do), a 1:1 Balun from Martin Lynch and a telescopic mast, 6M long which would conveniently sit in a parasol-base.

First job was to cut four lengths of wire - one for the driven element and three slightly longer radials. The driven element was cut to 5.13m and the radials were cut to 5.8m. Bear in mind that I chose these dimensions to make it resonant around the QRP frequency of 14.285MHz

Because the telescopic mast was only 6M high, I decided to wind the wire around the mast in a spiral shape so that most of it was up and away from the ground (the balun ended up being about 9ft high). This gives the added benefit of having the three radials going up at an angle instead of dragging across the floor.


To make sure the wire stayed in the spiral pattern, I added a little insulation tape every metre or so. I also taped the balun to the mast just in case the wind started rattling it a bit. It was actually a gorgeous sunny day (unusual for the UK in Spring) but the wind was picking up.

Once everything was taped up and a length of coax fitted to the bottom of the balun, I telescoped the mast to its limit and went to get the radio out.

I normally use the Yaesu FT-817 in the garden, but I opted for the superb ICOM IC-7100 because it has a very useful feature to help tune antennas. It has an SWR SCAN mode which takes a number of SWR readings across a frequency range. You can for example take about 7 readings across the entire band or you can opt to take smaller steps across a particular portion of the band that might interest you. I opted to take a few readings across different parts and here are the results...

 

 

 

Each of the screenshots above shows a portion of the 20m band and the centre frequency of the scan is displayed, meaning that you can see 10k readings either side. These readings were taken without the tuner connected.

So, overall I was pretty pleased with the SWR and if I'd have trimmed it a little I could surely have got it 1:1 somewhere on the band, but for now, it's good enough.  Let's get the radio connected!

As I setup the radio, the clouds blew in and covered that glorious sun. So annoying!! Most of the sky was still bright blue, but the light was dimmed by the clouds and it immediately felt 10 degrees colder.

I added power via a 13.2V 8.4A battery and started to tune around. The first station heard was W2RE BOOMING IN from the east coast of America with lovely levels of quieting. I was surprised at how low the noise was with this vertical because everything I've read about them said they could be quite noisy.

I spent quite a long time trying to reach Ray, but he just couldn't catch my QRP transmissions. I don't think it was anything to do with the antenna - he was just being swamped with lots of QRO operators. Eventually I decided to move on and see who else was out there.

There were LOTS of Europeans and they were all contesting, so every report was, of course, 59. Having said that, I could hear them all superbly and had little problem speaking with them. 

It quickly got cold and so I decided to conclude the experiment in favour of some late lunch. Just as I was starting to wrap it up, I heard Jesus calling! So I went back on and got him in the logbook! Praise be the Lord (or EC1KR).

I left the antenna erected and will go back to it over the next few days. I had previously spent time fully waterproofing the LDG Balun, so no harm would befall that if it rained overnight.

So in summary, I'm really pleased with today's little experiment and pleasantly surprised with the results. I feel confident that this will operate fantastically well up on the hills and is far more convenient to erect than a dipole.

So a big thumbs up from me.

Thanks for visiting :-) 

 73 de M7MCQ


This design is based on a post by Peter Miles

RSGB QSL BUREAU

QSL MANAGER

Well it's been over a year now and no one ever told me that I have my very own QSL Manager, LOL.

I've been sending out paper QSL cards (along with eQSL cards) to various stations and have never received replies apart from the one from DX Engineering. And then I saw an article in the RSGB Magazine that QSL Cards were building up and operators needed to contact their QSL Manager to see if they need SAE (Stamped Addressed Envelopes) to get their QSL cards posted to them.

So I looked it up online and found that my QSL Manager is Roy Taylor, M0RRV, so I emailed him and he told me that I have 5 QSL cards waiting, so I sent him a few SAE's and today the cards arrived on my doorstep.

With that knowledge, I can add "BUREAU" to my QSL list on QRZ.com

I know it's my ignorance that made me miss out on this, but this is EXACTLY the sort of thing that should be mentioned in that booklet which the RSGB send out to Newbies.

Anyway, here's the LINK to the relevant page.

73.

IC-7610 & WSJT-X

IC-7610 & FT8

In order to get my 7610 working with WSJT-X, I watched a few YouTube videos and used their menu settings. It worked. But I thought I could get better results, so I looked into it a little more.

One of the first things that I noticed was that the recommended setting for MENU/SET/CONNECTORS/USB/AF Output Level was "MIC/USB".  Now that setting worked fine, but a couple of days ago I noticed that the scope was showing a fairly wide TX spike. And then I noticed that if I spoke close to the desk-mic, the output increased. So basically, the mic was picking up (and transmitting) ambient sounds from the shack.

This was easily cured by choosing "USB" only from the menu and that cuts off the microphone, leaving a nice, clean data transmission.

For the benefit of anyone else who's just got an Icom IC-7610 and they're wanting to get it setup for WSJT-X, then please feel free to follow my guide below. This includes a couple of things which were not included in any video I watched.

These instructions assume that you have installed the necessary USB drivers and your radio is already working with your PC

PLEASE NOTE that I always work FT8 in "Split-Mode" and I recommend you do to. Be sure to edit the WSJT-X settings in the RADIO-Tab accordingly.



First thing is probably to RESET your radio back to its factory setting to be SURE that you don't have any oddball configurations within the menus from playing around earlier.

BEFORE YOU RESET make sure you save your current configuration so that you can get back to it later if need be.

Okay once you've done a reset, you'll need to re-enter your callsign into the radio (MENU, DISPLAY, MY-CALL).

So that your computer will still speak to your PC you need to go to CONNECTORS, CI-V, CI-V USB Echo, ON.

Now make sure that your COMPRESSION is switched OFF in the side-menu on your radio's main display. Then go to MENU, SET, CONNECTORS, USB AF/IF OUTPUT, and set it to 20%. Note that this setting will determine the strength of your received signal in WSJT-X. Ideally, it should be 30dB when there's only noise. Once everything's up and running, you can adjust this AF/IF OUTPUT to attain that figure, but for now it's better to start off low to avoid clipping.

Another very important adjustment is the ALC. Ideally, you want almost ZERO ALC and that's quite easy to achieve....

Go to MENU, SET, CONNECTORS, MOD INPUT, USB MOD LEVEL and set it to 15%.

If you are going to be using Data mode instead of the usual SideBand mode in FT8, you should also set DATA1 MOD to USB.

Okay, let's get back to the main radio screen. TUNE YOUR ANTENNA with the radio's built-in tuner. 

Switch the meters to ALC. Set your POWER to 15W (you can increase this later if your licence permits, but for now, just do the same as I did.

Find an empty part of the FT8 band using the WSJT-X waterfall and Click the TUNE button on the WSJT-X software and it will provide a carrier so that you can see your ALC reading on the radio (if you're in Split-Mode it will be the right-hand meter).

Hopefully the meter needle will not even budge because you already set the USB MOD LEVEL to 15%. If the needle does swing over, then reduce the USB MOD LEVEL a bit lower until there is no ALC reading (or next to none).

Now switch your meters to POWER and you will see that your power output is about two thirds of your radio's power-setting. That's fine for me - but if you have the licence for it, you can now increase the power to 20/30/40W or whatever you like. Recheck the ALC reading again. 

Click the WSJT-X TUNE button to stop transmitting the carrier.

So now you should have a tuned antenna with good SWR reading, a good ALC reading and the power you choose to use. 

Don't forget to check the RX Signal Strength meter in the lower left corner of WSJT-X to make sure you are averaging around 30dB and if not, increase the MENU, SET, CONNECTORS, USB AF/IF OUTPUT figure until you achieve that. Don't go too high!

FINALLY, be sure to save these settings with a relevant name such as "WSJT" so you can quickly change your radio for playing FT8, etc.

Spending today sorting this out has immediately reaped rewards by bagging my very first UNITED ARAB EMIRATES and my first PAKISTAN contacts! Very pleased :-)

That's it! 73.


RESPONSES :

Okay, so here I'll post details of any responses I get from people. And the first one is from Mike (VE9KK) in Canada. Mike says that he set his 7610 according to an instructional video posted by K0PIR. I've also seen that video and in it, Richard says we need ALC in digital modes...

ADDING ALC IN DIGI MODES

Well in other videos, people say we don't need ALC and should avoid anything but a mere 'flicker' of it. 

REDUCING ALC IN DIGI MODES

There's loads of these videos for the 7300 and 7610. Who knows best?? Not me! I have tried both ways and having cut the ALC right back on my 7610, I've just made some amazing contacts which I've not managed previously.

I guess you just gotta try each way and see what your results are with your radio, your antenna and your location. 

___________________

WIRE ANTENNAS UK

END-FED LONG WIRE

Today the rain kept away! There was still a biting wind, but a few layers kept that at bay while I searched for a space in my back garden to erect a 66ft long wire. It's ended up running diagonally across the garden from a chimney at the front of my bungalow, to a 20ft scaffold pole which I erected in the opposite corner of the garden. 

The wife was not pleased and I don't think my neighbours will be either! The reason most people chose their houses around here is the fabulous view of Winter Hill and Rivington Pike, so having a big scaffold pole appear on the horizon (not to mention a Diamond X300), is not something to look forward to as far as they're concerned. But when you look around at everything else surrounding our homes like tall street-lamps and telegraph poles with spider's webs emenating from them, my scaffold pole doesn't look that bad.

Anyway, it's up now and it's staying up. The WireAntennas.co.uk  EFHW is really intended for portable use, but I think it's too heavy for that, and so that's why I'm using it as a base-antenna. During the installation, I removed the black winder and sealed the resulting holes with silicone. I also put sealant all around the case edges and even around all the connectors and mountings, internally and externally. It should be 100% waterproof!

The good thing about this new wire is that it's at a different orientation (NE to SW) to the G5RV's (N to S), which will hopefully bring in some new contacts. 

Once it was erected and connected to my external antenna switch, I had a quick play on the 7610 in FT8 mode. Using my 10W, I checked out PSK Reporter and saw that the furthest stations which heard my CQ's were a couple of operators in Brazil and BOTH stations contacted me and ended up in the log. Happy days!

10,000km on 10W

After playing FT8, I followed the advice of Jason from Bolton Wireless Club and ran WSPR to see on a map far my 10W was reaching - and I was impressed! The first report showed a contact in Argentina! I was very pleased.

And then.........

10169  MILES on 10W

After just one day of playing with this new antenna, I had managed to make contacts on the East & West coasts of America, all over Europe, Russia, Costa Rica, Japan, Australia and even the Antarctica on 10W!!!

I only had a very brief stab at SSB on 40M and got two German operators. I'll do more SSB later. At this point, I've only tried 40, 30 and 20M (which all tuned very quickly on the rig's internal ATU), so I'm going to have to try out the other bands. I'm guessing the MFJ-993B will match the long wire to 80M and who knows - maybe the topband? We'll see.

SPECIFICATION:

• 64:1 unun
• NO TUNER needed
• NO counterpoise needed
• Frequency coverage:07.00-30MHz
• Resonant on 40/30/20/17/15/12/10m
• Wire length ~ 66 feet 20.12 meters
• Power Handling: 300 watts
• Stainless Steel hardware
• Stealth 1.5 mm black wire
• Connector: SO-239

GRUNDIG YACHT BOY 210

70's FINERY

Click To Enlarge

Thought some visitors might like to see my olde-worlde radio from the 1970's. It's the beautiful (in my eyes) Grundig Yacht Boy 210. This was Grundig's flagship model and has been one of my favourite general-listening radios of all time. When I was a young lad, we had very basic listening options so when I went babysitting for my 'posh' auntie and uncle, I was bowled over by their amazing "Yacht Boy". It was a dream machine to me.

It 's a ten transistor radio covering the Medium and Long wavebands plus shortwave from 5.85 to 7.4 MHz and the full VHF/FM band from 87.5 to 108 MHz. Switchable AFC is incorporated and there is a rotary tone control for excellent sound from the large loudspeaker.

A switchable battery test meter is provided on the front panel. Sockets are provided for the connection of a VHF Dipole, AM Aerial & Earth, Earphone, Tape Recorder 5 pin DIN and external power supplies. Normal reception for Short Wave and VHV is from the built-in telescopic antenna (which is still in superb condition), while MW and LW reception is from the built in ferrite rod. The radio will work from 6 'D' size cells, a 9 Volt external power supply, or 240v mains.

Being almost half a century old, the audio is understandably 'wooly' compared to the sharpest radios of today, but it has a deep, relaxing tone which no modern radio can simulate and this makes it incredibly easy to listen to.

What a lovely thing to have around :-)

Grundig Yacht Boy 210 (1971)

So why even bother with this analogue antique? It probably seems ridiculous to some people when they have smart-speakers, iPhones, Spotify and such like.

Well yes, I understand that reaction to some degree - in fact, sat behind this 1971 relic is an Amazon Echo!! I have two Alexa's in the house, two smartphones, a music server with thousands of MP3's, a collection of laptops, tablets and desktops with music stored on them and still I turn to this old girl for relaxed listening.

The thing is with streaming on Spotify or Amazon Music, etc, you get exactly what you ask for. Just by speaking a few command words, you can stream the best of Gregory Porter or shuffle through Pink Floyd's discography, but YOU have to decide. And with so many songs and artists available to you, it's hard to choose - a bit like when you find yourself flicking through all those TV channels that you have on Freeview, Netflix, Prime, Now, etc.

What you don't get, is company!! You don't get the surprise of a forgotten track, you don't get local news or gossip, you don't get to hear people laughing in the studio and sharing a funny moment. Many young people don't even know how to use a radio...

CAN YOU USE A RADIO?
CLICK TO WATCH VIDEO

Analogue radio isn't going to be around forever and I just want to make the most of it. I want to revel in the soft tones of a vintage radio that's in great shape after 50 years of service, from a time when people made good stuff and other people valued it and looked after it.

Rock on, Grundig Yacht Boy!

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