Ham Radio Blog
This is my new dipole antenna. (Figure not in scale.) The elements are J-shape folded in a vertical plane. It is now more compact and looks better with its simpler form.
Obviously, the antenna should work less better than before, because it occupies less volume in the air. The VSWRs are below 1.5 for all the bands from 80 m to 6 m, but became slightly higher in most bands.
I had some QSOs with domestic stations on both 40 m and 30 m bands, and I will keep this shape of the antenna for a while.
I suppose there are many straight key nights in the world such as the one by ARRL.
Today, the last Sunday of October, we had Let’s A1 Contest, and I joined with my Vibroplex Blue Racer 2000 by using the dash contact only.
I exchanged the number, RST plus two digits designating the year when you first obtained the CW operator license, with a local station, and immediately submitted the contest log.
Do I not seek for more QSOs? Well, there are opinions that there exist a negative correlation between the activities of rag-chewing and of contest engagements, as is exemplified by the statements:
The more time I spend at the mall, the less money I have in my checking account.
The more hours I spend at the office, the less time I spend with my family.
which are very true at least for me.
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“In my younger and more vulnerable years…” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
When I was young and perhaps a little bit vulnerable, my memory was almost empty. So if you have some questions like:
you must look out at the outer world for the answer and do not look into your own memory.
And after coming a long way down the track, someday you will notice that you are doing an exhaustive search of your memory for an answer, thinking “There must be an answer there, because I have done it before“.
So getting old is, for one thing, not being vulnerable any more, but becoming too much self-contained for another.
I think I should always try to do something new (a new language? a new skill?) to avoid being excessively self‐sufficient.
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So now I am refreshing my balcony antenna. Previously (see the above figure) it was a full length dipole for the 40 m band with the far end of each element folded artistically. With an ATU (ICOM AH-4), the VSWR values were well below 1.2 for all the bands from 80 m to 6 m.
My first trial is to fold the element more compactly so that the antenna does not hinder the utility of the balcony.
The result is:
It seems that how you fold the elements is something critical even with an ATU. I wonder what happens if I simply cut off the elements so that there is only a straight part.
Note that the low VSWR is merely a necessary condition, and it may not be a sufficient condition in many cases.
Back to the Future is one of my favorite films. Marty travels back to 1955, and Johnny B. Goode is a song released in 1958.
You can watch the original performance at http://chuckberry.com/864/.
W1AW Code Practice Files with the speed 25, 30, 35 and 40 wpm are currently in my iPod.
I do not perfectly copy even at 25 wpm, but recently I began to enjoy listening to 40 wpm files. While I always stumble in the middle with the longer words containing enough number of letters to overflow my small brain, I found that shorter words are really easy to understand, perhaps easier than at slower speeds, because such words jump directly into my mind without intentional efforts.
When I came back into ham radio after many years of inactivity and seriously wished, for the first time in my life, to be a good CW operator, my primary concern was if I could keep my interest and enthusiasm until I break through the barriers that must be awaiting for me somewhere along in the course.
Of course, there should be many barriers each with different nature at different stages, but I may have broken the first few ones, because now I do enjoy listening to 40 wpm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization
No, it is not a call sign. I18N is an abbreviation for internationalization in the form of first_letter-number-last_letter.
Writing this blog in English, I suppose it is English, no?, is my small attempt for i18n.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_Is_Falling_Down
I temporarily lifted up the element from the floor so that my antenna will be somewhat usable again. But since there is now no stay available for the folded part of the element, I had to make a loop at the end like ρ to keep it up in the air.
How does it work? Much better than b4 for receiving, but got no response when I called a domestic station with 50 watts.
Anyway, the VSWR value is both well below 1.2 before and after the repair. Another proof that the value does not tell you much truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_Is_Falling_Down
I was listening to WebSDR for the last couple of days, because the signals received by my rig are somehow very weak and noisy.
And I just found that one leg of my balcony dipole is not in the air but on the floor. Typhoon Vongfong came close to Tokyo on Tuesday before dawn, and we had a strong wind for several hours.
I need to repair the antenna, but with the green curtain hanging on the wire still on duty, a serious work must wait.
I had a QSO with a station in Hokkaido Island (JA8), perhaps for the first time. It was on the 30m band in the evening local time.
My multi-band dipole antenna sits on a south-facing balcony, so I had the impression that I rarely hear JA8 stations.
I usually try QRP operations around 2 watts with domestic stations, but this was something so special for me to get an all band new station, and I was tempted by an evil spirit and QROed to 50 watts to be fully copied after one QRZ?.