This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For connectors, cables,
and more, call 920 -435 -2973 or visit pl -259
.com. And by ICOM, heard it, worked it, logged
it. Visit www .icomamerica .com slash amateur
for more information about ICOM radios. Here
we go, welcome to Hamtok Live Callin' let's talk,
Neil's your guy Hamtok Live, here we go on Hamtok
Radio Hey, good evening everyone. It's time for
ham talk live. It's episode number 242 Rebuilding
the ham shack recorded live on Thursday January
14th 2021 I'm your host Neil rap WB 9 VPG Thanks
for tuning in to this episode of ham talk live
tonight. We're joined by Kate zero in EB Joe
Eisenberg and We'll take your calls live in just
a few minutes Last week on the show, Michael
Colley, W4MCA, was here to talk about Hamcation
SE, Hamcation Special Edition. If you missed
the show, you can listen anytime at HamTalkLive
.com or on your favorite podcast app or YouTube,
or you can catch the rebroadcast on WTWW, that's
5085AM. Saturday afternoons at about 3 30 p .m.
Eastern Time each week and We do have a few announcements
here to start off tonight As we do from time
to time first of all Hamvention if you hadn't
heard sadly Hamvention 2021 also had to be canceled
And so next week Michael Coulter w8 CI The spokesperson
from the Dayton Hamvention will be here to talk
about it and the plans for what was planned to
be Hamvention weekend though. They're planning
another QSO party. So Be sure to tune in next
week. We'll hear more about what happened with
Hamvention and what their plans are Also, the
AM rally is coming up. The annual AM rally is
the first weekend of February and encourages
everybody to get on any kind of equipment, vintage
or even a new SDR, and get on AM. Standard AM,
open to everybody on 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, 10,
and 6. And at 0100 Zulu Saturday, February 6th
through 700 Zulu Monday February 8th and in the
Eastern time zone that 7 p .m. On Friday February
5th through 2 a .m. On Monday February 8th For
the a .m. Rally and then the virtual ham expo
is coming up. The QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo
will return on March 13th and 14th. The QSO Today
team has been working hard to make this upcoming
expo even better with new speakers, panel discussions,
kit building workshops, and much more. Early
bird tickets are $10 and include entry for the
live two -day period as well as the 30 -day on
-demand period. You can register at qsotodayhamexpo
.com. There's over 60 speakers including Bob
Alphen, K4UEE, talking about his favorite DXpeditions
to the top 10 most wanted DXCC entities. And
they're going to have a live virtual kit building
workshop. You can get the kit. You can buy that
in advance and delivered to you in time so you
can build from home. So make sure you check that
out. Okay, we'll get your questions ready to
go. If you're listening to us live on Thursday
night, you can give us a call after the interview
by calling 859 -982 -7373. You can also tweet
us. It's at HamTalk Live. You can tweet us there
and also the comments. If you're listening to
us on Spreaker, you can type into the comments.
There's kind of like a chat area. So you can
use that as well. But again the phone number
and we'll give that out a few more times before
it's time to call The phone number will be eight
five nine nine eight two seventy three seventy
three and I'll be back with Joe right after this
word from tower electronics Right here on ham
talk live. Hey, honey. Have you seen the PL 259s?
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or call 920 -435 -2973. Do we sell PL259 connectors?
Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and
got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the
reception was excellent. You're listening to
HamTalk Live with Neil Rapp. Welcome back to
HamTalk Live. Thanks to Scott and Jill at Tower
Electronics for sponsoring the show tonight to
help bring you HamTalk Live. They'll be at Jack
Moyer's Tailgate in Orlando this weekend, January
16th. And then they have Dalton, Georgia coming
up in February 27th. And you can visit them online
at PL -259 .com. Tom, so you can check them out
anytime, anywhere. Well, welcome back to HamTalk
Live. Tonight, Joe Eisenberg, KZeroNEB, joins
us on the Orlando Amateur Radio Club and Hamcation
line. Joe is from Lincoln, Nebraska and well
known for his kit building expertise and his
picture shows of Hamvention. He's the longtime
kit building editor at CQ Magazine. and often
makes presentations and kit builds at ham fest
conventions club meetings um he uh like me started
at an early age in ham radio and has been licensed
since 1969 and at datan he's the guy wearing
the dr seuss hat and and for the first time tonight
joe uh we're not talking about kits although
we could talk about kits a little bit because
you've got some kit building stuff going on,
but our main focus tonight isn't about kits for
a change. Well, actually, I used kits. In fact,
the way I covered this in the magazine is the
fact that antennas are kits. Things that you
assemble like rotator control cable connectors
and so forth are all kits. And so I kind of took
that aspect of it. but kind of walked through
the process of what it took to make my signal
a little bit louder from here in Nebraska. Well,
and I had the chance to catch you on the 12 days
of Christmas and the Yoda month activities toward
the middle of December and you were booming into
the shack here in Indiana and It was a noticeable
difference so we're gonna talk a little bit about
how you have taken your your shack and and just
kind of revamped everything and and You know
we were talking about You know the picture on
the cover of this month's CQ magazine and that
being your your tower project and you know we
were talking about and you mentioned that you
know normally you see these great big antenna
farms you know and all these you know de -expeditions
out in the middle of nowhere and all this and
it's like Gee, that was just my tower on the
cover. So talk a little bit about that. That's
quite a difference for the magazine. And I was
very honored that my editor decided that it was
significant enough of a project that it deserved
to be on the cover. And yeah, it's not normal
because usually you have the de -expeditions
and so forth. But I'm glad it's going to help.
Inspire people because we got a lot of people
that are stuck home right now and with Dayton
even being canceled It looks like the regular
ham fest circuit isn't going to come alive For
any large ones until sometime this summer so
it gives you some time to work on your station
at home And so that's what I did The problem
is a lot of other people are doing this at this
time. And so the problem is that antennas and
cable and rotators and other things that you'd
use and some radios and so forth are hard to
come by. And so if you ever listen to any of
the DX engineering podcasts, he's always complaining
that they're having trouble with suppliers right
now. And it's because it depends on where in
the world or where in this country it comes from.
the coronavirus has affected supplies of everything.
So we'll start off with the first problem that
I wanted to tackle. Power distribution was not
an issue, although one of the power supplies
I did replace one of the Astron 35Ms with the
SAMLEX. But that wasn't the major issue. Power
distribution was not an issue. but it was a lot
of unused cables. Now, a lot of people think,
okay, I've got all these wires from years ago
and I'll just punch another hole in the wall
and I'll run another cable through. Well, that's
what I did for 35 years. And so you end up with
a lot of cables. that are passing through the
wall and then goes into the laundry room next
door to the shack, which is where my workbench
is, and then out through a hole in the wall to
the tower in the outside world. Well, I had four
conductor cables and eight conductor cables and
another old rotor cable and several coaxes that
were cut on both ends. They were replaced by
newer cables, but they were still like RG8X and
so forth. And so the problem was that what I
didn't realize is that I had an untenable situation
where I couldn't get on 80 or 160 on FT8 because
there was so much RF coming back into the shack
that the computer would reboot or the radio would
even reboot. And using chokes on the line, cut
it down, but it was still an issue. And so it
brought back the situation where I've seen this
at field day and stuff as well. And it's unused
cables just sitting there. Actually, the RF that
comes down the jacket of adjacent lines ends
up on these unused cables and re -radiates. And
so digging out all the old wires was the first
step. The second step was When I did that, I
got rid of some coaxes that were maybe 30 years
old or so. And I decided to go with a remote
coax switch. And at the same time, I wanted to
improve the grounds because I discovered I had
one 14 gauge wire that was running into the laundry
room and it was hooked to the copper pipe. And
then there was a thinner wire than that that
went outside and connected to one of the ground
rods. Well, that was all pretty much rotted out.
And so I went to the hardware store and got some
eight gauge and four gauge copper. And the ground
rod system around the tower was in good shape.
So I connected that to the water pipe just inside
the house. As it comes in, it goes right by the
water pipe. and then connected that to a new
heavy cable that came into the shack. Now what
I did was I bought a DX engineering grounding
block kind of a thing and it's a kit and it comes
with a copper bracket that you screw into the
wall and it has space for three alpha delta transit
traps and so I bought those and I put those on
there and then I got some braided wire and now
people tell me I shouldn't have used the braided
wire, but it seems to work. Okay, and So I I
have separate grounds that go to each radio instead
of a wire that kind of went from one Wing nut
to another to another on all the different radios
now they all go to this one ground and They go
out and when I change the ground and then I I
put a brand new clamp on the pipe When I pulled
the other wire off the old clamp, it pretty much
came right out in my hand. So I sanded the pipe
and then put the clamp on and everything and
the two heavy gauge wires, the one going outdoors
and the one going into the shack. And immediately
the noise floor was incredibly dropped. It went
from about an S7 to about an S2. And I thought,
oh, well that's interesting. So then I connected
the remote coax switch and I cut all the coaxes
that came into the house, the old ones. And then
I had a new piece of LMR 400 that went from the
coax switch to the radiums. And so once again,
The signals improved just immensely, but the
old cables were still hooked up to the old antennas
outside. But yet, the noise floor had dropped
just tremendously and all the RF problems had
gone away. And I thought, oh, yes, this works,
getting rid of all the old cables. In fact, we
recycled the cables and I ended up getting $16
.50 for them. I just piled them up and took them
to a recycle center. But by going to the remote
coax switch, instead of having like five or six
runs of LMR 400 coming into the house, I have
one. And that made a big difference. Now there's
some quirks that I discovered with that, but
we'll get into that later. But it works. It works
quite well. The coax switch, because it is remote,
it has to be powered on for the antenna to be
live at the radio. So that's kind of a good thing
because if I turn it off, it opens that connection.
But I also have the lightning arrestors inside
and they're also grounded when they hit the coax
switch because the frame of that is grounded
directly to the tower. So the noise level was
immediately lower. the signal strengths were
better, but the antennas, they were old. So I
ordered a five element, six meter beam, and then
a new TH3 MK4 to replace the TH3 Jr. And I of
course ordered LMR 400 for the six meter beam
and for the UHF antenna that's above that and
for some other antennas. And then the wire antennas
were another problem. And that was I had one
rope on a pulley and three hooks, three snap
hooks. And so I had three wire antennas on one
rope, which wasn't very good because the wind
would bang them against the tower and sometimes
they'd short out and things like that. And when
I tried to lower them to repair it, they would
get caught. So because they were pulling in three
different directions and so That rope is still
there and it holds the 40 meter Double bazooka,
but it does not hold Excuse me any other wires
that Rope is still there, but I replaced that
rope and then I put up four more separate pulleys
with Dacron rope And so that way I have antennas
that have survived two ice storms already and
we had 55 mile an hour winds today and also a
few days after we put this up in November. And
so I have wires now for bands that I didn't have
before. I have a 17 meter double bazooka. I have
a 12 meter dipole. I have 160 meter shortened
half Sloper that's top fed and I have an 80 meter
version of the same thing so In addition to the
40 meter double bazooka and the 12 meter dipole
that I hung All of them are fed with LMR 400
except for I think one of them is on LMR 240
which is kind of like a Higher -end version of
RG 8x that lets you still run up to a kilowatt
so The end result of the whole project was I
had a lot of stuff to do in a very short amount
of time because By the time all this stuff came
in It was the end of October and I had to get
my tower crew who had been working to get the
repeaters in the area all set up for winter and
so What happened is we ended up doing it on two
consecutive afternoons two hours each and the
first one we stripped the tower completely down
all the cables came off and then I ran new rotor
cable and everything and we actually got the
rotor back up and we got the TH3 and the 6 meter
beam and the UHF all reconnected with new cable
all the way through and I have to tell you that
there was a piece of RG8X that I used to as an
interim repair because we had trouble with an
owl that would and a hawk that would claw onto
the UHF antenna. And so that was a temporary
fix that lasted 15 years, but there were claw
holes over the piece of 8X. Now we've rerouted
it so that it's underneath so that if he puts
his claws on it, he will be on the boom and not
on the cable. So because the tower is the highest
point in the neighborhood and it is attractive
to this type of bird So I have morning doves
I have an owl and I have a hawk and I have pictures
of them that that do roost up there from time
to time and Part of the problem is there's a
city park behind me. So there's field mice and
things like that that they go after This really
hits home because when I was talking to you the
other day on HF, I was going through that exact
thing. Every time I'd key up, the monitor on
the computer would go out. And so it was like,
OK, I got to stay off of 80 and on 40, I got
to be in the lower part of the band, not the
higher part of the band, because because my monitor
would go out. And one time it even took out the
router and I had to re -upload the firmware and
reboot the router just to get back on. I'm trying
to run this 12 days of Christmas thing. And it's
like, you know, it just. It wasn't good. So was
that the motivating factor? Is that what finally
made you say, hey, it's time to do this? Yeah.
When things just quit working, it got to the
point where anything but maybe 20 meters sideband
and 40 meters wouldn't work. I decided that I'm
stuck home. This is the time to do it and get
everything done. RFI issues when I was done,
yes there was. And the addition of being able
to use the SB200 amplifier, which I have never
had an amplifier at home in the 52 years I've
been a ham, that brought its own little interesting
things. And I have to tell you, you can get these
through DX Engineering, snap -on chokes are wonderful.
And it really takes things out. I had a problem
that the TV would turn itself on upstairs just
randomly turned itself on and so I took the power
cord to that and to the the Cable box actually
goes into my fiber and my blu -ray player turned
out to be the blu -ray player was the thing that
was at fault because I would key up and it would
say insert disk on the TV and I thought oh, okay
even though the TV was off because I have a smart
TV and when you turn that on, turn on a device
that's plugged into it, it sees that on the HDMI
port and it turns the TV on. But I wrapped the
power cords of all those devices through individual
snap -on chokes and then I had the problem that
the furnace kept trying to turn on every time
I sent a data frame on FT8. Well, that turns
out to be the thermostat wire because part of
the changes was the 40 meter antenna got raised
about 15 feet higher, which worked wonderful
for 40 meters, but it put it right at the level
of the upstairs thermostat, which is a nest thermostat,
a very smart thermostat. And so it was putting
RF back down the line and went into the controller
in the furnace. So once again, loosening up the
thermostat wire by removing a couple zip ties,
wrap a couple turns around the snap -on choke,
and that took that problem out right away, even
when I'm running 500 or 600 watts. I knew there
would be issues. It was just a matter of what
are they going to be when I do this. But I have
not had a single complaint from the neighbors.
Nobody has had any problem at all. One of them
changed from a satellite dish to fiber, but I
think that was more because of the internet,
not because of any RFI. So and I don't have a
neighbor on the other side that's on cable or
anything either. They're on fiber as well. So
That was a blessing but Going to LMR 400 was
was a real bonus on this Yeah. Well, let's take
our break here, Joe, and then we're going to
come back. We're going to talk about this a little
bit more and more about what you did on the inside
of the shack, which we've already kind of. gotten
into, but we'll come back and talk more about
that and some ideas here. I tell you, I've been
just kind of putting things off and waiting until
I move and set up the new shack and everything.
It's kind of the same story. It's like, okay,
I know I could do this, you know, and those snap
-on chokes, I used to get them, you know, just
when I needed them. And finally, I just had to
forget it and bought a whole bag of them and,
you know, and been putting them on. But it didn't
help a whole lot in my situation. So we're going
to have to do that. But let's take a break here
and then we'll come back. We'll talk more with
Joe Eisenberg, KZeroNEB about Renovating a shack,
maybe get some ideas to renovate your shack right
after this word from ICOM America right here
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Rapp takes the rig, he breaks through the pile
up, he's on 80, now 40, now 20, 15, 10, 2 meters,
touchdown Hamtok Live! Welcome back to HamTalk
Live. Thanks to ICom America for sponsoring the
show. Check them out at icomamerica .com slash
amateur and check out HamTalk Live every Thursday
night, 9 p .m. Eastern time right here at hamtalklive
.com and check us out on Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram as well. And we'll get back to Joe
KZero NEB in just a few moments, but now It's
that time once again for the HamTalk Live Ham
Radio Joke of the Week. Now it's time for the
HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke of the Week, the
part of the show where Rick tells us a ham radio
joke. The HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke of the
Week is brought to you by QRM Labs. Now, here's
Rick Garrett in 9GSU with today's HamTalk Live
Joke of the Week. The other day a buddy of mine
told me he got Mexico on his ham radio That's
no big deal. I opened my window and got chili
This has been the ham talk live ham radio joke
of the week with Rick Garrett in nine GSU Tune
in again next week for another joke from Rick
Boy He got chilly. Oh my goodness. All right.
Well, thanks Rick for that. 859 -982 -7373 is
the phone number. If you'd like to call in, go
ahead and do that. 859 -982 -7373. You can tweet
us at HamTalk Live. If you're listening to us
on WTWW. or on the podcast edition. You won't
be able to reach us live since we're doing this
on Thursday night, but Joe is back here and we're
going to talk a little bit more about his shack
renovations and maybe get some, some ideas here.
And Chris AA4CB typed in and says that you finally
got to hook up all the antennas you want at Dayton
and Huntsville. So Actually, I bought a few of
them there One of them I did win and the others
I bought and they come from radio waves is almost
all the wires are radio waves antennas and something
I didn't mention before is that when you're dealing
with rotor cable, even though it's shielded and
so forth, and the shielded wire that comes in
that runs the remote coax switch, which is a
9 or 10 conductor cable, you need to use one
of those snap -on chokes as well. And the reason
is is that there's a lot of antennas that use
the coax as part of the counterpoise, especially
my 160 and 80 meter antennas. Now they both have
a ground wire that attaches to the base of the
tower but you still have some RF that some of
it gets bled off when it goes to the coax switch
and then I have another choke that handles the
cable that comes from the coax switch to the
radio. But there are other lines coming in like
the VHF UHF lines that aren't bypassed that way
they do go to a ground later on and the control
cables do end up with RF on them and so choking
them where they come into the house that that
pretty well takes care of that by wrapping around
one of those snap -on chokes. You mentioned ICOM
earlier the main rig here for those who don't
know is an ICOM 7610. And I also have a 7300
and a 9700, which is now doing the duties on
VHF and UHF. And it's gonna get a little bit
of a workout this weekend with the January VHF
contest. So we're gonna try it out and see what
it does. I don't have a lot of fancy VHF, UHF
antennas up quite yet. Two meters, unfortunately,
is on a discone. But UHF is on six elements up
55 feet. And of course, we have the six meter
beam. So we'll see what we can do during the
VHF contest. But all those are once again fed
with the LMR 400. The 400 that I use is called
Ultraflex. And what's interesting is I don't
think the loss at six meters is even a dB at
100 feet or maybe 1 dB. And you compare that
to the old RG8 that I had that even the braid
wasn't 100 % from 30 years ago. And the difference
in the loss is incredible. And when people say,
well, I'm not going to invest in good cable,
well, if you have 2 to 3 dB loss, That's like,
uh, if you replace that with the good stuff,
that's like buying an amplifier. So if you're
going to spend another $30 or so on that cable,
that's like buying a 200 watt amplifier. So you
have to think of it in terms of DB. Okay. Yeah.
I remember, uh, dad got a hold of a piece of
half inch hard line and put it on our VHF antenna
and the difference that it made. even just at
50 feet was just phenomenal. And so you really,
especially VHF and UHF, you've got to really
consider what feed line you can afford and what
feed line you want to use because it will make
a huge difference. You've already mentioned lowering
your noise floor on HF and getting all that stuff
going. I know you've got more plans to finish
up once we get out of this frigid winter. You
know, let's talk a little bit about that and
then let's talk a little bit about, you know,
getting that amplifier hooked up and what else
you did inside. Well, the amplifier I spent three
months writing about in CQ magazine because I
did three different Harbach kits and I went through
assembling the kits and then I went through the
beginnings of installing them in the radio in
the amplifier. And then the final one was what
they did and everything. The Hartbach kits basically
replaced the power supply. We added inrush protection.
And then we have a relay control voltage change.
So instead of having 120 volts DC across a relay
of a modern radio, we have about one and a half
volts at about 10 milliamps handling the relay
keying. The inrush protection, of course, protects
the tubes and the capacitors and so on when you
fire it up. But the biggest change was the power
supply. And that is when you replace a 52 -year
-old power supply, it's amazing the technical
differences between filter capacitors and diodes
and load resistors and stuff that make up this
power supply board. And so I highly recommend
the Harbach kits. for restoring the amplifier.
But there was one last minute piece that I did
not do during that process that I was reminded
that I should do to preserve the tubes, because
I got two brand new tubes as well in this amplifier.
And that is the parasitic choke. It's a resistor
with a coil wrapped around it, or sometimes parallel
to it, depending on your amplifier. So a friend
of mine, Dan WBZRLJK in Iowa is a Collins engineer
and he has a 30L1 at home and it uses the same
pair of 572 tubes pretty much in the same configuration
as the SB200 and he told me which resistor to
get and he gave me some of the special wire that
he used to do it. gave me the dimensions. I wrapped
it around a drill bit to wind the coil and put
the resistor in there, soldered that all together
and replaced that. And so I have all new parasitic
coils as well in the amplifier. In a way it goes,
the only band I'm having trouble with is 10.
And that's because I think whoever had this amplifier
before me must have tuned the slug to 11 or something.
And so, and not that anybody would ever have
done that. And so tin doesn't work and I'm not
gonna mess with the coil because if you try and
turn those slugs they can they can shatter Because
it's 52 years old But otherwise the amplifier
works well and it helps heat up the shack in
the wintertime The the VHF UHF changes will be
a 2 meter 440 horizontal array and another 2
meter 440 antenna that'll just go to a mobile
type radio in the shack that I will use for the
local repeaters freeing up the 9700 to be used
for the more serious stuff like 2 meter sideband
and tropo scatter and things like that. So that
will be what finishes up the renovations here.
But I have to tell people it's worth it to do
this. The grounding, just changing the grounding
and putting in new cables and new grounding and
new lightning and static discharge devices took
my noise level down, like I said, from an average
of S7. all the way down to S2 and lower, of course,
depending on band conditions. Now I'm able to
more discern if the noise is band conditions
or neighborhood noise or whatever. And it makes
a huge difference. Grounding cables, it all makes
better shack. And I can't emphasize that enough
because after being a ham for 52 years and And
just kind of rolling with the punches as things
got older, it is a great relief when everything
works and I get DX on 12 meters on FT8 and things
like that. And a guy in New Zealand, I could
rag -chew with him for 30 minutes on 15 meters
when I didn't hear many other signals on the
band. And things that I could have never dreamed
I could do is now possible. Yeah, it's just amazing
what that can do and I look forward to getting
mine done when I get moved and get everything
going and I found that I've got a a stoplight
a traffic light controller in the neighborhood
now that that I'm picking up and It's raised
my noise floor So Yeah, there's that well some
of those some of those the stoplights are LEDs
and some of those can be noisy There's all sorts
of things that can cause a problem, but It takes
time to do it right Ward silver n0a x who is
my aro handbook editor has a great book called
grounding and bonding for the radio amateur and
That is well worth it. Ward Silver's book is
probably about the most authoritative book on
the subject of grounding and bonding and so forth.
That book is sitting on the shelf. I'm looking
at it right now. It's here. I actually had it
sitting out and the guy from the satellite company
came to change out some equipment and he mentioned
that he got written up because of a lightning
issue somewhere and he saw that book by Ward
and said, do you mind if I take a look at this
book? Because he was really interested in the
grounding and bonding thing and I'm like, yeah,
sure, take a look at it. Yeah, it's just fabulous.
I've heard his presentation on it at a couple
of different club meetings, and he's really got
some good stuff. So if you haven't checked that
out, check it out. And if you haven't seen his
presentation, look around for it. I'm sure you
can find it. But he's got some great information.
Yeah, the other thing I wanted to mention is
the tuner I'm using now is an MFJ -998. And it
handles full legal limit. And it's kind of interesting
in that you route the relay control for the amplifier
through the tuner so that when you tune the antenna,
it uses the rig as the exciter. And it tunes
the antenna, but it holds the amplifier offline.
And then when it's done tuning, the amp is now
online. So you can tune your amp knowing that
it's not going to be into a mismatch. The other
thing is everybody says, but you're a QRP guy
and you make all these little low power kit radios.
Well, when you reduce your loss in your feed
line and you improve your antenna gain and your
ground and stuff, it works good for QRP as well.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I would argue that it's probably
more important because you don't have that much
to start with. And if you can, you know, cut
down your losses, that's, uh, That's a major
issue so 859 982 oh good yeah, some of the connectors
I got were from tower electronics and The cable
I got was from a BR in Texas and I got it with
pre -made connectors on it as well and The like
I said the grounding and the remote coax switch
and so forth came from DX engineering the radios
or icons And some of the cable the control cable
for the rotator came from the wire man So lots
lots of great suppliers out there. He also supplied
some of the rope I used Yeah, and you mentioned
the supply issues and and every uh... vendor
i've talked to is the same the same thing it
just is really difficult to to keep uh... stock
going because uh... you just don't know when
that stuff is coming in eight five nine nine
eight two seventy three seventy three the phone
number if you'd like to call in that uh... it's
time to do that right now so Give us a call at
eight five nine and nine eight two seventy three
seventy three Brett Wy seven BG on Twitter says
Good evening Neil and Joe saw Joe two weeks before
the Nebraska State Hamfest was canceled Where
he thought he'd see you again but he heard you
and says that you're really loud there in Wyoming
on FT8 and that new setup must be working and
He says might want to do a show on RF in the
shack and he's got some some tips to offer and
I know Like I said Ward in his grounding and
bonding has some really good stuff, too. So yeah,
we may May need to do that here, too Yeah, Ward
would be a real good guest The the other thing
is plan ahead by having everything done and all
the feed lines done into the house, when we had
the tower crew, all I had was the cables coming
down before I plugged them into the coax switch
at the base of the tower. So I could measure
the SWR on any of the lines and then choose which
portal to plug them into. But everything was
all done. And that's the thing, to be really
prepared for your tower crew because they don't
want to be putting PL -259s on and things like
that. They want to bring things down, strip the
tower clean, bring the stuff back up and things
like I replace the rotor and stuff. I have to
thank MFJ for being real prompt at getting all
this stuff to me and the tuner and everything
and it works wonderful. The only, I have a few
oddities that I'm resolving. It has to do with
feeding six meters through a tuner that's not
made for six meters. So I have to bypass it when
I am on six, but otherwise, everything seemed
to work great. And now it makes me think about
maybe I need a bigger amplifier. I have to admit.
I did a little amplifier shopping online, window
shopping, but, um, did a little, a little shopping
last week, trying to fit, trying to pick one
out. So we'll, we'll see. Well, surprisingly,
I know a lot of guys use the AL -811 and AL -811H
and they are very popular because they use an
inexpensive tube. And if you don't want as much
power as your local AM broadcast station in your
shack, then one of those amps, it'll get you
through the pileup. The difference might be an
S unit below the full legal limit, but when you're
putting out six to 800 watts PEP, that's pretty
good. They're gonna hear you. TroyW9KVR says
he's got a solar farm about a half mile away.
Yeah, all kinds of inverter noise there and,
and says, Ward's book should be required reading.
It really is major. I mean, I went away from
the club meeting. I had him zoom in at our local
club meeting before all the COVID stuff happened.
And, and I walked away from that, just saying,
okay, you know, I have got to plan this out on
the new house. We got to get some ground rods
in there. We got to get them bonded. We got to
do a better job of that than what I have now,
which is next to nothing. Well, the good thing
is you'll have access to a new place with no
furniture or anything in there. And it's a great
time to figure out how you're going to get your
cables out, how you're going to bond the the
water pipe and power service grounds to your
ground and to your outside grounds and so forth.
So it's the ideal opportunity before things get
cluttered, which was another problem here and
digging out stuff. I ended up with 20 bags of
trash that got hauled to the curb and you wouldn't
believe it, but somebody stole it. well joe i
had somebody steal aluminum hard line off of
a repeater site actually i believe that took
it off of the tower and then surprise surprise
it was aluminum hard line so might have got a
dollar out of it yeah it's not copper yeah there
was a piece of andrew heliax on the tower previously
And it was not being used in our the head of
our tower crew for our club. We have like four
volunteers that do this now. He took it for use
for a short run because only about 30 feet or
so. And it will find use on one of our local
repeaters. Yeah. You know, again, feed lines,
very important. um go with uh you know the best
feed line you can afford uh it's just worth it
all right one more call 859 -982 -7373 oh sorry
859 -982 -7373 we're running over here so i want
to get uh one last opportunity for the phone
calls here um okay i want to ask you a little
bit about the hamcation stuff but any last things
about the renovations here that we missed. No,
I would say that it's something you can spend
some time planning now because people are at
home more and get rid of old cables that aren't
connected to anything, please, because all they
do is they bring in more RF. Yeah, and get a
bag of those snap -on chokes. They're definitely
worth it. I have them on everything from USB
cables to monitor cables to just everything and
I'm gonna be putting more in when I build the
new shack so good thing to do well I signed up
for your One of your two forums at hamcation.
You've got two forums You've got the kit forum,
of course And then you also are doing one on
3d printing and that's the one I signed up for
because I want to hear A little more about this
because that's something that I have not got
into but you made me a wonderful little call
sign display and sent it to me for my 50th birthday
and it's sitting in the shack but I'm curious
to hear what you have to say about that so we
should mention that if you go over to hamcation
.com and sign up there you can sign up to hear
about that as well as kit build so give us a
minute or two on those Well, the kit building
form will be the the one that I normally give
but of course updated But the the 3d printer,
of course, I use at the beginning of the pandemic
to produce Face shields for our local first responders.
I made over 300 of them and The 3d printer is
very useful in ham radio because you can make
things like insulators. I make cases for kits
That's a big thing You can make little stands
and stuff that hold up your little QRP radios
and so forth. You can make knobs for different
radios and a lot of that stuff is free online.
You can just download the recipe we like to call
it and what we call slice it and I'll go over
what the process is and how you can download
a file and then adapt it to your printer. and
print it out and I have some hints and kinks
of things like what kind of print heads to use
because I ran this 24 -7 for three months and
it's a entry -level Ender 3 Pro and I learned
a lot. I ended up servicing about every part
in it and because they're not meant to run 24
-7 like that and so there's a lot of things you
learn about 3D printers and They are very useful.
Like I said, there's a zillion things you can
make for ham radio. I bought it intending to
make cases for kits and It kind of grew from
there. And so I'm able to not only do that I'm
helping design some kit cases now and There's
just a whole host of things that you can make
and they're not real fast, but What you get is
what you design. Yeah, some good stuff. I look
forward to hearing all about it so make sure
you sign up for that if that's of interest to
you as well as the kit build and all kinds of
stuff over at hamcation se coming up here in
a month so make sure to check that out and that's
free and I bought a couple of tickets I know
you'll probably buy like you know two thousand
tickets but you know Not this time. I'll get
a handful. You know what? You've got to want
a chance at that 705. Yeah. Yeah. It was too
good to pass up. So I had to get a couple of
tickets. So we'll see how that goes. But some
good stuff from Joe coming up at Hamcation. So
make sure you check that out. All right, well,
Joe, I think we're about done here. We're running
a little over time, but thank you for coming
on and talking about all this. And I'm sure next
time it'll probably be Kits again. But as always,
we'll get you back on here and talk about it.
And congratulations on getting on the front cover
of CQ. Thank you very much. I don't think there's
a song for that. I don't think there's a song
for that, you know, there's a song for getting
on the cover of the NCJ, but the spurious emissions
did, you know, on the cover of the NCJ. I don't
think there's one for CQ, but yeah, that was
nice to see. I like that. Well, thank you very
much for having me on Neil, and I want to tell
you a great big congratulations on the award.
very, very, very well deserved getting the Carol
Perry Award. Well, thank you so much. It's been
a lot of fun to have all the comments this week
and appreciate yours as well. And it's been great.
So thank you once again to Hamcation for for
awarding that. And now you've got me. You told
me stories of this banquet that they have down
there in Hamcation. Now you've got me like, you
know, really wishing I was there because it sounds
great. So but I got to wait. I got to wait a
year. Yep. It's a long evening, but it's interesting.
Yeah. Sounds like a lot of fun. So really looking
forward to that. and seeing everybody again,
my goodness. So I guess we'll keep fingers crossed
for Huntsville. Yeah, for Huntsville now. But
just hoping for the best. So, well, I think we've
got all the comments and the tweets and everything
wrapped up. So we'll go ahead and call it a wrap.
for this week's edition of Ham Talk Live. Thanks
to my guest, Joe Eisenberg, KZeroNEB, and everybody
out there in cyberspace for listening and typing
in tonight and invite you back next Thursday
night, 9 p .m. Eastern Time. Michael Coulter,
W8CI, will be here to talk about the cancellation
of Hamvention 2021 and the plans for the QSO
party and other things during Hamvention weekend
virtually. And for a list of all our upcoming
guests, just go over to HamTalkLive .com and
please, if you like the show, leave a review.
That's how you can help back to the show, is
to leave a review and help others find us faster.
So for now, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying
seven three, seven five, and may the good DX
be yours. Thank you.