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-4373 or go to hamstation .com. Good evening,
everybody. It's time for another episode of HamTalk
Live. It's episode number 59, Spring Antenna
Projects with Radio Waves Emmet W0QH, recorded
live on Thursday, April 6th, 2017. I'm your host,
Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning into this
episode of HamTalk Live. Tonight... We are joined
once again by Emmet Honesty III, W0QH, and we'll
take your calls live in just a few minutes. And
last week, Don Wilbanks, AE5DW, was here to talk
about Ham Nation episode number 300 coming up
and the Newsline Young Ham of the Year Award
nominations. So if you missed that show, you
can listen on -demand anytime at HamTalkLive
.com. or on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn,
SoundCloud, or YouTube and several others. So
get your antenna questions ready to go and we'll
take your calls tonight as always at 812 -NET
-HAM -1. That's 812 -638 -4261 or you can call
us on Skype. Our username is just HamTalk Live.
And you can also tweet us. Our Twitter handle
is at HamTalk Live. So I'll be back with Emmet
right after this word from the HamStation right
here on HamTalk Live. This episode of HamTalk
Live is brought to you by the HamStation. For
over 37 years, the HamStation has sold new and
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Heil Sound Pro... The grass may be greener on
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mow it. You're listening to Ham Talk Live with
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HamStation has you covered for both new and used
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or download it from most popular podcasting sites.
Emmett Honesay, W0QH, is the chief engineer at
Radio Waves in the St. Louis, Missouri metro
area. Emmett designs and builds custom antennas
for both amateur and commercial radio. He's been
on numerous ham radio podcasts teaching about
antennas and was instrumental in the operation
of the W8D Dayton -Hamvention Superstation. And
he's also helped activate the Dry Tortugas National
Parks on the Airdy Expedition. And his company,
Radio Waves, along with Rochelle, is also a proud
co -sponsor of the amateur radio news line Young
Ham of the Year Award. And you can visit Radio
Waves online at Radio Waves. That's with a Z,
W -A -V -Z dot com. So Emmett, thanks for coming
back and rushing home tonight. Well, thank you
for having me back on again. It's been great.
It's been a long time and kind of missed you
Yeah, well, we've had a lot of response from
the first show that you were on Several people
were listening and wanted to call in it was the
cat trust me. It was the cat Oh, is that what
it was? Well, I don't know. It was Katie's cat.
No, it was Katie's Katie's I gotta blame her
Katie's cat was listening to podcasts. Is that
how that goes? She has some smart cats up there
in Wyoming. She does. Mine just, she just runs
off. I don't know. Every once in a while you
hear her meow in the background though, but can't
keep her off the microphone. There is a good
advantage of having a German Shepherd as your
best friend. No, I'm just kidding. Well, it's
it's spring finally except all of a sudden today
here in here in beautiful southern indiana it's
it's dark dreary rainy and 38 degrees tonight
uh after being like 60 something yesterday but
but uh maybe after this spring will finally stick
and so that means it's time for some antenna
maintenance and time to do some of those antenna
projects that you keep putting off all winter
because you don't want to go through all the
snow and mud and cold and all that kind of stuff.
So give us some tips on some antenna maintenance
and maybe a few projects for the spring. Oh,
that's a fun one. The one thing I always like
to discuss or bring up in any of the discussions,
especially about this time of the year, is there
are projects for you right now that would be
to your advantage to go ahead and address. Probably
some of those things are the things that you
didn't do before the winter came in. And now
the winter hit, and now you can't go out there
and do anything because everything's frozen,
or it's got six feet of snow, or it's all whatever.
You just can't get out there and do it. Things
are starting to thaw out. Things are getting
a little bit warmer. The rain is starting to
fall. There's a lot more moisture. In many cases,
you're able to do things that you really probably
wouldn't be able to do any other time of the
year. So, you know, springtime is the best time
to start looking at, you know, one, do I want
to do something new? Two, I got maintenance issues
that we all have to do. I say every season and
just about every time there's a major whatever.
And then also, how can I enhance what I've already
got or do things to make my life easier to do
these maintenance things? And of course, the
very first thing that we want to look at is,
how's our grounding? Many people say, well, I
just use the electrical ground in that three
prong plug that the radio is connected to, and
that's good enough. And in some cases, No, it's
not. You know, you really should and can have
a good antenna ground system and I suggest that
you go to the ARRL antenna book or the antenna
guide and they've got some good suggestions on
how to do grounding for your station. A lot of
times we get phone calls You know on a daily
basis actually where I've got this problem or
I've got that problem And you'd be amazed how
quickly those issues are resolved once the person
put in a proper ground Now that we've got all
that rain The first thing we're talking about
of course is grounding go out and take a look
at ground rod if you have one If you don't, you
need to put one in. But go look at your grounding.
And many times people will use the grounding
from the power company. And you've got to understand
that sometimes those ground rods have been there
for quite a while. And the one thing most people
don't realize is the ground rod itself is conducting
electricity one way or the other. There is current
flowing through that copper pipe or the steel
rod, and it's getting in contact with silicon,
and it's getting in contact with all kinds of
other things. And there's an effect called glassing.
So as the current goes through the ground rod,
It has it it creates just a micro spark just
enough to melt just a little bit of that silicon
And it literally coats the ground rod with glass
you won't you don't realize it But it's glass
and you look at the ground rod and you see this
green stuff all over believe it or not. That's
glass And over time, that ground rod becomes
less and less effective as things become glassified
or there's more glass. Now you're going to say,
well, what do I do? Well, there's a couple things
you can do. One, if you have to replace the ground
rod, don't pull it up. You don't necessarily
have to go ahead and sink another one in close
proximity. And then just make a jumper. Or you
know move everything over to the new ground rod
and still use the old ground rod as an auxiliary
if you're working If it's your main home electrical
ground have the power company do it or a certified
electrician that's the safe way because you don't
want to be messing with You know your power in
and you don't want to shock yourself, and you
don't want to blow anything up in your shack
I'm talking about your own ground rods for your
radios and like I said because it's that time
of the year you can You know, you can pretty
much do a lot that you wouldn't normally be able
to do, like putting in that ground rod. I like
to run several ground rods over, you know, around
the perimeter of my building or the place that
I live or whatever, just to ensure that we've
got a really good ground potential and that I
don't have to deal with a lot of stuff that would
be coming in, especially with the spring weather
bringing in what? April showers. That's right.
Thunderstorms, rain, tornadoes, which we've got
a lot of in the last couple of weeks. And I just
heard a while ago we had a EF1 not far away yesterday.
Yep. A couple friends of mine down in Louisiana
had a couple hurricane, had a tornado and we
were down in Louisiana a couple weeks ago in
New Orleans specifically and they had a tornado.
It's like what a tornado, you know, how did that
happen? But you know now's the time to do a lot
of that the other thing you can start looking
at doing is if you have a wire type antenna system
Go ahead and start actually not even a wire type
any type of antenna system that's outside Start
looking at all those connections that you have
your coax If it's if the coax hasn't been sealed
you definitely need to go ahead and open it up
Take a look inside. Make sure there's no moisture
which there is is if there's an SO -239 out there,
there's water in there, especially if it's been
outside. That is a notorious connector when it
comes to sucking moisture in from outside. And
what you'll sometimes see is you'll see what
looks like a little gray film. you know, just
a little line of gray along that white or whatever
the dielectric is that you're using. Believe
it or not, that was an electrical arc that had
happened over time. So that tells you that you
really need to do some work on it. You can use
something like tissue paper to, you know, clean
off the tip on the connector. Clean off the inside
of the, the outside of the barrel. And we do,
Radio Waves does have a product called our, it's
our connector kit, which basically has these
little, they look like Q -tips, but they're just
the right size for you to insert into the connector.
then pull it back out again to help clean any
of the stuff that might have accumulated on the
inside of that connector and then it has a little
syringe that has a stuff called stuff which is
a dielectric filter which fills the void so you
know what happens if you have a void in a in
a connector it gets filled with something and
generally it's water and air So by putting this
dielectric in there, it fills up the hole. Then
there's another material that goes on the outside
threads which helps to seal the threads and keep
things nice and clean and keeps things from getting
contaminated. You should do that one function
at least three times a year. Sometimes four.
If you know that you had a lot of bad weather,
definitely do it more time. Inspect the cable.
Make sure that there's no moisture Physically
look at the cable if you have binoculars. Let's
say you've got a radio tower like my friend up
in New Jersey She's got this Munster tower with
this Munster antenna and You know my suggestion
is if you have binoculars or something like I
just go and visually inspect your coax You'd
be surprised how often? The weather may have
split the the the actual outside Coding on the
coax lightning may have struck and you may not
have known and it literally, you know You know
literally busted the coax open. You don't realize
it I can testify to that one personally I Bet
you wonder I got all this curly hair. Yeah You
visually inspect it because you know, there's
a lot of things that you don't really anticipate
you really don't think is gonna happen I've had
some people call and say hey I've had this coax
for 15 years, and there's nothing wrong with
it. And of course, a couple of days later, I
called back and said, you know, I touched that
thing, and it felt all crinkly. It turns out
the dielectric had all their moisture had gotten
in and broken down the dielectric. The dielectric
had cracked. And then next thing you know, there's
all kinds of problems. So just now is the time
to eliminate a lot of issues prior to heavy weather,
change of season. It's nice weather, so you're
not going out when it's 100 degrees. You're not
going out when it's 20 degrees. You're going
out when it's 60 and 70, where you can at least
enjoy the time out there. And then, of course,
after the connectors and coaxes and stuff like
that, if you have a wire type antenna, My recommendation
has always been if you're going to mount an antenna
outside, you really need to come up, make sure
you have a way to do maintenance on it. I know
some people say that, well, I've had this thing
for fill in the blank years. And it does, you
know, I really don't have to do anything because
it was built to where, you know, blah, blah,
blah. Well, think about this, even the military,
the government. other major organizations, commercial
companies, do maintenance on their antenna systems
and inspect them on a regular basis. As a matter
of fact, as a chief engineer for a radio station,
or radio stations... I inspected our station
on a regular basis just to make sure that everything
was working properly. Because in that world,
that antenna goes down, their revenue goes off.
And when the revenue goes off, guess who gets
in trouble? Yeah, that's right, me. I don't want
that to happen. I can't help it if it's a bad
reporting, but I can help it if the transmitter's
not working. But those are some of the big things
right there. Just real simple projects that you
can do. You don't have to do it all at once.
Come up with a little list. Sit down at your
table one morning when you're having coffee,
tea, water, milk, whatever it is you have in
the morning. Write down on a piece of paper a
couple things that you want to do to check out
to make sure your stations were working well.
We were talking about wire antennas. When you
installed your antenna, most people have a tendency
of just sticking it up there, getting it up there,
and setting it up to where it's not coming down.
The problem with that is it's twice as hard to
get that thing down and get it back up again
if you didn't set things up to where you could
manage it, i .e. For instance, where I live,
I'm not allowed to have antennas. So what I ended
up doing is I ran my... I have a DX160 going
east to west and a DX160 going north to south.
And what I did is I ran it through the tree lines
or up the top, you know, over the top of the
trees. And, you know, it's kind of difficult.
But what I did is I made sure I had plenty of
line that so that I could... either I could pull
the antenna down service that the balan I could
also you know pull it all the way in because
I literally had a lot of extra let's say string
or whatever believe it or not my antenna system
is suspended using a weed whacker line it's lasting
me five years but I do change it out every two
years the weed whacker line has done great for
me it's uh how do I say this it's it's it stretches
and it acts like a rubber band almost So what'll
happen is as the trees start to sway and things
start getting crazy that thing stretches and
goes back together again stretches and goes back
together again And it works just fine, but I
always give myself enough line to bring the antenna
down And so I service it and if there's any other
issues like squirrels getting on the wire How
many times you heard that one where you know
the squirrel ate my wire and chopped it in two
well guess what? You know if you had You know
the wire if you had things set up you could effectively
drop the balan You know drop the other end where
the wire is pull the wires through Replace the
wire and pull the antenna back up again. I know
it sounds complicated and generally takes more
time But if you spend more time in the beginning
if you take the time To set these up and get
them resonant and all that The antenna or the
radio station itself will definitely work a whole
lot better. And I can guarantee that as you spend
more time on the outside, things go a lot better
on the inside. As one of our slogans for our
company is that radio waves, we make your radio
sound good. And that's literally the truth. And
that's my antenna project that I need to do right
away is the rope needs to get replaced. I've
got to get that through the pulley and get that
replaced because it's been way too long since
that rope's been replaced and it's getting frayed.
So that's definitely my next antenna project.
Well, if you guys have some questions about some
of these projects and some maintenance, Write
those down, think those out, and then we're going
to take your calls here in just a little bit.
So have those ready to go and we'll see what's
going on. We already have a tweet or two going
here. But before we take a break here, I want
to talk a little bit about a couple of other
things going on. First of all, you just got back
from a week out. out in Vegas and IWCE. So share
with us a couple of minutes of what your adventures
were out there with IWCE. Adventures in the Great
West is about the best way of describing it.
Yeah, it was almost like we had the theme of
blazing saddles going on in the background. Sometimes
we weren't sure if it was serious or if it was
real, but no, it was a good trip. Ended up going
from St. Louis down to going down visiting my
son who's in the military, and then continuing
on meeting up with a group of guys that I hold
near dear. Basically, it's the MCOM -1 vehicle.
It's an emergency communications platform, which
it was called. The best way to describe this
is it's interoperability, a mobile interoperability
platform designed for emergencies, emergency
operations centers, and so on. And I'm part of
that group to the extent that I built the HF
antenna systems and so on. So I got to play along
with them and got a chance to go to... the show
IWCE, which is a very, very, very, very large
land mobile communication show. And it's basically,
you know, the big players like the Kenwoods,
the Yesus, the ICOMs. Motorola, Harris, Tate.
The list goes on and on and on. A lot of the
Japanese manufacturers who you see in a lot of
the amateur side, they also make what they consider
to be land mobile, the new digital modes and
so on. It was an interesting experience in that.
You got to see a lot of this stuff that I know
is starting to filter down to the amateur world.
Like the DMR stuff is a really big thing, and
I know DMR is very popular in the amateur realm
now. Got to see a couple new ICOM radios. Got
to see some really cool Kenwood stuff and some
Yesu stuff, and of course I got to see a lot
of Motorola and Harris, which was interesting
as well. It's kind of interesting in that When
you look at a show like this, this is this this
is the kind of show that Unlike with on the amateur
world. These people are looking for like government
entities Police stations fire emergency services.
So literally these this communication equipment
is the kind of stuff that you used when people's
lives are on the line. So it absolutely has to
work. There's no question about it. There's no,
you know, I don't know what the right button
is, because, you know, fill in the blank. It
has to work the first time and every time. And
so it becomes it's a it's an interesting show.
It was really nice, literally inside the Las
Vegas Civic Center. I swear that building is
a mile long. It is a mile long. It was one of
those things where if you look down the hall,
you could almost see the curvature of the earth.
It was that long kind of a deal. And it cut off
your signal, didn't it? Oh my goodness. And what
was really interesting is this place was so big
that it had another convention center underneath
ours. So it was like a double stacked convention
center. So they had just as much room underneath
us as we did. And they had another convention
and it was a computer show. And I'm thinking,
man alive, that is huge when you think about
it. So it was quite busy. We got to see a lot
of new things. Like I said, the DMR stuff. My
time was spent mostly in the ICOM booth because
I was with the MCOM1 team. And it was quite an
experience. It was really neat. We got to show
off our Sentinel hex beam. You have to understand
too that the central hex beam that we showed
off at IWCE and the one that we built for the
amateur world are two completely different antennas.
One antenna, even though it looks like your hex
beam, is designed specifically for land mobile
type use ALE type operations, you know has a
broadband element on it It's built differently
specifically for you know, the individual channels
that the radios hop to for ALE So it it's a it's
a different animal even though it looks the same
which is kind of funny because we did have some
hams show up and is that a Hex beam? Oh, yeah,
it's a hex beam and it's but it's not the same
hex beam that you're it's not the one that you're
familiar with I guess is what it boils down to
Um, but it was, it was an adventure. Sounds like
a lot of fun. Oh yeah. It, uh, you know, it was
two days. It was pretty intense. A lot of stuff
going on. Um, it, uh, very formal. Uh, you, you
know, generally I was blue or not. I was wearing
a suit and tie. Okay. Give you an idea. Wow.
Wow. Now that says a lot right there. It wasn't
the kilt. It wasn't the kilt. I was tempted,
but no, it wouldn't have flown, not even. Although
I kept telling my wife, I should bring my kilt.
I really should. We are gonna be wearing kilts
again for Dayton, which is gonna be fun. Then
after that, we finished up on Thursday evening
at five o 'clock. Now imagine this, you got a
mile long of stuff, people trying to get out
of this place. Okay, you know how, like, the
ham shows are and like ham vincennes and so on.
Well imagine this done on a professional level
and everyone's trying to get out at once and
they got big stuff they're getting out you know
power segments you know microwave dishes radar
stuff and of course here we are with mcom1 the
vehicle and we got to break down the entire station
we we literally set up mcom1 in its deployed
condition in other words It was set up in the
icon booth in the condition that it was actually
operational, even though we didn't operate out
of it, but it was operational. So we had the
hex beam up. We had our folded terminated dipole
up in the back. All the VHF stuff was up. If
you go to our website, our actually Facebook
page on radio waves, at radio waves, there'll
be some pictures there. But anyway, we had all
that set up. So what happened was at five o 'clock
we had to tear all that down. And it was interesting
because it was our we were already dog tired.
So we tore this thing down and packed up the
van And the generator and everything And tried
to navigate through all these boxes and all this
stuff, you know, they're pulling up carpet They're
you know, you know forklifts moving. I mean flying
all over the place You better not be in that
lane because that forklift will get you But anyway,
we pretty much got the vehicle out. I think we
arrived at the East Canary Casino, which is where
the NVCon was held, at about 7 o 'clock in the
evening. And we literally redeployed. In other
words, we pretty much set most of our stuff back
up again. for the next day, which started, you
know, in VCon on Friday. So it was, you know,
a tear down in the set up. And then we had in
VCon, which was Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Unfortunately, we couldn't stay for the Sunday
section of the show because, you know, these
said we were driving and, you know, it's a two
day drive, three day drive from Las Vegas to
St. Louis. Anyway, it was a fun show. Phil and
Mike were basically from Florida, so they had
two more days. So this was a long trip. And Neil,
I think we've got a break coming up, don't we,
sir? Yeah, we do. We need to take a break and
we need to get back and talk a little bit about
the Superstation and take some calls here. So
we're going to do that. And we'll be back right
after this word from Tower Electronics right
here on HamTalk Live. This episode of HamTalk
Live is brought to you in part by Tower Electronics.
Tower Electronics has been the Ham's Dime Store
since 1978. When you need connectors, mobile
and handheld antennas, cables, or adapters, visit
Scott or Jill at a HamFest near you. Or you can
order online at pl -259 .com or call 920 -435
-2973. Stock up on those supplies like PL259
and end connectors, SMA adapters, audio cables,
soldering supplies, mobile antennas, and hamsticks.
Their silver -plated end connectors are even
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Electronics carries MFJ, Comet, Daiwa, OPEC,
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Call us on voice with Skype at HamTalk Live or
give us a call at 812 -NET -HAM -1. That's 812
-638 -4261. Now here's more HamTalk Live. Thanks
to Scott and Jill at Tower Electronics for sponsoring
the show yet again tonight to help bring you
HamTalk Live. They're at Mobile, Alabama this
weekend and also Staunton, Wisconsin this weekend
on Saturday. They'll also be at Calhoun, Georgia
on April 22nd or you can give them a call at
920 -435 -2973 or visit their website like I
did a while ago and got some soldering stuff
going here. PL -259 .com and tell them you heard
it. Ham talk live and we're here every Thursday
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check out our Facebook Twitter and Instagram
just search for ham talk live you will find us
there and we are Getting late into the show here
and we want to take some calls, but real quick
Let's talk about the the Dayton Superstation.
It's gonna happen again. Oh Yes, I did have one
question for you though, you know Now you just
said tower electronics is going to be down in
Alabama and then they're going to be back. Where
else? Wisconsin. Yeah. So Jill, Jill went to
Alabama and Scott's a big guy, but I don't think
he can do two shoes at the same time. Yeah. Jill
went to, to Alabama. She got down there today.
I saw so sent Jill on the road. Yeah. He's done
that before. He stays home in the hot tub. Okay,
I get it. And Scott and Joe, I tell you what,
those guys, they got hearts of gold and they
want, they've got parts. That's the best way
I can say it. It's like, it's a mobile, what
used to be a radio shack, a quality radio shack,
which, anyway, I love those guys. But yeah, we're
talking about the... Dayton ham station or the
superstation which we're doing part two this
year Last year was the first time ever where
we had We had a meeting of the the big and the
big the the big radios ie icon Kenwood and yesu
we also had two of our antennas which was a One
of our Barrett's which is the great big 40 meter
through 10 meter hex beam, and then we had our
Sentinel, which was 10 meter through six, both
operating on OM amplifiers from Array Solutions.
And then we also had ICOM, Kenwood, and Yesu,
the best of the best, and tech radios. We had
a Kenwood 990 that... Yes, we did. Neil, you
all about playing on. Yes, we did. As a matter
of fact, it was one of those things that he says,
you're not getting this mic back. I mean, until
you get him off my cold, dead fingers. No, I'm
just kidding. Not really. You're not really kidding.
He really got into working it as you can tell
because his neck got a little red which meant
he was excited and You know, it was good to see
and it was it's a fun radio to work with and
then we had the esu 5000 we had the the flagship
radius of of the icon line, which was the 7851
which is a just imagine two hf radios in one
box that do 200 watts and they're Absolutely
quiet that would be the ICOM 7851 beautiful radio
Then of course I was hooked up to OM an amplifier
as well and we split the two we split the two
Stations up between the two antennas and one
would be working on 20 meters and the other one
would be working on 17 We tried 40 off and on
but it wasn't exactly How do I say it the best
in the world? We also had Another special event
station that was running on 40 meters, which
was on a yesu. I want to say DS 3000 and then
It was attacked we had that was attached to one
of our off center fed our DX 80 off center fed
Pro lines which were they had a MFJ ALS 600 amplifier
which that is a nice little solid state amplifier
if you ever want to have a no mess no must no
fuss solid state that you can't I mean, it's
kind of in between things. You don't have enough
money to get the big ones, but you don't want
to go too cheap. That would be a very good product.
And it's solid in its design. And I like it a
lot. And you don't have to mess with tuning finals
and so on, which I like a lot. And then, of course,
they had one more station, which was a vertical,
which was more of like CW and digital modes.
And that was using one of our Pathfinders this
year. The Dayton Hemvention is going to Zinnia,
as you know. It's still going to be called Dayton.
Even though it's in Zinnia, it's still going
to be Dayton, because that's how we all identify
with it. I'm very excited about the new venue.
People complain, oh, it's a fairground, yada,
yada, yada. Has anyone ever been to Hera Arena?
You realize that in that main area, they do on
a regular basis. Think about it. That's where
the rodeo goes. I think just about every one
of the major rooms has it set up for livestock.
So you're not losing any. You're not really going
anywhere different than you're used to. It's
just that it's cleaner. It's newer. The people
from Zinnia are just bending over backwards for
the Hamvention people. They're literally letting
the kids out of school half a day earlier just
so that they can free up parking. Think about
that one. I think that is cool. I mean, the city's
participating at that level just to bring the
Hamvention in and make it a success. And I mean,
that's a lot of weight right there. So back to
the station. This year, we're going to have our,
once again, we're going to have all the big ones,
plus several radios that we didn't have last
year, but this year we're going to have. And
the new stations will be... the flex radio 6700
with their new 500 watt amplifier. They'll also
be showing off their maestro and their ability
to do remote operations. There's a young lady
up in New Jersey who probably will be... You
know removing this their station using a maestro
to from her location So you literally there'll
be a booth set up where you're going to be operating
off of the off of the remote location And it's
going to be just like you were there, which is
absolutely cool A craft is set in a system with
a 500 watt amplifier I think they might even
be bringing in their new amplifier, which is
the one kilowatt. It hasn't been 100 % confirmed
yet, but I think it's this. Let's see. Who else
is going to be the amplifier? I'm trying to remember
the amplifier line. We've got one more other
amplifier besides OM. Noah was being. brought
in by, um, well, obviously the company named
OEM and, uh, uh, erase solutions is providing,
is providing that. Plus they're also providing
all the filters, the bandpass filters and, and
switches, which is really nice. Jay does a great
job on all that equipment. Some cool stuff. Well,
we need to, uh, go ahead. Oh yeah. We need to,
we need to get some calls in here. Cause we're
just. getting close and and you're connections
cutting out a little bit here too. Not sure what's
going on there but let's open up the lines here
so we can at least get a call or two in here
at 812 -NET -HAM -1 812 -638 -4261. If you wanted
to get a question in here we'll try to get one
or two in here before we have to get off of the
air. 812 -NET -HAM -1 812 -638 -4261 or you can
Skype us or tweet us and did get a tweet from
KM0MMM that said his project today was the radio
waves dx -40 offsetter fed dipole and added wire
to the short end to make it an 80 meter and it
looks great. Okay that's cool. You can do that.
It's field improvisation, which we've done that
a lot. I mean, that's my world. They send me
places and say, hey, I need to talk from point
A to point B. And this is what you got. OK, let's
do it. Yeah, so sounds like a good spring antenna
project there. So if you have a question about
a spring antenna project, Give us a call, 812
-NET -TAM -1, 812 -638 -4261 while we still have
a couple of minutes left. And while we're waiting,
go ahead and finish up your SuperStation stuff.
Yeah, the rest of the SuperStation is kind of
the same. Of course, we're going to have ICOM,
the ICOM 7851. We'll be set up again. We'll have
a Kenwin 990 and a Yesu 5000 with all the bells
and whistles attached. And, excuse me, all that
will be attached, too. We're only going to have
two antennas this year. a radio waves Barrett
hex beam, which is 40 meters through 10 meters.
And the unit that we're going to be setting up
this year will also have our 80 meter short option,
which means that you'll be able to have something
on the order of a 7 dB forward gain with a 15
dB front to back. It's going to be a 80 meter
beam. Can you believe it? And it's still in the
same space as the 40 meter. And then we'll also
have our high power off center fed, which is
designed to have 5kW. So we're just going to
have two antennas. Also for your reference, there
will also be the MCOM1 vehicle will be there
and we'll have our hex beam set up out there
as well with the couple ICOM 7300s. Sounds like
we got a call. Yeah, we do. We have a call and
a tweet. So let's take the call. Who's this?
Hey, how are you doing? Good evening. So I actually
bought one of those 40 meter offsetter bed fed
by holes. That was the last tweet. And I was
wondering, do you really need to have anything
else other than just hook that up to your rig
and start running or does it need any of the
balance or anything else? Well, typically you
should be able to work without anything else
I do recommend Well, obviously You need to bring
the antenna to resonance if you can just follow
the directions. There's like a five page Thing
on how to you know, make the antenna resident
on 40 meters and then 20 20 10 and 6 should come
in quite easily. We do recommend that you in
a simple common mode choke of some kind just
to take care of any spurious radiation that might
be coming back, especially if you're not working
on the resonant frequencies, like let's say you're
working on 17 or 15 or 12 meters. Having that
common mode choke will help with any RFI issues
that you might have coming back in the shack.
But for the most part, once you get it up in
the air, you tip it. We don't have to do too
much to it to make it work because it is a resident
antenna on 40 and then 20 and then 10 and 6 All
right. Thank you very much guys. Have a great
night Thanks for calling in call Yeah, thanks
for doing that and appreciate it All right. We
have just about a minute. So Blast thoughts.
Give me your tweet. Give me your tweet Oh, no,
he was just saying great show and and and even
Emmet likes icon. They were dr. Scott right keys.
Your MD was harassing me. He knows I'm a Kenwood
fan Well, I'm a Kenwood fan too. Don't get me
wrong. I have a good relationship with with all
the manufacturers You know, it happens that icon
and radio waves have a working relationship on
the commercial side So it it works out quite
well Well, thanks so much for coming back on.
Oh, go ahead. Make it quick. No, I just say,
Neil, I really appreciate your program. I really
do. You're providing a great service. It's informative.
It's lighthearted. It's not hard hitting because
that's not what we want. Or light breaking. Yeah,
yeah. Oh my goodness. And I thoroughly enjoy
speaking with you. Anytime you want me to do
something for you, just give me a call. And I
think we talked about a project next week or
so for your next shows. He'll have an announcement
in his post. So we will, we will make an announcement
on that. So thanks so much for coming on the
show and doing that. And we'll be talking about
that soon. Thanks to everybody for listening,
calling in, tweeting in Thursday night, 9 PM
next week starts our Dayton Hamvention preview
and Tim Duffy will be here K3LR to talk about
contest university. So be sure to check that
out for a list of all of our upcoming guests.
Visit HamTalkLive .com. For now, this is Neil
Rapp, WB9VPG, saying 7 -3, 7 -5, and may the
good DX be yours.