Category: Antennas
February 24, 2019
Yesterday I upgraded the balun on my 80m Off Center Fed Dipole from a 4:1 MFJ to a Balun Designs 4:1. The new one is designed to work in compromised environments, such as over a house like mine is. Since I was already on the roof and had put up an extra pully on the thrust bearing under the hexbeam…
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November 13, 2018
At last weeks meeting of the SPARC Club they had a couple 2m radio, I picked up the Icom for use in my shack. Over the weekend was the yearly SPARCfest, where I picked up a 2m antenna. I put it up against my fence on some of the military camo poles I have left from Hamcation. I got on the SPARC net…
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June 2, 2018
I went to help members of the SPARC club take down Doug, KB0SDQ's 50ft tower since he's moving. He had a hexbeam on the top, he said it worked really well, I bet it did up there. We had a little issue with the rope as we lowered it down with a truck and one of the hexbeam support poles broke. Quite…
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April 26, 2018
So I got the hexbeam installed, took quite a bit of work but wow the reception is significantly better than my old off center fed dipole. This is the NA4RR model. The hexbeam itself was really easy to put together. I had issues with the mast. Lots of issues. The previous antenna was built with…
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March 16, 2018
I used some military camo poles I picked up at Hamacation to make a higher mast for my 80m OCF dipole. This added about 12ft to the top. I don't notice a huge difference and the SWR got worse which was unexpected. I'm still able to get through pileups into Europe and have been making contacts. I've…
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December 27, 2017
Can't get enough antenna. One end of my lot to the other is 133ft, which is just about enough for an 80m off center fed dipole. This antenna requires a 4:1 balun. I went with an MFJ again because of price and because it had next day Amazon Prime. At some point I will upgrade to a Balun Designs I…
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December 3, 2017
It didn't take long for the "more!" feeling and I quickly added 40m speaker wire to the balun and put it on a roof tripod. I did a fan dipole in an X pattern on the roof. This got me on 40m and 20m. I used the 468/f formula to measure out the speaker wire. By this point I also joined the local…
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November 25, 2017
After doing quite a bit of research I purchased a used Icom 7410 radio. I was looking for a radio with USB connection for digital modes and the ability to do an IF tap for a panadapter since I already had a couple RTL-SDR dongles. I found a Icom 7410 on eHam classifieds that had the filters and the…
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