The end feed that became a vertical
I started this afternoon testing various end fed wire antennas when I hit 29ft with a 9:1 being to be the perfect combo with 50ft of coax and a ugly balun at the beginning. Then I got to thinking of the antenna Gary gave me and the extra bits too. So I stacked a 29ft aluminium mast and stuck the 9:1 on it. It worked pretty good albeit very directional. So I'll test again with my fans of 1m radials. Nice to put something together that actually works for a change and zero maths applied to it.
So the chain goes like this right now
Radio -> coax -> ugly balun -> 50ft coax -> 9:1 Unun -> 29.5ft aluminium straight up.
Note: I needed that ugly balun there so the coax shielding reflection would work as a counterpoise for the antenna. That's why it was very directional.
GoBox update
Well I took the Alinco out of my go box and installed a FT-891. Also picked up a Signalink audio interface. Only con I have run into is how the ATU interface works. But I'll have that sussed out Saturday from HRO at HamCom. I might try and find a 2U box to put this in too. The 945 isn't really needed as there's an SWR meter on the radio. And the drawer weights a ton.
Remote Capacitor
Here's the start of onother project I'm working on. You will see it on field day next month.
Baofeng/Pofung Squelch Settings
If you have a UV5R radio you know out of the box the squelch settings are wrong. There are fixes here and there and do work in a perfect world. However the world is not perfect and for me even less so. I have a cell tower within a block and a half from me and street lights that the city say are not monitored remotely, but are monitored remotely. And then I have all manor of electronic devices around me. So this little radio will waste it's juice airing different radio bursts that I don't really want to hear. So this was my numeric fix for this crappy little radio. So far I'm riding on setting 6 at work.
You'll notice I didn't go to 100%. Yeah after 65% if you're not standing on top of the person you're not hearing them.
Addendum: I call the radio crappy but don't get me wrong. I like this little radio and all it's little brothers and sisters I have in my junk drawer. Best 20$ I ever spent. It got me into amateur radio. And if I loose it, get's damaged or it goes scuba diving in the toilet I truly don't care. 20$ and it's replaced. Just like my budget Craig Action Cam(GoPro look alike), do you want to loose 400$ or 15$ on the milsim battlefield?
MagLoop testing (part 1)
This is the first test in the line of probably many. I have spent quite a bit of money playing around with failed antennas. So this time around I'm trying to almost solely use junk to prove it works first. I got a few variable caps from Milton the other day, unfortunately they just weren't big enough for this project. However they do work for fine tuning. The cheapest cap I could find online for power was 55$. Nope, not spending 55$ to find out it really doesn't work. So I came up with this idea for a capacitor. Not sure what it's capacitance is as the battery in my meter went dead this morning while testing it. It currently works only on 20m even though it's design is for 40m. Later today I'll setup in the yard to test it on battery power. Maybe try the LiFePO4 batteries too.
UPDATE:
I did take it to the yard and got one QSO with AF6O in California. That was the point I realized I wasn't feeling very good and packed it all up and went back inside.
