Good Day for a "Beverage Hike"

After repairing the Monster-L a few days ago, I decided it was time to inspect/repair the Beverage antennas. Tim, K8RRT, strongly suggested I wait until a Sunday to avoid any confrontations with deer hunters so we decided to make our trek today. We loaded up with a 10-foot aluminum tube (two 5-foot pieces) with a wire hook on the top to lift the wire up over branches, small saw, pruning sheers, chain saw, tape, dacron line, split wire nuts, hand tools and fluids for us. As we hiked along the 60° / 240° Beverage (Reversible), we found some small branches over the Beverage and a couple of forearm size trees that we were able to lift by ourselves. At the beginning the Beverage wire was as tight as a Banjo string and would actually "sing" if you tapped it.

After about 650 feet we found the wire on the ground because 3 or 4 LARGE trees had fallen on it. Some of those were bigger around than me! No sense trying to cut those, so Tim went to the far end of this 900-foot long antenna and removed the wire which I then pulled from under the trees. We re-strung the wire over the dead-fall and now had the Beverage back to its original condition. It was amazing that the 2-conductor wire (WD-1A Military wire) had not broken, as tightly has it had been stretched.

On the way back down the ridge, we heard others in the woods! Tim and I stopped and listened and determined it was just some teenagers playing "Paint Ball." We were within 50 yards of them but I do not think they even knew we were there. Tim was armed with a small, pistol-sized shotgun and we wondered what the kids would do if we fired off a round but we decided to just silently drift away. On the way back to the Beverage Hub, we came back the route of the un-terminated North/South 500-foot antenna and found one or two arm-sized trees on it which we removed.

We completed this inspection/repair mission in less than 3 hours. One more Reversible Beverage remains to be inspected but because Tim had to go to work and I needed some "sit-down time", we elected to stop for today. After sundown, I did a quick "check" of the 60° Beverage to see if it was back being the "Killer" receive antenna it was last year. I've posted two small MP3 files below to show how it plays. Click on the callsign and the file will download or be played in your Browser or by using Windows Media Player or other MP3 player on your computer.

EA8DO - He sends "CQ EA8DO EA8DO" then a station starts to answer him. I was listening to him on the Beverage until he sent "EA" the second time and that's when I switched to the Transmit antenna. You hear him send "CQ EA8DO EA" and then he all but disappears in the noise as I switch to the transmit antenna.

S5ØA is in a QSO with N4NN and you can hear him sending "N N4NN TKS 73" and in the middle of the "3" I changed to the transmit antenna, then back to the Beverage then back and forth once more. It is pretty apparent when he is being received on the Beverage wouldn't you say?

I think our little project today was extremely beneficial. Tonight I can hear TU2T weakly, not strong enough to call, but strong enough to copy reports and portions of the stations he is working. Hopefully he will be on Top-Band near his sunrise as with a little enhancement, I think I can work him.

WVU's Ms. Mountaineer for 2011

May I present West Virginia University's Ms. Mountaineer for 2011, Ms. Katlin Stinespring! Click on any photo to see a larger image.

Katlin is the eldest daughter of Tim Stinespring, K8RRT, and is a senior at West Virginia University. She was chosen today from five finalists all of whom are seniors at WVU.

Below is a description of this award:

The award recognizes students’ exemplary academic achievement and extracurricular involvement. All applicants must be eligible for graduation by May 2011 to be considered.

Here is Katlin's bio:

Katlin Stinespring, a public relations major, is a Hurricane native and is sponsored by the National Society of Collegiate Scholars. Stinespring is the assistant clarinet section leader and woodwind rank leader of the Mountaineer Marching Band and the vice president of public relations and membership of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars among other activities at WVU. She is the daughter of Tim and Pam Stinespring.

The entire West Virginia DX Association is over-joyed that Tim's daughter has achieved such success. As many have said, it is obviously a credit to her abilities and to the parenting she has received. Congratulations, Katlin, you really deserve this!

K8RRT's Dual-Flag Receive Antenna

The photo at the left shows Tim, K8RRT, standing behind his new Dual-Flag receive antenna. The antenna is made up of two rectangles 30-feet long by 20-feet tall. The telephone pole is set up to accommodate a total of 3 or 4 Flags aimed in different directions. The feedpoint is at the bottom corner next to the far support. That support is made up of military surplus telescoping fiberglass tubes available on eBay. You can see a close-up of the feedpoint in the small photo on the right. Click on any photo to enlarge it then Close the open photo window or use your BACK button to return to this page. The photo of the antenna was adjusted so that the wires showed up a little better against the bright sky.

Below is a Posting by Charlie, N8RR, who has been leading the use of this type of antenna here locally. He gives a fuller description of the antenna.

Yesterday in about 4 or 5 hours W8TN, K8RRT and I built a dual flag receive antenna for the low bands in Tim's field. We continue to refine the process of building these. The next one will have a couple of minor changes to the construction method. It occupies about the same length as a 40-M dipole.

These are pretty effective RX antennas on 160, 80 and even 40 meters. For those without space for a significant beverage, they might be a solution. My 60-degree dual flag held it's own with a 450' NE beverage, and was a bit less noisy most of the time. These antennas can be built to a lot smaller dimensions than this one used, and will still have great directivity. The smaller the antenna, the less output signal it has, and the more pre-amplification that is needed in the receive chain. I would not hesitate to build a small version of this for limited space, as rx pre-amplification is not expensive or difficult to obtain.

The flag antenna has been around a while. Some have even built rotatable flags, which by necessity are a lot smaller than this one. This current design is from the work of others, and I deserve and take no credit for it.

Tim's antenna models to have maximum gain response at 25 degrees elevation, with a f/b ratio of nearly 30 dB. The beam width at -3 dB points is 107.3 degrees. What this means is that Tim's antenna, which is centered on 60 degrees azimuth, will cover from 6.35 degrees azimuth around to 113.65 degrees azimuth before the gain response falls off 3 dB from maximum.

Although the antenna max gain is at 25 degrees above the horizon, it has significant response at lower angles. The local power lines are behind this antenna. At 2 degrees Azimuth, the model shows over 34 dB front to back ratio, so the antenna should really do a good job of rejecting noise from the powerline.

Now for the real world testing. I am anxious to see how this antenna performs for Tim in the real world of DXing!

The horizontal wires are 30', the vertical wires are 20'. VI in the drawing is the matching transformer. The antenna is fed with RG6 TV cable coax.
The terminating resistor is 1222 ohms. The antenna is directional toward the terminating resistor, away from the feedpoint.

If someone wants to build one of these in less space, it can be done at reduced dimensions.

One can also build a single flag version of this. The beam width is broader, the signal output is higher, but the front to back ratio is poorer. I built one of these single flags last year and at times it was useful.

73 Charlie N8RR

W8TN's Monster-L is Repaired!

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that I could no longer load my 160-M Inverted-L (nicknamed the Monster-L by Tim, K8RRT) on 160-M or ANY band. Received signals were drastically down from what the 80-M Wire Vertical heard. So, I knew I had a problem. First I thought the vertical portion of the "L" had broken off. But, a trip over the hill revealed that the antenna was intact, just a bit of slack which I removed by tightening the support rope.

That meant I had a more serious problem. So, I put the N8LP LP-100 Digital Vector RF Wattmeter to good use and ran an SWR Plot of the antenna. The resulting plot is shown at the right. (You can click on any image to view it larger, then either "Close" the opened image or use your BACK button to return to this page.) This plot basically says the SWR for this 160-M Inverted-L is almost totally flat across the range of 1.8 to 2.0 MHz at an SWR of about 5:1. That's not good! I then surmised the feedline must be the problem and felt it had to be either Open or Shorted (DUH, now that's intelligent!) A quick resistance check at the shack end of the feedline yielded 0.7 ohms. The feedline was a Dead Short!

Now, how could I figure out where the short was located? I knew I had read somewhere that you could use an MFJ 259-B Antenna Analyzer as a Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR.) If that worked, it would tell me how many feet it was from the shack end of the feedline to the Short. I have never tried this but decided it was worth a shot to see if I could find where the problem was located. So, I hooked up the MFJ-259B to use it as a TDR (after a short Google search to find out how to do it!) First I swept the cable with the 259-B to find the frequency where there was a sharp dip in the Resistance (pretty near zero ohms) and found a big dip at 2.51 MHz. I then applied the following formula:

492 / f (in MHz) X velocity factor of the coax X 1 (or times 1/2 if it is an Open)

492 / 2.51 X .66 X 1 = 129.37 feet.

As I recall, the distance from my shack to the base of the tower is just about 130-feet. So, I now needed to go over the hill and look at the coax at that point. I did that today and about 8-feet short of the tower I found the following:

I guess it's not safe to let me work with power tools!

Over the last few weeks I've been clearing brush around the base of the tower in preparation for taking down the SteppIR for repair. I guess I got just a "little" too close to the 160-M feedline with either a weedeater or a chain saw. It was clear that the center conductor was touching the shield - SHORT!

So, I trekked back to the house, acquired the necessary tools, and returned to cut out the bad spot, install PL-259's on each end, and connect them with a double-female connector. Back at the shack, I ran another SWR plot which you can see at the left, and it looks like I'm back in business with the Monster-L! Actually the antenna is resonant about 1.812 and needs to be just a little shorter to move the dip a little further up the band but this is certainly good enough for me.

This little "error" on my part cost me at least TWO New Ones on Top Band and maybe as many as five! LOSER! However, it now looks like I'm ready to work some DX. The antenna is 1.11:1 at 1.810, 1.14:1 at 1.820 and 1.21:1 at 1.830. Plus, I'm back in business for using the 160-M Inverted-L on all the other bands until I can get the SteppIR repaired.

Next I need to walk all the Beverages with my chain saw to remove any trees that surely have fallen across them. NOTE to self: Take plenty of split-nuts for when (not IF) I cut the Beverage wire with the chain saw. Also, take a First Aid kit and cell phone with 911 on Speed Dial!

A New Ham in the Making

Today my 7-1/2 year old grandson, Grant Kimberling, was home sick from school. After he felt better, he asked me if he could "type" on my keyer paddle. He had done this before and enjoyed sending CW and watching the letters print out on the microHAM microKEYER display. Today he started asking me how to send certain letters instead of just sending stuff at random. What he was asking for was how to send the letters of his own name. After he mastered that, he asked how to send the letters of his brother's name. I soon started the "CW Get" program so that he could see the letters in a more static position instead of while they scrolled across the microKEYER display.

In about 20 minutes he had learned 9 letters and one punctuation mark (he randomly sent "period" and saw it on the screen and kept repeating that until he had it memorized.) Soon I decided to record this event but the battery of the camcorder was dead. I put it on charge and we left to run some errands. More than 2 hours elapsed and when we came back I told him I wanted to record him sending his name and he sat right down and sent it without any questions or help from me. Click on the link below to view the short recording. At the beginning you can see the letters print out on the screen on the bottommost line. You can also click the "4 arrows" icon on the bottom right of the video to expand it to full screen. Then use your BACK button to return here.

Maybe we have a Young Ham in the Making here?

UPDATE: Five days later, Grant came back by the shack and asked if he could show his Daddy what he could do. I hooked up the keyer and he sat right down and sent his name with no hesitation, no mistakes and without any questions, failed attempts or any prompting from me! I guess the "lesson" has "stuck" with him!

10-Band DXCC Achieved - Whooo, Hooo!

My last DXCC Endorsement Application has now been processed by ARRL Headquarters and my 12-M DXCC has been issued. That now completes a 10-Band DXCC SWEEP for W8TN!

You can click on the image at the left to see a larger view. Then, click on the BACK button in your Browser to return to this page. OR, if you see the image on top of a greyed out image of this Blog, just click anywhere on the Blog page.

The individual "DXCC Awards" are shown in the left-most column. As you can see from the bottom of this image, an asterisk "*" after the award name means that award has been issued. The only one without an asterisk is 2-M.

I managed to reach this 10-Band DXCC after 46 years and 10 months as a ham! I'm sure I could have done that a LOT quicker if I had spent more time sending QSL's for contacts I had made in years past. However, the expense of sending cards was high and I was initially only concerned with the basic DXCC. So, once I got a country confirmed, I never sent any more QSL's for contacts made on other bands (or modes!)

It looks like I now need to get busy trying to accumulate another 99 QSL's on 2-M in order to reach that elusive 11-Band status! But, in the meantime, I'm working toward that 2,000 Medallion for the Challenge (thus adding more numbers to my individual DXCC awards) and looking for that P5 to put me at the Top of the Honor Roll. No time to slack off now!

My First JT-65 QSO

After watching Eric, K8OHZ's Digital Demonstration at the last WVDXA meeting, I was getting enthused about trying some new Modes. Then, at the WV State ARRL Convention, Steve Ford, WB8IMY, gave a presentation on JT-65 and I was hooked. Tonight became the time for me to give it a try. I have made many QSO's using other WSJT modes in the past on 6-M, Meteor Scatter and Whisper. But, JT-65 was a new one for me.

I thought it would be simple but I ran into a few roadblocks along the way. Getting the radio to STOP keying was the big problem. That turned out to be a simple click of the mouse in the microKEYER II Router Software. It seems that I could have save myself a LOT of headaches if I had just Read the Fine Manual (RTFM) first!

After that hurdle was cleared, I had to spend some time getting used to the software. Maybe it was because it was 2 o'clock in the morning but I seemed to be a little slow to pick up things tonight. Anyway, I answered a couple of stations (SP and G) on 20-M but they did not hear me. Do you think running 5-watts into the 160-M Inverted-L could have been the problem?

Well, as it got later and later, the stations got fewer and even though I upped my power to 20 and then 40-watts, I could not work anyone. Finally I moved to 30-M and saw a good signal from ON5UN. I clicked on his "CQ" (5th line down in the screen capture on the right at 0712) and gave it one more try - (I had upped the power to 60-watts just in case!) You can click on the screen capture to make it larger, then use your BACK button to return to this page.

As you can see on the screen, ON5UN answered me and we had a FB QSO. The software automatically generates the signal report (no 599 on every QSO) and I gave him -10 dB which is 10 dB below the noise. He gave me -18 dB so I was MUCH weaker to him. However, he copied everything on just one transmission so it was all good. You can see the software marks CQ's in Green, QSO's in progress are in Gray and when the other station has received my call, it is in Red. The Red lines show what I received back from ON5UN.

This mode is not going to break any speed laws as it takes about 5 minutes to complete a QSO. But, it's a hoot to do it! Each transmission period is a minute. You can see that ON5UN was transmitting on all EVEN minutes and I was transmitting on the ODD ones.

There were many more stations on the air on JT-65 tonight than I expected. I'll probably have to give it another try (after I get some sleep - it's 3:50 a.m. now!)

Elecraft K-3 - Saving SPLIT State on Band Change

Since acquiring the Elecraft K-3 a couple of years ago, I have learned that I simply can NOT remember to put the K-3 back into SPLIT mode after I change bands. For example, I'll be trying to work a DX station on 17-M CW and he is listening UP. I see a spot for another DX station on 20-M so I take a break from calling the first station and go to 20-M. When I return to 17-M, the transceiver is correctly on the DX station's frequency, and I can see (and hear) that my "B" VFO is on the SPLIT frequency so I proceed to send my call only to hear "LID LID", "UP UP UP" or other not so pleasant things. It seems that the K-3 "forgot" that I had the SPLIT MODE turned on when I was previously on 17-M and it was now transceiving on the DX station's frequency.

A couple of days ago I was helping Jimmy, W8JA, set up his K-3 for RTTY operation and I noticed that HIS K-3 did NOT forget that his radio was in SPLIT MODE when it came back to the band where he was operating split. How could that be? Well, it turns out there is a setting in the K-3's CONFIG menu that controls whether or not the K-3 remembers the SPLIT MODE. It is the CONFIG menu entry called "SPLT SV". If that menu entry is set to "YES" (as it is in the image on the right) then the K-3 remembers the SPLIT, RIT and XIT on/off states for each band it is on. Here is the description from the K-3 manual:

SPLT SV - If set to YES, SPLIT, RIT , and XIT on/off states are saved per-band.

In my K-3 (and my manual) that setting is defaulted to "NO" so all I had to do was to access the CONFIG menu and find the SPLT SV entry, then change it to "YES." Hopefully I will no longer answer to the call of "LID" anymore!

N8WC's First QSO

Last night a long-time friend of mine, Mike Comer, came for a visit. Mike used to be N8DGV and had a MONSTER 10-M station in Ravenswood. Simply stated, he OWNED the band. I had a Hy-Gain TH6-DXX at 90-feet about 1 mile away from Mike's QTH and that was a really good 10-M antenna. But I would sit and listen to Mike "run" JA's and out of every 3 JA's he worked, I knew I could work one easily, one I figured I could work with difficulty and the third I could not even hear! Mike would open and close the band with his Alpha 86 and his 40-foot boomed antenna.

Well, as I often say, "life got in the way" and Mike became inactive while raising a family and maintaining his career. He recently retired from his main job and although he took other employment, he decided to get back into ham radio. He upgraded to Extra Class and acquired the callsign, N8WC. But, because of not having a station anymore, he has not had a chance to use his new privileges or his new call. So, when he came to visit last night, he asked to get on the air and put N8WC out into the ether for the first time. Below is a video of his first QSO.

It is obvious that an 18 year layoff from ham radio has not diminished his CW skills in the least! And, it was also obvious that the "bug" has bitten him again and it won't be long until he has his own station operational again.

After the above QSO with Spain on 15-M, Mike had a desire to get back on his favorite band - 10-M. So, we moved to 10 and Mike easily worked a Canary Island station with just 100-watts into the 160-M Inverted-L. More grins ensued there so I'm guessing he was making some QSO's in his sleep last night!

Beverage Maintenance

Two days ago we got slammed with a serious wind storm. Various reports indicated winds from 66 to 70 mph. I'm certain what we received up here on the top of the hill was at least 60 mph. It launched the neighbor's trampoline up into the trees (see photo at right.) - Click on any photo to see it larger then use your BACK button to return to this page.

I felt certain that my wire antennas must have suffered from limbs and trees falling on them so today the weather was good and I decided to go check it out. The first thing I found was a tree had taken out one of the two radials on the 80-M wire vertical. I brought the wire back up to the house so I can put another ring lug on it and I'll replace it tomorrow. I then noticed that one of the radials on the 160-M Inverted-L (the original radial) was not looking right. The tree that took out the 80-M radial had pulled down a small tree which was supporting the 160-M radial about 30-feet from the feedpoint. After I removed that I walked out to the end of it and removed another branch there. The loss of the one support tree now had the radial touching the tree which I nearly caught on fire (see the last Post to this Blog) so I had to find another support for the end of that radial.

I then decided to walk the NW/SE Reversible Beverage since it was over easier terrain than the NE/SW one. I found five or six branches on top of the Beverage which I removed (I had taken pruning shears with me) and was feeling like I was not going to find any serious trouble. Just as I got to where I could almost see the end of the Beverage, I found a good sized tree straight across the Beverage pulling it to the ground. You can see the Beverage wire near the bottom corner of the glove in the photo at the left and continuing just beyond the point of the index finger.

It turned out that this tree was 192-feet from the end of the Beverage. I could not budge the tree and did not want to walk all the way back to the house for the chain saw. So, I walked to the end of the Beverage, untied it and removed the wire from the transformer. I then pulled the wire back to the fallen tree, pulled it all underneath the tree and then re-strung it to the end. That's how I know it was 192-feet - I measured the wire (roughly) while pulling it through. It turns out that the Beverage has apparently stretched a bit as it is now a good deal closer to the end point. After securing the Beverage I walked its length back and estimated (by counting my steps) that the length of that Beverage is approximately 820-feet.

Back at the Beverage Hub I looked at the beginning of the NE/SW Beverage and just a matter of a few feet from the Hub, that Beverage and the N/S one were both pulled to the ground by another fallen tree. I managed to cut off some smaller limbs and freed up both of those antennas but did not attempt to walk the two of them as I feel sure that there are more and larger trees on top of them. I'll leave that job for another day.

Improvements to the 160-M Antenna Farm

Today the weather was great and I decided it was time to get back on a couple of antenna projects that had been waiting patiently for a long time. After having breakfast at Shoney's with Charlie, N8RR, I decided that I needed to upgrade the 160-M Inverted-L with the addition of a 2nd elevated radial. At the same time I planned to take care of an issue that I first noticed when the grandsons helped me string the reversible Beverage toward Japan.

The "issue" was that I noticed the elevated radial had come in contact with a tree and the RF had found a path to ground through the tree and burned a patch on it about the size of my open hand! In fact, the tree is about 5 inches in diameter and the radial had actually burned itself into the tree to a depth of about 3/4 inches. You can see in the photo at the left that the insulation had burned off the wire and actually a couple of strands of the wire had burned apart or broke from friction once the insulation was gone. It's a wonder I've been able to work anyone with this going on. The location of this damage is about 25 feet from the far end of the radial. It appears that when you push 1,500 watts into a piece of wire, it had better be well insulated or that power is going to go somewhere besides out into the ether!

I manufactured an insulator out of a piece of 1-inch PVC (see photo at right) and installed that at the place where the damage was located. I then wrapped the insulator and wire with Scotch 88 electrical tape. It turns out I really did not have to do this because as I moved on to the end of the radial I saw where some limbs had fallen against the radial and they had pushed the wire over against the tree. Once I removed the limbs, the wire moved away from the tree on it's own.

I then proceeded to add an additional radial to the Inverted-L. On my first trip away from the feedpoint I pulled out some new wire and measured the new radial so that it would be the same length as the first. I had attached the new radial to the original radial by using a split-nut. Back at the feedpoint I tried to make my way through some heavy brush to pull the radial on a Southerly path. However, I soon found that I did not have enough Real Estate in that direction so I had to come back and take the radial off in another direction. I only went a few feet in the new direction before I realized the angle between the old and new radials would be fairly small and I felt I needed something nearly opposite the original one. So, I reversed direction and headed off to the NW. I had also pulled a second wire because I had planned to put three radials on this antenna but I was short about 33 feet on the balance of that spool and did not have enough room to put it up anyway so if I was going to end up with just 2 radials, I wanted them as far apart as possible.

Once back in the shack I ran a plot on the antenna and was REALLY pleased to see I had actually improved the antenna! SWR at 1.800 is just over 1.1:1, at 1.820 it is 1.2:1, at 1.840 it is 1.5:1 and hits 2.0:1 at 1.870. You can see the plot on the right. Click on any photo to see it larger then use your BACK button to return to this page.

After the antenna was taken care of it was time to finish the installation of the reversible Beverage that the grandsons helped me string up THREE months ago. DUH! I'm not the speediest guy around that's for sure. Anyway, the new 2-direction Beverage joins the other single wire (North) Beverage and the original 900-foot reversible Beverage (NE/SW) so that I now have 5 directions I can listen with Beverage antennas. I will be up tomorrow morning to see if the new Beverage improves signals toward the NW.

This operation took a total of four hours and I'm pretty sore now. And, as I write this just 3 hours after completing the project, I can hear thunder and the rain has already begun. However, I got it all done, didn't break anything, and it looks like the effort may be worthwhile. Only time and pileups will tell!

Update Logger32 for VP8ORK

The current DX'pedition to South Orkney Islands is using the callsign VP8ORK. I checked to see if my Logger32 program would recognize that call as being an operation from South Orkney and it did not. Therefore, I needed to add that callsign to my country database so that when I enter QSO's with VP8ORK, Logger32 will log it as the correct country and I will not have to manually change the log entry on every QSO.

The first thing to do is to open Logger32 and pull down Tools | Database maintenance | Country/Prefix maintenance. That will pop up a window like you see on the left. Scroll down through the list of countries until you come to VP8/O, South Orkney Islands. Click one time on that listing and another window will open called "dbEdit : South Orkney Islands" just like you see in the picture on the right.

Now you will see an empty yellow box about the middle of that window. In that box you need to type a "less than" symbol, then VP8ORK, then a "greater than" symbol - just like you see in the photo on the right.

The "less than" and "greater than" symbols tell Logger32 that it is to look for the callsign that is between those two symbols and identify it as South Orkney. Now click on the "Add" button. You can now click on the close box of both these windows.

Back in Logger32 you can type in the callsign, VP8ORK, in the "Call" field of the Logbook Entry window and as soon as you finish typing it, Logger32 should now identify the call as being in the South Orkneys. Also, spots you receive will now show up as "VP8/O" instead of "VP8/F" which were previously being identified as the Falkland Islands. That's all there is to "mapping" a callsign to a particular country. Now, go work VP8ORK.