7 Band Portable Dipole Antenna

almcr1 on June 10, 2011

7 band portable dipole antenna

center

Bob Rice VE3HKY has produced another beautiful antenna, this time it is called the 7-Band Portable Dipole Antenna. I attended the London Amateur Radio Club meeting last night and he gave a talk on his new antenna. His previous 7-Band Semi-Vertical Antenna is documented at his site. His new portable dipole seems to compare nicely with the W3FF Buddipole. Contact Bob at bobrice2@sympatico.ca for more information, he has a DVD which shows him constructing one of the antennas. Let me know if you build one!

73, Al

p.s. link to video on how to build the antenna

WW2 QRP

almcr1 on June 9, 2011

One of the posters to QRP-L gave a link to the radios used by troops in WW2, the SCR-694. Old time QRP, link, there are 3 videos on this wartime radio.

scr694

73, Al

N3ZN Keys

almcr1 on June 5, 2011

N3ZNpaddles

K7QO on his website wrote an article about a beautiful paddle he had purchased called the ZN-4A from N3ZN Keys. If you are interested in paddles at all, take a look at Tony’s web site and enjoy the incredible workmanship in the paddles. What great looking paddles!

73, Al

Tuna Tin 2 35th Anniversary Special

almcr1 on May 14, 2011

tunatin2-35anniv

QRPMe.com is offering a 35th anniversary special version of the famous Doug Demaw Tuna Tin 2 transmitter. The original article appeared in QST 35 years ago, and has been kitted and built by many hams since. The original Tuna Tin 2 tranmitter still exists and is put on the air occasionally. There is also a companion receiver available from qrpme.com if you want to pair this classic transmitter with a classic receiver. Take a look at Rex Harper’s website qrpme.com for more details. Have fun building…

73, Al

K6JSS

almcr1 on March 28, 2011

k6jss-qrp

QRP ARCI is celebrating its golden jubilee by endeavouring to put every state on the air in 2011. In 1961, the club started out as a 100 watt club interested in reducing QRM, and have transitioned into a group of operators, hikers, builders/experimenters, and contesters that pursue this great activity at five watts or less.

One way the club will mark this anniversary is to activate the club call in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia throughout 2011. QRP ARCI members/volunteers will be assigned one week during the year in which they can use the club call, K6JSS from their location. We encourage them to operate with K6JSS with as many modes/bands and as often as possible during their assigned week. A special “Worked All States” certificate will be issued to all that qualify by working 20, 30, 40 or all 50 states who use the callsign K6JSS. A plan is being developed for later in the year for any states you miss first time around.

Check K6JSS at QRZ.com for the operating schedule. Good luck in snagging the rest of the states.

73, Al

DCTL Antenna

almcr1 on January 26, 2011

Here’s an interesting antenna that I would like to try out some day, made from 300 ohm twin-lead.

73, Al

Universal Time

almcr1 on January 23, 2011

Suppose you want to schedule a contact with a ham in another part of the world, and you tell him to meet you on 14021 khz at 8 pm Thursday January 20th, 2011. Unless he is in the same time zone or in one close to yours, then he may have trouble figuring out what time you will be on the air calling him

Take a look at a chart of local times to get an idea of the problem he may face. If he is in Africa, then how does he figure out what you mean by 9 pm on Thursday night? The way to avoid this problem is use Coordinated Universal Time (abbreviated UTC). This is the time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time.

Time zones around the world can be expressed as positive or negative offsets from UTC as in this list; UTC replaced GMT as the basis for the main reference time scale or civil time in various regions on 1 January 1972.

I am in the Eastern Time zone in Canada, in winter, UTC = EST + 5 hours and in summer, UTC = DST + 4 hours. So for our contact, I would tell the other ham that I would meet him on 14021 khz at 0100 UTC Friday January 21st, 2011. We would not be confused about what time to meet and if conditions are right, then we would be able to complete the contact as scheduled.

Moral of the story… use UTC time for ham radio, not local time, it helps to avoid time confusion.

Ref: Current US Time

73, Al

555 Code Oscillator

almcr1 on January 15, 2011

cpo

This is the circuit diagram I use for a code oscillator used to teach adults at Community Living here in St Thomas the morse code. Along with Floyd VE3ONF and Terry VE3TEH, we have been practicing Morse Code there for a few years. They seem to enjoy it – none of them will ever be able to copy code faster than one word per each 5 minutes, if that, but they enjoy meeting with us and playing with the code once a week.

73, Al