Made a few changes to the Ham Radio pages, this is a page that will continue to be under constant development, their are stacks of web sites dedicated to the topic and I’m refining mine to attract a general interest in the subject and a quick entry feature for hams to get search and discovery information.

If there’s anything specific that you would like considering for insertion in this page, please drop me a line using the contact form.

Not sure where to start with this, so the easiest first; I enjoy listening to the scheduled networks on FM, and as a member of CDARC I wanted to participate in their regular nets, unfortunately my Diamond X30 just could not quite pull in all the signals (Chatteris is not exactly the (highest point on the planet – not the lowest though!).

I opted for the SPA-X200-N from an ebay vendor due to the increase in gain, ability to be a direct replacement for the X30 and its price point. I tested the antenna for the first time today (12 Oct 14) and worked really well, this antenna is not a Diamond original so hopefully it will last, I have used silicon grease on the sealing gasket where the two sections screw together to keep the water out but I suppose that’s not much use if it snaps in the wind 🙁 -Watch this space!

X200 which replaced the smaller X30

The X200 is connected to a coaxial switching relay in the loft, as my intention to remotely switch over to a dual band Yagi antenna for listening/transmitting on sideband, but that’s for another time.

Ok, the next saga was my lack of reception when using my random length antenna, the antenna would tune but the transceiver was quiet of activity, called Andy (G6OHM) for his advice and whist we were on the phone compared what he could receive on a particular frequency to me when tuned to the same frequency, yep something wasn’t right.

Andy came round armed with his experience and a 4:1 balun, right he said “back to basics”, so the SG auto-tuner, MFJ artificial ground unit and MFJ SWR/tuner came out of circuit and the balun went in, simply connected to the antenna wire and earth, their was a huge difference, but Andy noticed the really high background noise level causing signals to struggle to be heard, I was pleased that the signals had been increased, but a bit miffed that all this quite expensive kit was redundant, Andy loaned me the balun, and that night I ordered one from ebay for £33.00.

A few days later I decided to power the rig from a battery and turn the house power off to try and locate the source of the background interference, it turned out that the biggest problem started around 29.700Mhz where S+60db signal noise is noted, I suspect is from a neighbours solar power inverter, outside of this frequency the background noise wasn’t that noticeable.

I relocated the rigs Power Supply to beneath the desk and started turning the power on, one circuit at a time, each time checking the radio for additional interference, I was hoping for a dramatic leap in background noise caused by electrical interference, but the background noise didn’t really alter which was strange, when Andy was here a few days earlier it did have a higher noise floor.

I have previously spent a lot of effort putting in a ground earth system, so I though I’d measure the resistance from the cable outer at the garden end to my earth terminal block which is robustly connected throughout back to the rig, when I saw the reading was into fluctuating Megohms rather than ohms, I thought ‘now that can’t be right’?????!

From the earth block at the bottom of the garden I ran a connected wandering lead with a multimeter inline set on ohms scale to track the where the problem was, at each of the earth rod positions measured the resistance of the copper earth rod connection back to the earth block (taking into account the additional resistance the wandering lead introduced), all read less that 1 ohm, that is until I measured the last one before it enters the house on route to the rig, where it was all over the place, it turned out that the brass bolt which secured the earth clamp to the copper rod had failed and the earthing connections had sprung open. Inspecting the bolt showed that the brass casting in the center of the bolt was flawed and the subsequent material stresses had caused a catastrophic failure.

Replacing the bolt and getting the integrity of the RF earth back to the rig and antenna tuner allowed me to put the SG tuner back in circuit and everything seems to be working and receiving just fine.

I have left the MFJ kit disconnected, hence the before and after pictures below:

As was.

As is (can you spot the difference).

Hindsight moment – Don’t over-read looking for resolution to problems which you haven’t met or experienced yet, more importantly, don’t buy equipment until you know you need it, I also bought a tuner with a built in power and SWR meter, the rig has this already built in, hence it’s now in a box in the loft.

On a lighter note – Here’s me and Barney in the man cave.

Their is a great saying that ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’, I was reading about the optimal (link to random length article) length of antenna wire, my overall wire length is 30m rather than at one of the optimum lengths specified in the link, one of the indicators apparently was if the auto-tuner tuned to perfectly, then it is not optimized for all the bands that the tuner can tune to.

According to the article, my antenna length should be 25.6m, so I loped 4.4m off the end and gleefully went to the shack to see what a dramatic change this will have made, well it used to tune on 80m and now it doesn’t 🙁

The ladder came back out as did the soldering iron and heat shrink, I now have it back to as it was and I won’t make that mistake again!

The table shows the results of the SG-237 tuning a 30m inverted ‘L’ wire at 6m above ground:

Lesson learned or is it now Lesson identified.

This is the final part in the installation journal, the first bit was to mount the end bracket which secures and terminates the antenna wire to the side gable at the front of the house, I used the ‘T’ from a galvanized TK type bracket, the one used was 24″ in length and secured to the masonry by 2 x 10mm expanding shield anchors.

To fit the insulator to the ‘T’ bracket I bent a small length of M6 threaded stud bar round a scaffold pole, to enable the insulator to slide of the exposed threads of the stud, I slid the braid from a length of coax over it and secured that with helleman sleeves at each end.

The existing TV pole and brackets were removed and the ‘T and K’ brackets were replaced, as were the securing fixings and pole brackets, this TV Pole also support the Weather Station anemometer and Direction sensor, so this was the reassembly order:

Nipped the pole up in the bracket and inserted the wind & direction sensor and pole into the top of TV pole and secured with machine screws, the pole was then pushed up slightly to allow me to add a log periodic TV aerial, the reason for replacing the existing TV aerial was to reduce windage loading on the pole.

The cables for the sensor and TV aerial drop within the pole exiting at the bottom before using conduit to pass through the wall.

Below the aerial is a bracket which secures a small length of pole at 90 degrees to the main pole, this has pulley’s which enable me to lower the insulator for maintenance.

The pulley parachord is secured with a halyard:

Couple of pictures which show different views of the antenna wire up:

The mod to this arrangement will be to replace the parachord with Dacron cord as I believe this is a more robust cord against the elements including UV.

Planning permission was granted today (10 Sept 2014 –  Ref:N9ZIWLHE01U00 ) for the installation of the 6m pole and longwire, in preparation I had mounted the 100mm x 100mm post and drilled the holes ready for the fixing saddles, this is a photo journal of the antenna install, this will be updated as each part is added.

Saddle secured to post using 10mm stainless steel stud, on the reverse of the post is an additional saddle to spread the load on the studs and to prevent any ‘pull-through’.

Pole secured to post using two saddles at 600mm centers, pole raised to insulate it from ground.

Paracord threaded down the inside of the pole and secured, this allows the insulator to be lowered for maintenance, the slack is pushed up inside the pole.

Tension on the wire is applied by the shock cord fixed to a hook, to reduce friction wear on the cord it is threaded through a galvanized pulley.

Side view of the pulley arrangement showing the shock cord fixing at the insulator and the clamp used to loop the flexiweave antenna wire.

View of completed antenna post, eventually the bush will grow to ‘soften’ the post.

Post up and antenna wire ready for high level fixings.

Click for part 4