Construction
Building a coax entry panel
Overview: Legal Disclaimer: I am not an electrician, you must check with an electrician prior to performing any work involving your home. A year or so ago, I got the idea of installing a loop antenna to help reduce some of my RFI. Not wanting to follow some of my previous bad practices with more … Continue reading
6BTV Yearly Maintenance
Checklist for yearly maintenance of a 6BTV antenna Continue reading
Building a K4 external keypad
The K4 is fundamentally different in the way it launches macros than the K3. The K3 launched macros via the SVGA card, (which is an add on to the Elecraft P3 panadaptor), and used an indirect addressing scheme to select which macro was launched. The K4, on the other hand, uses telnet, and accepts macros directly, in real time! You just log into the K4 via telnet, and send the macro. This required a total rethink of the process for communicating with the radio. Continue reading
Review of DX Engineering’s 6BTV 17 Meter add on kit
I am very happy I purchased this kit, as opposed to cheeping out and using PVC, and non Stainless Steel parts. Continue reading
KPA500 Input vs. Output Power
Graphs showing input power vs output power of the Elecraft KPA500 RF Amplifier. Continue reading
Elecraft K3: KSYN3A synthesizer installation notes
Overview: At one point, myself and K7OLN were living about 700 feet apart. Both of us were very active, and as a result could not operate on the same band at the same time. I purchased an Elecraft K3, and that helped, K7OLN then purchased a K3 and that helped more. Then Elecraft came out … Continue reading
Notes on tuning a Hustler 6BTV
I thought I would share a few of my notes on tuning up a 6BTV antenna, and constructing a radial field. I have been using a GAP Challenger DX, (review here), for the past fifteen years, unbeknownst to me, and over that time, water had been slowly seeping into the tuning harness of the antenna. Continue reading
Adding an external keypad to the K3
The Genovation keypads have either forty eight or twenty four keys on them depending on which model you purchase. Each individual key can be programmed to send a single character, or a series of characters. Further, each key has a removable plastic cover so you can put a label under the plastic. All of this allows you to program a key, then label it, then use it to send a macro trigger to the P3. Like the P3, the Genovation also needs to be programmed in advance of use. Fortunately Genovation provides a rather nice piece of software with each keypad for just this task. Once a key is programmed, if you tap that key, the Genovation sends out the character(s) you pre-programmed into it via the USB port. This lends itself well to the function of sending macro triggers to the P3. Continue reading
Review of the 30 Meter MonoGAP
The first thing I did was to start WSPR off using the new antenna… All the usual suspects came in all a bit better than before! Next I decided to see what one watt could do using JT65 and PSK Reporter… The photo at the left shows what happened, I am transmitting from Oregon… Continue reading
I have RFI, now what– Part II, House Cleaning
I then brought up each circuit one at a time… Remember I had all the major appliances unplugged, so this test is looking for the various vampire devices that suck electricity all the time, pretty much anything with a wall wart on it. First I brought up the kitchen. That caused no issues, so I started turning on lights, and plugging things back in. The first source of RFI I found was a set of LED lights I got from Walmart. They are the ones that look like a 100W light, and put out about as much light as a 100 watt light. I heard nothing from them on 80, 40, 30, or 20. However on all bands above 20, they put out a horrific spray of RFI. Had I not checked all bands between testing I would have missed this. OK I noted this in my log book, and put a note there to change them out later. I turned them back off, and plugged in the refrigerator, I got a bit of RFI, so I added a few 31 mix ferrites to the power cord, and that RFI did not return. Next the Microwave got plugged back in, again, a small amount of RFI, and again a ferrite or two took care of this. There were no wall warts in the kitchen, so that pretty well took care of things for the kitchen. Continue reading
