Thanks to everyone who pointed me to the FCC broadcast station database, and particularly to the feature that returns bearings to your particular location. It makes this job a lot easier! 73, Pete N4
I second this motion. My 31-meter tower has a 40m yagi on top and two tribanders at 31 and 21 meters, but the real kicker is that I have a 4 x 80m lazy-vee dipole array, fed through coax that foes up
I am looking for a passive hybrid splitter that would let me feed two receivers from a single source with losses as small as reasonably possible, and good isolation between output ports, without reso
Thanks for the many detailed responses and suggestions. 73, Pete N4ZR _______________________________________________ Topband mailing list Topband@contesting.com http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/l
By popular request, a brief summary. Many people suggested DX Engineering, KD9SV and ICE splitters. Others suggested Minicircuits, which makes a variety of splitters rated 1-100 MHz. Also favorably m
In my experience the choke at the loop end of the feedline (before the transformer) is essential - the signal levels coming from the loop are so low that it doesn't take much shield pickup to fill in
You might also take a look at the two-choke design in recent editions of ON4UN's book (the one that has the shield grounded between two strings of beads about 15 feet from the matching transformer, w
A little related experience, maybe. My tower is 97 feet, with two tribanders and a shorty-forty on it, plus a 4-dipole lazy vee array for 80M which is fed by feedlines that enter the tower at about t
I thought people might be interested in the first Europeans and Atlantic island stations heard here yesterday evening in the half-hour before 2200, in full sunlight. I was using an SDR-IQ RX and CW S
In the same spirit, since I will not be operating after dark in the upcoming ARRL contest, I will put my SDR-IQ/CW Skimmer combination on 160 meters all night (US East Coast, GMT+5), reporting what i
An elementary question but -- If I want to switch a topband RX antenna among three radios, can I just use an ordinary rotary switch, without special attention to maintaining impedance, etc. 73, Pete
Thanks to the many topband denizens who responded to my inquiry. I have one related question. KD9SV, who knows a lot about receiving antennas, cautioned "I would just make sure to switch 'both sides
It depends ... (helpful answer, right?). For example, I have had various SDRs connected to the RX antenna loop on my two transceivers. One of them did not load the RX inputs at all, while my current
I think I understand that common mode chokes are important on small loops and other low-output receiving antennas, in order to prevent signals being received on the shield of the feedline and passed
I understand that low-output RX antennas like flags, pennants, and various loops need more common mode suppression than Beverages. I wonder if two of those chokes, with a ground in between, 10-15 fee
DXE's pricing is a clear example of charging what you can get, rather than some reasonable multiple of manufacturing/marketing cost. I was startled by their Dayton display showing all the DXE gadgets
What I intend to do shortly is use spectrum analyzer software and an SDR-IQ to look at several different alternatives. Still eyeball, but at least it's the whole band at once. I'll be testing the ON4
I thought readers here might be interested in some crude experiments I have been doing here with a Clifton Labs active antenna and various common mode choking schemes. It's conventional wisdom that s
Apologies for being less than clear - the choke that gave the much better results was built on the inspiration of ON4UN's low-band DXing book, 4th edition, figures 7-88. A length of RG-59 coal is use
These are fair points, Jim. One of the purposes if this series of tests is to see if Clifton Labs' super-duper center-tapped choke, which combines 2 different wound cores on each side of the center g