Greg, K4NO sent a message back in April asking what projects and
station improvements everyone had planned for the summer.
I please to say that I've gotten most of my listed improvements done.
Six bands from one 15m tower:
10-15-20m - A3S at 15m.
40m - A743 rotatable dipole kit on A3S. While the bandwidth is
limited, it works much better than the 125 doublet. And a bit better
than the half-sloper.
80m - shunt feed on 15m tower. I'm using an omega match, but almost
need no shunt capacitance, and can't quite get down to 1:1 since the
A743 was added. May need to experiment more here.
160m - shunt feed on 15m tower. Using an L-network to match -- it's
two T-200-2 toroids stacked, wound with about 46 turns of wire, and
tapped every two turns. Using about 36 turns, this is about 40uH. Cap
is 600-750 pf using a fixed and variable cap. Matches very nicely,
with about 35 kHz 2:1 VSWR bandwidth.
I have a relay to switch between the two matching networks. Already
have 25 60 foot radials down, and it works well on 80m. Looking to
add about 6 100 foot radials where I have the room to help out on 160m.
So, I'm ready for SS, and the ARRL 160m.
Built a 30m/17m trap dipole. Worked OK at 15 feet, but resonance went
odd when I got it on the tower. May have a bad connection somewhere.
More things to troubleshoot.
How's everyone else fairing on their projects?
Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
-- Wilbur Wright, 1901
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