Regarding the use of the Gibson Girl hydrogen generator from Fair Radio:
I used one of these hydrogen generators for a FD antenna in the early 70s.
Although that was a long time ago, I will try to remember the problems I had
(and there were some!)
First of all, I had no success using a bucket of water to immerse the
generator in. After you have opened it and slid the telescoping cans out,
it is pretty long. I used a plastic garbage can about 1/2 full of water.
This means about 15 gallons of water! This was not easy to come by at our
FD site!
It took some doing to get the cans telescoped and locked together properly.
If you don't do it properly, all your hydrogen will escape through the joint
and none will flow into your balloon. If I remember right, the solution
that is produced when you immerse the can in the water is caustic, so be
careful. The generator contains some compound of lithium, I think. Which
brings me to the next point....
What do you do with 15 gallons of lithium-based caustic solution? Well, I
dumped it out on the ground - but I certainly wouldn't do that today (I was
only a kid, please no environmental flames :-) I don't have an answer to
this one. Maybe you can add some chemical to the solution to neutralize it.
Lastly, don't bother wasting your bux on the generator unless you can also
get the matching filler tube. This threads into the end of the generator
and provides a "pin" on top for sticking into the balloon neck. The "pin"
is about 3/8" (9mm). It looks like a big version of a basketball filler
needle. The filler also has a handle for agitating the generator in the
water, which you will have to do for A LONG TIME, if I remember right.
Boy, this sounds pretty negative! Well, here some positive things:
IT WORKS! We had the antenna up 250+ ft for the whole contest. It was alot
of work, but it was pretty neat. Due to my total lack of knowledge about
antennas at the time (no radials, no tuner, etc) it didn't work as well as
it could have, but it still beat the dipole at 25 ft!
Good luck, and let us know how it works!
73,
Scotty WA2DFI
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/topband.html
Submissions: topband@contesting.com
Administrative requests: topband-REQUEST@contesting.com
Sponsored by Akorn Access, Inc & KM9P
|