Winding Down

Or should I say winding over?
Yesterday, having finally finished giving the lawn a short back and sides, I decided to change the 2m yagi beam for a more sensitive one. This is the mast once it has been tilted over:



The old beam can be seen still attached to the top of the mast and the replacement is leaning up against the mast. Time will tell whether it has been worth the effort.

 

As conditions for radio contact are changing rapidly it will take a few days, or maybe weeks, to judge whether it is an improvement.

Hamming It Up

Ham (amateur) radio that is. After working on HF frequencies for the past couple of years I decided to return to using the VHF amateur bands. Specifically 2m (144MHz). Last week I tried using digital modes on my white stick (vertical) aerial which was reasonable for contacting other stations in England but was useless for contacting any stations on the continent. On Monday I decided to rescue one of 2m yagi aerials from the garage, wound the mast over, changed the stub mast and wired the yagi beam in place.

It can be seen at the top of the mast. I left the 6m halo (square) aerial in place.
The white vertical aerial can be seen in the background at the bottom of the photograph.



I also had to re-connect all the wiring for the rotator as the beam aerial needs to point in the direction I want to make contacts.

My simple set up



The rotator controller on the left. Above the radio is a power meter so I can see how much RF power the transmitter is sending to the aerial.

When I am using digital modes of transmission I use an internet program to see which amateur radio stations are receiving my transmissions. The transmitter is connected to the laptop via a control box.



Sunspot minimum is not the best of times for long distance contacts but I have made contacts in Germany, France, Holland, Belgium and the Isle of Mann.

Going Round to America

One of the things I enjoy with my Amateur Radio activities is experimenting with simple aerials to see which works best for me. For the past week or so I have been building and experimenting with what is called a magnetic loop aerial. Something which has been on my 'round tuit' list for several years:



The small black 'loop' connects to the transmitter / receiver. That picks up the signals received by the larger copper loop which is about 1 meter in diameter. Just above the copper loop is the tuning mechanism which has to be designed to handle high voltages. It might be low power being transmitted but in excess of 1000 volts can be generated at the top section. These aerials seem to need little power to send signals a fair old distance. I use just 10W which is one tenth of the full power of my transmitter and one fortieth of the power I am licenced to use. Best contact to date has been 4177 miles to a station in the US using a digital mode called FT8 on the 17m band.

With most aerials the higher up they are the better they work but the magnetic loop seems to work miracles when close to the ground.