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It sounds like a new show on commercial TV. So you think you can build a 160m antenna? No? After all the 30m DX euphoria (2 direct QSL cards from the USA already less than 8 days after the QSO) and the irritated moaning about FT5GA, it’s about time to pick up the 80/160m antenna thread. Yes, that MFJ-thingy-antenna again.

Putting up an 160m antenna would be easy if I had more space and / or more money. But let’s focus on what I do have. The garden isn’t really small and I put every square meter to use. I’m doing quite well given the real estate and setup. And more money? I wonder if a Cushcraft short loaded vertical is such a good deal for Top Band. Yes it is when you don’t have any other choice. But I do have a choice. Come to think of it: the MFJ-998 cost me more than this antenna. But combining being short on garden space and installing yet another extra (vertical) antenna is simply begging for troubles. Both RF-wise (coupling) as XYL-wise (lawn czar). So I went down the other road. That means the 80/160m antenna hangs from the tower and uses elevated radials that neither man nor pet can’t touch.

As you all know I have spent too many hours already last year and again after summer to get this Low Band show on the road. It worked and I logged many new DXCC’s on 160m last winter. And I’m psyched about my 80 contacts in ARRL DX CW working as deep as Texas into the USA. Hello Top Band, meet ON5ZO! Then I had to take it down for the construction project and after putting it back up, it didn’t work. I wonder why… To get QRV I made a quick ‘n dirty 80m vertical fed with the MFJ-998 and used it with success in WAE CW last August. But the 160m and DX contest season are coming so I need to hurry. About two weeks ago (remember?) I took the whole thing down to start over from scratch and now I’m slowly… What exactly am I slowly here? Building? Measuring? Panicking? Rotting away on 7 MHz and above?

The original concept last year was: put up random wire, put up random number of elevated radials cut to random length. Insert MFJ automatic tuner ‘et voilà’ 50 ohms on the low bands, ready to take 1kW. And when the WX is nasty and the tower is not cranked up all the way, the slightly altered impedance by a changed vertical/horizontal ratio of the L-wire will also be taken care of by the tuner. Foolproof concept. Yet no proof of concept given so far. But I’m starting to know the ways of the MFJ thing. It does not work for extreme mismatches. It does work to adjust small to reasonable mismatches. That said, the mismatch can be bigger on a dipole than on a vertical. Just my luck. Experimentally proven by yours truly.

So today I added some more radials to improve efficiency (at least I hope they do) and used the installed quarter wave L wire on 80m. In fact, this setup needs no tuner. SWR is 1:1 on 3775, and about 2:1 in the CW sub-band. Well of course: it’s my resonant 80m dipole put up as a vertical! These are measured displayed values on the K3 in the shack, so on the other end of the coax. Fair enough. Then I added a series loading coil right at the feedpoint. The MFJ could plough it’s way through the L/C combinations on 80m but it did not really work on 160m. Mind you, it was just a stock coil that I had. I have no clue about it’s L value and I don’t even know what L value would be needed. Exit random…

Time to take a more scientific approach. I always take a scientific approach when making verticals and dipoles. Not much science needed though: calculate, cut, adjust. Use antenna analyzer to check. Works for me every time. What was I thinking? That all these weird random and extreme impedances could be matched by a finite number of L/C combinations switched by tiny relays? And then take a QRO kW and smile at me? So I lengthened the L wire to about a quarter wave on 160m. My theory got proven: this messed up the 80m operation. Because of the extreme mismatch the MFJ-998 could not find a match. But it did and worked like a charm on 160m. Even with about 900W. The nice thing is that it works QRO on 160m without the ferrite core current choke. I only use the DX-Wire coax chokes with the ferrite beads slipped over the coax.

So where do we go from here? I restored the 80m operation. So it works QRO on 80m now. I will measure the impedance then and see what coil needs to be added to load the thing on 160m. Then make a loading coil and a use switching relay to add / remove the coil for 160 / 80m operation. The coil may be off, the MFJ will adjust as long as it’s a ballpark value. I could prune first to get it better for 80m CW operation so I can bypass the tuner. It’ll take care of business when I’m in the odd SSB contest on 80m. Alternative to the coil and the relay might be a coax trap. I assume a good coil will be better, especially since it’s out of the circuit on 80m whereas the trap is active on 80m. I need to think over how exactly I will try to fix the problem. And maybe consult some experts? But at least there is a plan!

Apart from this high priority antenna work, the K3 kit has been waiting four weeks to get assembled. I need to put the kit together ASAP. And order a microHAM cable for the K3. I still need to stick some 60 labels on QSL cards and get these out to the UBA QSL bureau. That has been on the to do list for 5 weeks now. And I’d like to make a small RX antenna for 80/160. And maybe get on the bands and work me some DX? And fill in / send off my application for WRTC 2010 Team Leader.

That said, I always write this for my own pleasure. And as a kind of archive for myself. I like writing. Maybe I should write a book too one day. About my own low band antenna HI HI. I never imagined people reading this. But the stats counter tells me I get a lot of hits. And the last couple of days I got quite a lot of positive feedback from people I know telling me they like reading this. I hope it’s sincere but anyway: thanks for reading and 73! Oh yeah, I was just joking about WRTC 2010.

For two evenings in a row I had a lot of fun on 30m. Thursday night I needed to put a halt to the fun at around 01.00 (23.00utc). After all I had to get out of bed on Friday! But I did manage to work FT5GA on 30m. Yesterday the same story, then I quit at 23.00 utc because I was tired. During these two nights I could work USA on 30m. Not just some, but they kept coming back. Mostly very strong signals in the S9 range. Some only S4 while others were S9+20dB.Thursday night I could work into W6/W7 and logged a batch of ‘Left Coasters’. Yesterday only a handful. Still better than none of course.

In between K/VE there was XE, TI, a Russian /MM near ZS2 and a bunch of very strong LU / PY. Super! All this with my Fritzel trapped WARC rotary dipole about 16 meter high and 600W from the amp. Imagine what would happen with the tower all the way up? Then the antenna would sit 23m high. All in all I worked over 300 Americans on 30m in about 3 nights. I think that’s cool. Once again 30m proves to be my winning band. I can work it all there with this simple antenna. I never get enough of working DX on 30m.

I got home today and rushed to the shack. At about 15.30 utc I heard FT5GA on 15m CW. Good signal! Only drawback: they were working ‘NA NA NA’ again. I could hear quite some NA in the pile up so I tried 15m myself. Got called by a Texan W5 and a TI8. Both were way weaker than what I heard in the Glorioso pile up so again good propagation is overruled by poor activity.

This evening I tried 17m again. First I worked a few East coasters but much to my surprise I worked as far as Colorado and Arizona. Cherry on the cake were a handful of W6 stations. The original W6 flavor from the Golden State of California. Super! The strongest signal was W6OAR whom I also worked on 30m last week. Today on 17m he was S7 with QSB dips to S5 and peaks to S9. I can’t find any information about his setup but the signal speaks for itself.

I think this small increase in SFI from 69 to 76 could make a big difference. At least I hope so. If not, there’s always 30m!

I got out of bed early today. Around 04.00 utc I sat in my shack but found no sign of FT5GA. Nowhere heard and the cluster didn’t reveal any activity. NOT ACTIVE? A crying shame. About 07.00 utc I see a spot on 15m so I listen but don’t hear a thing. I’m starting to get a bit annoyed by these fellows. Before you tell me it’s because I didn’t work them: I just did. Too bad it was an SSB QSO on 20m. I need them in CW.

While typing this, I am listening on 15m CW. The signal is quite good. The operator isn’t.

• He just works Japanese calls and signs ‘TU’. How can I tell it’s FT5GA? Maybe because the cluster tells me? WHY DOESN’T HE SEND HIS CALLSIGN every few QSO’s?
• He’s listening up. How can I tell he’s working split mode? Maybe because the cluster tells me? WHY DOESN’T HE SEND ‘UP’ THEN?
• He seems to be working Japan only right now. How can I tell he’s working Japan only by choice and that it is not a matter of propagation? Maybe because the cluster tells me? WHY DOESN’T HE SEND ‘QRZ JA’ then?

All this is just poor operating to me. To make things worse he gets louder and then sends “QRX 1 HOUR”. I’m not the guy to tell bad things about DXpeditions. About the EU zoo and QRM’ers in contests yes, but in general I respect DX operators. They go to remote locations at their own expenses trying to give us some nice DX. Remember the German crews who went to far away places recently? Much further away, much more difficult path from here, yet workable in a breeze on many bands with better signals. Propagation wasn’t better then than it is today. But since this is my personal soap box I tell you that I don’t like the FT5GA operating style.

I did work T2G (=PG5M) for a new one on 20m CW. Right over the pole and very loud. Sharp operating. Listened to ZL7/N7UO on 40m CW but didn’t work him because I QSY’ed to 30m where I worked TO7RJ. Hey wait a minute, he’s on Mayotte which is close to Glorioso. He was loud and easily worked. So why doesn’t FT5GA show up there?

The cluster (yes I read that thing but do not rely on exclusively) showed a KL7 on 40m SSB. He was loud (S7-S9) but he was working simplex and the EU’s kept calling and calling. Funny. If everyone keeps calling and calling, who’s going to hear and work the DX then? A ZL4 a bit higher up was logged on first call. He gave me only ‘45’ while he was ‘59’ here. He said there was a storm over ZL which created some noise. I also heard a VK7 and a K5. These DX signals gave me hope so I called CQ myself on 40m phone. Which I never do. But apart from some EU nothing was worked. Too bad. I’d like to work some 40m DX on SSB too for a change. Maybe this year SB40 and no SB20 in CQ WW SSB?

ADDED 17.30 utc: listening to FT5GA on 17 CW, fair signal. He’s working EU for some 10 minutes when he works one or two Americans. Then he realizes ‘NA NA ONLY NA’. Now it’s counting down until the band closes for EU… I really start to hate those guys! Start to? Actually… When I typed the first part of this item this morning, I wrote a very unkind part about the FT5GA team, which I decided to delete. It was about working JA only at that point. Too bad I deleted that because it applies now more than ever before with this ‘NA only’ farce.

I just don’t seem to get it right with this one. FT5GA jinxed me!

Friday night, on 30m: what a mess! I just couldn’t bother, so I CQ’ed away myself.

Last Sunday, on 15m CW: good signal, heard them working a Japanese station and right away they were asking for JA only. JA JA JA.

Yesterday 17m CW. Good signals. But only NA NA NA. Then for 20 minutes or more, they were specifically asking for French stations. CQ F CQ F CQ F. After that, back to NA NA NA. Sure they work EU too, but not when I’m around… Or at least I don’t come around.

Yesterday 15m SSB. From all the jumping between 15m SSB and 17m CW, the rig lost its split setting. As a result of that I called simplex. On 15m SSB, there must have been one or two ON stations listening with the VFO simplex. Belgians alright, I could tell by the expressions they used (“up jong”). They immediately drew my attention with some aggressive yelling. Oops. I must admit I was a annoyed by this, because I already got aggravated by the fact that my SSB voice keying once again didn’t work. Just like RTTY, I only use this a couple of times a year. Just like RTTY, I need to fiddle with the Windows XP settings to get it right the moment I need to use it. It has to do with Windows only being able to play the WAV files run from N1MM through the default sound card. That needs to be the MK2R’s on board sound card but Windows seems to reset it to the sound card on the main board once in a while. I don’t notice this since I only use that shack PC for ham purposes. I changed this back and checked / changed a bunch of other things but it didn’t work. Running out of options, I rebooted the PC and then it worked. All this with FT5GA pretty loud on 15m SSB. CW always works – period!

But the best example of bad karma is this spot on the cluster yesterday:

KC3ET        18072.1 OQ5M        Ur Qrmng FT5GA on 18073.9       1453

This can be filed under as a  “WTF? moment”! How can I QRM almost 2 kHz away? And should this be the case, why send out this utterly obnoxious spot? Why not just call me, work me, and tell me? If sent properly, I copy a real CW conversation up to 32 WPM. I was a bit toppled by this at first. I don’t want to QRM someone. But I assumed that the guy had a problem because no one else complained. I asked ON4BHQ who was online the MSN instant messaging, to check it and he confirmed a clean signal and no QRM from me on the DX QRG. So KC3ET: get some CW filters and be a man, tell it to my face in stead of through this cluster spot.

My radio weekend started Friday afternoon. I had several things planned for the weekend:

• Work FT5GA.
• Play in Scandinavian Activity Contest.
• Finally get the antenna for 160/80m back up (easy) and working (impossible?).
• Work some DX on the band where / when possible.

The WX was very good. I started with cranking 2 of the 3 tower sections up. Then I put up the 80m vertical, a wire hold up by a pulley on the tower. Remember that everything worked fine before I had to take it down for some serious construction work in the garden a few months ago.  From here, the MFJ-998 saga picks up again. Of course this ‘random setup’ worked fine on 80m: vertical wire and 2 elevated radials about lambda / 4. But from last year’s curse I remember that 160m is another thing. So I added some long radials, random length. There you go: “no go”. Every crime needs a suspect to get it solved so the current choke balun was the culprit. He had to go. Yes, I’m talking about THIS ONE again. You could call him the usual suspect. I replaced the 5 core stack and parallel copper wire by a two core stack with extremely expensive Teflon coax. Price is over 6 Euro per meter… Lesson learned: if big ferrite cores worth 10 Euro a piece fall on the ground, they break. Luckily the broken pieces were not broken HI. Nothing that Pattex super glue can’t fix. Honestly, this must be one of my ugliest realizations since I started homebrewing stuff. No patience to round it up and I’ve become very bored with this kind of construction projects. So I really couldn’t care. I need a permanent WORKING antenna. Period. Especially for this €|@{#@#{[{#@ project. No way back now since the box containing my previous choke a/k/a the suspect, was used to house the new one.

The thing got ready after dark so too late to put it up. I went to the shack and listened to FT5GA on 30m but it was horrible. A mess, a zoo, tuners, uppers – you name it. So I settled on 10104 and started CQ’ing. I heard FT5GA work some USA so my hope was to draw their attention. I worked a bunch of USA there and got called by a KL7. He was the loudest of the pack! Random thought: if a KL7 gets spotted on 30m, he enjoys a huge pile up from EU for an hour or two. If I get spotted by Americans on 30m, there is only one KL7 that calls me… Same holds true for VK/ZL and yours truly. Only if there is a sustainable opening to JA, I can work them for an hour on end on 30m. But no real pile up though. Side note: ZS4TX was spotted on 160m. I heard him on the 80m vertical… “Hearing” yes, but only S1 with some QSB. Still…

I got up early on Saturday to get the 80/160m situation under control. Episode 10. I’ve worked on this antenna while my fingers were freezing off, in the snow, in wond and rain so I was glad the WX was sunny and warm. I replaced the current choke, still no go. Added radials. No go. Removed radials. No go. Either the MFJ tunes for 160, or for 80 but not both. Oh yeah, neither band matched is possible too. Around noon I came up with a dramatic plan. I removed EVERY wire. Vertical part and all radials. Everything gone. Start from scratch. In my previous attempts earlier this year and last winter, I discovered a logical pattern. MFJ-998 matches ‘near resonant’ stuff but has troubles with total random verticals. Random lengths of vertical radiators as well as radials. Ugly impedances. So I took my spare 80m dipole and put it up as a vertical (dipole leg 1) with one elevated radial (dipole leg 2). The MFJ gets the job done between 3500 and 3800. Efficiency approaching zero probably but I only planned to work Scandinavia on 80m this weekend. By then it was noon and I didn’t want to waste a beautiful Indian summer afternoon so I quit. But not before fixing the 40m vertical. One of the two elevated radials got pulled out of the hedge by the dog. By accident. When he walks behind the hedge, his tail gets stuck between the radial where it rises from the feedpoint near ground to the top of the hedge. When he runs away, the wire gets pulled out of the trees. My bad: I did a poor job a few weeks ago because I was too lazy to get the big ladder out. Now that the big ladder was out to install the other radials, I fixed it firmly this time so it won’t happen again.

At 17.00 utc I started working some SAC. High on 20m there was some K7 activity. Of course: Salmon Run a/k/a WA QSO party. I jumped in and worked 12 stations from Washington state. Not in a row but off and on in between SAC contacts. I logged them as late as 2300 utc but I heard dupes until after my midnight. That was a surprise but I could feel that the tower was up only 2/3 in stead of all the way. Because SAC on 80m seemed a drag, I went to 30m again. Yes I love 10MHz a lot. I worked another bunch of Americans with very strong signals. One of them was Dan KB6NU whose blog I follow. I worked as far as W6 (real CA). A surprise because it was only 22.50 utc which I believe is noon in California. Soon after that I quit.

With only 5 hours of sleep, I found 80m abandoned for the Scandinavian Activity Contest on Sunday morning. I worked a bunch on 40m and later on 20m. I didn’t hear a single thing on 10m. I tried working Scandinavia on 15m. That wasn’t easy. All I heard was UA9 and Japan. Yes I heard JA’s on 15m. A handful. And they were S7 strong. Too bad I couldn’t work them in this one… Maybe next time? All in all I had some fun in the shack. Now I still need to work FT5GA once, or on several bands. No stress, I’m not a DXer, remember?

I like a clean desk with some structure. That helps me to relax and concentrate. I can’t work in the middle of a messy table. Too bad my shack’s operating table is cluttered with cables. In fact, it’s only two teenie weenie cables. One ultra thin USB cable for the mini mouse and one small PS/2 for the keyboard. So what’s the deal here? It’s not the cables, it’s the draconic RFI measures I had to take to keep the PC running in a QRO environment. With the antennas so close to the shack, there is a ton of RF flying around the PC. Once I turned the amplifier on and key the rig, the PC would freeze or even worse: “Windows is now shutting down…” while I didn’t even touch a thing apart from the keyer. Devastating for those scarce 15m runs.

To cut a long story short: those two cables are now wrapped in aluminum foil including the keyboard itself. Then they run through the copper shield of a big coax cable which is grounded at the end. Finally they’re totally covered with ferrite clamp on cores. That ain’t a pretty sight and it limits the flexibility to position mouse and keyboard. A couple of years ago I found the solution. A major discount supermarket carried a wireless keyboard/mouse combo for only 25 Euros. Deal! Once installed in the shack, it worked FB until I keyed the amplifier. The PC acted as if I was pressing all keys on the keyboard at once. Of course: 27 MHz technology… I should have known better.

I heard a lot of good things about the new 2.4 GHz wireless technology for mice and keyboards. I posted the question on the ON Hams reflector and I heard a lot of good things about the Logitech brand. I browsed some websites and for about 70-80 Euros I could buy a 2.4 GHz combo. Until I saw an add from (another) major discount supermarket. They offered a Logitech mouse/keyboard combo for less than 40 Euro. I jumped in yesterday but the box didn’t reveal anything whether it was 27 MHz or 2.4 GHz technology. I almost took the bait but then I decided to bail out and not to buy. Better check the Internet first to be sure.

It was hard to find this information. The manufacturer’s website didn’t mention it. At least I didn’t find some detailed specs. I needed to Google pretty deep to find out it’s using 27 MHz transmitters. So I barely escaped another 27 MHz trauma.

I’ve been complaining a lot about the huge amount of QSL cards I have to handle the last couple of years. Apart from consuming time and money, in the long run the big issue here is: where do I keep all those kilos of paper? Or do I just throw it away one day? I know Scott W4PA told he did so back when his blog was still online. I was shocked that he threw away all his cards but I understood. Maybe one day I will find myself in a situation where I just have to part with the cards.

World famous DXpeditioner Nigel G3TXF has built a “QSL shack”, a small barn dedicated to his QSL collection. That’s pure madness to me, sacrifice garden space and budget to build a QSL warehouse! You can see it here: http://www.g3txf.com/QSL-Office/QSL-Off.html

Something different: Glorioso is coming! Are you ready? And if you want to see a crazy mofo building a big contest station from scratch: SJ2W is the place to be. Good luck Mike SM2WMV, and CU on the air.

This week ten years ago, I took a train to Brussels and went to the BIPT’s ham radio exam. It seems like yesterday…

Not that I wanted to become a ham. Not that I knew the difference between CB and amateur radio. A guy from work, also in his early twenties, had a friend who happened to be a colleague of mine at my previous employer. They both enlisted for the exam and I wanted to show off my knowledge of radio electronics. Or at least I didn’t want them to look smarter than me. That was a leftover from my time at the previous employer. At that time, the colleague and I just graduated from different schools and started working for a German company making T&M equipment for the telecom industry. We both wanted to do our job right and learn tons of new things in the service department. Both fresh out of school and wet behind the ears, it seemed we engaged in some unspoken competition to be the best new service technician. I quit the company for a better offer and less traffic jams and soon after he left too.

Back to the exam. My employer back then, a commercial broadcasting company, counted several hams on the payroll. One of them provided me with a collection of question pools representing the tests of the previous years. The technical questions were not a problem at all. I only needed to study the legal side of things. Which was very boring matter. Especially since I didn’t really plan to actually become an amateur radio operator. On the day of the exam, the three of us met at the building where the test was taken and of course we passed with ease. A couple of days later I was holding my license as ON1DRS. I could do VHF (2m) and up, or wait: I believe I could do 50MHz (6m) too. I had no plans and no equipment.

A few weeks later, my co-worker ON4BAI and I engaged into a conversation. I wanted to buy a 2m FM handheld. I needed to do something with the license and what else is there to do? He told me I should look for an all mode rig, because DX is more fun than local FM talk. He warned me that local FM contacts would soon become boring, effectively killing the interest in the hobby. He pointed me to the website of an organization called ‘UBA’. Courtesy of The Wayback Machine, on the right is what the site looked like in the pioneering Internet days of late 1999 (at least in Belgium)… That UBA site showed a link to what was called ‘the virtual ham fair’. A page where you could put items on sale. ON4BAI’s advice was to look there for a second hand all mode VHF rig. I spent numerous hours at work ☺ browsing that site until there finally was a TR-9130. On a gray Saturday somewhere in October 1999, I made a trip to Antwerp to visit a big guy who sold the rig. Little did I know that day that a few years later, when I became heavily addicted to ham radio, I’d meet the big guy again and get to know him better as DX’er, contester and general nice guy Joe ON4JZ / OP4K. The Belgian amateur radio scene isn’t big.

I took the rig home but I needed some other important things like coax, plugs and… an antenna! Another co-worker (ON4BCB) provided some runs of coax and plugs and I made myself a l/4 antenna. Since there was no way to get the coax inside I spent a couple of evenings outside on the veranda and made contacts on 2m FM in the 15km range. I got to know some local hams inviting me to the local club ON7SA. Although it wasn’t until much later I’d had the courage to go there. The evenings became colder and wetter so I lost the interest and the rig ended up in the closet for a few months. It wasn’t before February 2000 that I picked up ham radio. I bought an 11 element yagi to finally work DX. I put it up on a telescopic pole one Sunday afternoon in March, still outside on the veranda. The weather was better again so the first sun of spring tempted me to try some VHF DX. Working my first real DX, a PA and a G, was a real thrill. I ran inside and proudly told my (X)YL and parents that I had crossed the border. That Sunday afternoon, I got infected with the DX virus that made me want to contact stations farther and farther away… The disease never cured. I convinced my dad to weld a support to put the yagi fixed on top of the house and to drill a hole through the ceiling of my bedroom to run the coax and rotator control cable through. I was working the FM repeaters and trying to contact DL, PA, and G. One night I stumbled into a great opening to the UK. Those guys were handing out very strange signal reports? Not the usual ‘59’, or ‘55’ or whatever. They were giving exchanges like ‘59 123’ or ‘59 056’. Who cares, DX is DX and I called them. They heard me alright but kept on asking for numbers after I gave ‘m my ‘52’ or ‘56’ report. They didn’t seem happy with me calling them this way. I had no clue what it was all about but I felt I was doing something wrong, based on their reactions. So I abandoned. The day after I reported this strange incident to ON4BAI at work and he explained me the principle of amateur radio contesting and the serial number. Yes, that was my first encounter with contesting…

The months following can be summarized as follows: got bored with VHF, got impressed by HF after ON4BAI (him again!) demonstrated 20m SSB, studied morse code, passed the CW test September 2000, got on HF as ON4CLN, became hooked and addicted to HF ham radio and contesting, changed call to ON5ZO in June 2001… The rest is history – and future! Ham radio is always on my mind. It has been since I tasted the joy of working DX and it has only gotten much worse over the years.

BTW, soon after taking the test together, the two other fellows vanished into the unknown. I don’t think they ever did something with the license. Their loss…