Meet Hamlet, the newest member of the WA2HOM team. Mostly he just sits around and chews the fat, but I’m trying to teach him CW.
ARROW Participates in First A2 Mini Maker Faire
James, W8ISS, headed up our effort at Saturday’s MiniMaker Faire. More later on how it went after I talk with him, but here are some pictures from the event taken by Mike Gould of Monodyne: Continue reading
The Big Horizontal Loop Goes UP! And down! And up again!
Spring contest season demanded a new antenna that would handle 160m with some efficiency and compliment my other antennas. I settled on the >1 wavelength horizontal loop for its multi-band potential, relative invisibility, and ease of matching. Anything over a wavelength on 160m (540′ length) would be sufficient, but longer is better, as it lowers radiation angles and improves performance.
Radiation Angle Counts for a Lot – an Argument for Having Both Vertical and Horizontal Antennas on HF
Since I reconnected the coax to it, my vertical dipole – a tribander driven element hung from a high tree branch – has still not seemed to work well. I would switch back and forth between it and my 20/40/80 horizontal fan dipole, and the horizontal was always at least an S-unit better. In the WPX SSB contest the vertical dipole was only better when the signal came from directly off the end of the horizontal dipole, and I began to think I had water in the coax.