Military HF Radio
I found a pretty neat playlist on Youtube while researching ALE on military HF radio. Military educational stuff tends to teach you enough theory to be dangerous, with the idea that you’ll learn the most by actually doing things. I haven’t watched all the videos yet (just the ALE one), but there’s a lot of interesting and useful information here.
Chasing waterfalls
In a previous post, I mentioned setting up the SuperAntenna indoors. However, I couldn’t get it tune much of anything. I ended up building a dipole with the legs roughly 8¼ feet long (e.g. for the 10m band), however I couldn’t get it set up fell length indoors, so it ended up with the legs at 90° angles to each other.
This antenna uses an antenna hardware kit I’ve had lying around forever, along with some silicone-coated copper wire I have a couple small 100′ spools of. I figured better to construct the antenna and see what happens. Well, here’s what happens:
This is the antenna tuned up on the 10m band. I need to spend some time thinking about what that SWR graph says about the antenna’s performance, but the point is that the antenna wasn’t bad. I still had a hard time picking anything up, but I tried this in the evening when the 10m band wasn’t so hot. I figured I’d see what else I could see. I’ve mostly stuck to the 40m, 20m, and 10m bands, but there’s a couple more bands in between the 10 and 20m bands (e.g. the 12, 15, and 17m bands).
Turns out I had the best luck on the 15m band.
I was able to receive a couple signals decently enough, including one that I think is a PSK31 signal.
Here’s a short video of the signal:
10m Contest: no dice
I went to a local park to try to take part in the 10m contest. I brought the FT-817 because I don’t have a battery yet for the G90 and I don’t have an antenna connector for the KX2. For an antenna, I set up the Superantenna on the picnic table; I probably should have strung up something else but I was already getting enough weird looks.
I could hear quite a few people on SSB, and I could see a lot of activity on FT-8 and even some on JS8Call. However, I noticed my radio wasn’t transmitting at all. I poked around at it to see if I could figure it out, but couldn’t get it sorted. I had a brief bit of panic that I had blown the finals: at one point, the ATU had stuck in tuning mode. Fortunately when I got home, I thought to reset the radio1 (hold down the F key while you power it on), and then it began transmitting. It wasn’t receiving V/U modes very well, though. I’m not sure if that’s normal (I almost never use it for V/U), or if something else is going on.
Some lessons learned:
- I really need to get some wire winders.
- It would be nice to simplify the setup as much as possible: right now, I’ve got the radio, Signalink, and Z-817, with cables to connect pretty much everything to everything else more or less.
- I’ve never had much luck transmitting on the MP1 Superantenna. It might just be bad luck, and to be fair, this time was due to the radio not transmitting. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever actually made a contact on it.
I’ve been coming to find I’m really only interested in FT8 as a “can anyone hear me” sort of deal. It doesn’t convey any useful information, and honestly just isn’t fun anymore.
- Yes, I tried turning it off and then back on again (more than once, even) while at the park. ↩︎
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A new radio appears
A friend of mine is selling me his Elecraft KX2; he sent it to me ahead of time to get familiar with it. Unfortunately, I don’t have a BNC antenna or a BNC→PL-259 adapter, so I haven’t been able to use it. It’s shiny, though!
Apartment radio
I set up the G90 and power supply on my bench, and stuck the SuperAntenna in the corner. It’s not a great set up (my feed line is way too long), but I could receive a little. I think my roof is metal lined though, because I struggle to get much of anything.
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