Joined the 43ft Vertical Club

Well, I have officially joined the 43ft vertical club.  The ubiquitous 43ft these days seems to be turning into the vertical antenna equipment of the G5RV.

Having a couple of days off, I finally got a chance to do the full install of this antenna, just in time for winter.

First I had to run a new coax line of RG-213 out to the back corner of the yard from the shack.  I took the 'shallow trench' made with a spade approach which I have used in the past.  I also am starting to like RG-213 more than LMR-400.  The specs are nearly the same, but the RG-213 has a solid PE (looks like hard plastic) dielectric inside it, where the LMR-400 has foam.  I think the RG-213 will actually hold up better long term outdoors and buried.   I have concerns about LMR-400's foam getting full of water seeping in the coax over long term.  But, that being said I do have 2 runs of LMR400 already in the ground that have been there for about 4 years now with no problems.   But if I ever have to replace them, I think will go with RG-213 next time for those as well.

After the coax was run, I decided I needed to upgrade my single point ground panel.  I had used a pretty nice all aluminum NEMA box I got from a surplus site when we first moved into this house(see it in this previous blog post), it was kinda small inside being only 8x8 inches and it was going to be very full by the time I put a 3rd coax line and polyphaser through it.    I had originally purchased some of the nice watertight cable feedthrough couplers from DX Engineering to use with my box, so I went to their website to look at ordering some more for this new cable run, but then I came across a new offering.  They now offer their own nice weatherproof box, along with some of those coax feed through couplers, an aluminum panel for inside, and even a little copper bar to use in mounting copper strap like I have to the grounding panel.  Pretty much everything you need to setup a single point ground box.  AND, it was 13x14 so quite a bit bigger than the one I originally used.  I decided to spend just a little more money and get the whole kit.  Really, at $49.95 this is a very good price.  

Most of the time, just finding a NEMA box will run you that much by itself, and this has pretty much all you need.  I highly recommend it if your wanting to setup a single point ground panel yourself.

So I ended up replacing my entire single point ground box, and remounted and reconnected everything including a new HF PolyPhaser and coax for the new antenna.

Here is what it looks like now:

So now, that I have to coax run and connected, it was time to install the vertical antenna.  I did not purchase a pre-made antenna such as the S9, or ZeroFive, I decided to build my own.  

I had visited a number of companies at Dayton this past year who were selling telescoping vertical sections of fiberglass.  After checking some out, I decided that the ones I had seen that were being sold by the SpiderBeam people were the best.  They were much heavy duty than the ones that were being sold by people like S9.  In fact the ones that SpiderBeam sells can hold up a small beam or easily the center of the lightweight dipole.  The fishing poles used by S9 are very thin and flexible at the top and will not hold any weight at all.    But the Spiderbeam poles are still light enough (only 7 lbs)  for one person to put up and take down easily.   I purchased the 12m long pole, which is available here for $119 US: 

http://www.spiderbeam.us/product_info.php?info=p3_Spiderbeam%20HD%2012m%20fiberglass%20pole.html

They have other lengths available as well, including 18 and 26 meter long versions.  

The other part of this antenna consists of a unun at the base of the antenna to convert from the coax to the vertical, and radials.  I used a 4:1 unun made by Balun Designs that they recommend for the S9 verticals, http://www.balundesigns.com/servlet/the-76/unun-4-cln-1-wire-vertical/Detail.  

For the actual antenna conductor, I used electrical tape to affix a wire to the entire length of the fiberglass pole, taping it at the top, and then taping it at each fibreglass section.  I did not want it to be too tight since the pole will bend in the wind, and the wire needs a bit of play.  I used a single wire of "silky" 14 AWG wire from thewireman.com which is very flexible wire and perfect for this purpose.  

For the installation, I decided the most stealth location I have is to attach it to my kids 'tree house' which is right under my best tree, and the same tree I currently have the center point of my 80m OCF diple hung in.   I attached the fiberglass pole to one of the legs of the tree house and extended the poles up into the branches of the tree.

It is attached with bungee cords right now to the tree house legs but I am going to come up with a more permanent solution using pipe clamps or something soon.   I might make a little wood platform attached to the tree house leg to sit it on as well, and that would allow me to raise the bottom up off the ground 3-4 feet or so to get it a little higher in the air.

I also built a little loop of copper plumbers tape and some stainless bolts and nuts to serve as my radial base and put it around the leg of the tree house.  I then laid out 10 radials(more coming soon) of 40 ft or less in all directions from the tree house and connected everything to UNUN and it was done.

Hopefully, this will be stealth enough not to get any neighbors upset with me.  It does blend in pretty well with the tree after you get far enough away.  

Here is a picture from a distance and you can kind of see how it starts to disappear.  And in the spring when there are leaves on the tree, there is no way you would be able to see it much at all.

So far doing some tests sometimes the vertical is louder than my 80m OCF inverted V, and sometimes it is a little lower on the signal receive.  I am sure it is going to depend on the station I am trying to work, I imagine some will work better on the vertical and some on the horizontal dipole.  But at least now, I will have the two antennas to switch between and see which works better.  Before I only had a dipole and it either worked or not.  

Here is the first pass of the antenna analyzer on the new vertical.  You can see its really pretty decent for 40m-10m at 4:1 or less which is well withing the range of my LDG Tuner and the loss will not be very high, but its not that good on 80m where the SWR is up about 7:1 and the losses will start to add up..   I will probably use it mostly for 40 and up, and I might consider building a loading coil for use on 80m.  But for now I will just see how it works within its known limitations.

New Weather Station

This is something I have been planning for a while, and finally got around to doing.  I setup a weather station at home.

The weather station itself is made by "Fine Offset" http://www.foshk.com/, and sold and marketed by several different brands, including Ambient, Zepher, WeatherWise, Tycon Power, dr Tech and others.

The specific one I purchased is sold as the "Zepher PWS-1000TD-TZ".   The reason I purchased that kit is because it comes with TWO wireless remote display units, and I have one in the house, and one in the shack connected to the radio for sending weather data out via APRS.  It is functionally the same as the WS-1090 model weather stations marketed by the other brands.

It provides wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, barometric pressure, wind chill, in/out humidity, and in/out temperature.

It also has a built in USB Computer interface, which is something that many other stations charge $100+ additional for.

I had considered purchasing a Davis Vantage unit, but your talking $500-$800, by the tame you purchase a base system, their expensive proprietary computer interface, and software.

There is a huge jump in price from the $100-150 for the Fine Offset type of weather stations to the expensive Davis Vantage weather stations, and I decided since its my first time trying this I would keep it simple.  Not to mention that while people say the Davis Vantage systems are a little more reliable, there is no denying I could purchase a whole handful of the fine offset replacement type stations for the cost of a single Davis station.

I mounted the station around 25+ ft. hight on a 6 foot mast mounted to the peak of the roof.  This gives it a clear view to every direction except for a large tree to the NW which is my antenna tree, so I am not going to complain.  That tree is about 60 feet away, which I think it meets the minimum obstruction distance recommendations, so it should not be an issue.  The temp/humidity sensor is mounted on the north side of the building under the eves and should be protected from direct sunlight as required, and still have sufficient airflow for accurate measurements.  I read the information on the Citizen Weather Observer Program website to help figure out where to place the unit.

Here is a photo of the station mounting:

Inside the shack, one of the remote consoles collects the data from the wireless sensors.  I am using the free Cumulus software to capture the weather data from the station, and it then feeds the weather data to the UI-View APRS Software running on the shack computer which sends the data out over VHF APRS using the TNC built-in to the Kenwood TM-D700 radio in the shack which sends the weather data out every few minutes over the air.

Here is the various places you can view my weather station data:

• I send data to Weather Underground. They have nice historical data charts for all stations that supply them data.
• APRS Radio Station Data (WS4E-1) on MAP (The APRS weather station data is transmitted directly over VHF on the 144.390 standard APRS frequency)
• APRS Weather Data Graphs for WS4E-1 
• APRS Info for WS4E-1
• CWOP Station Information (Citizen Weather Observer Program) -   The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a group of ham radio operators and other private citizens around the country that have volunteered the use of their weather data for education, research and use by interested parties.  After a few weeks of data collection, this site will run a data quality check and compare the data from my station to nearby stations to help determine the data quality.  This will help me see if I need to change where I located any of sensors or if the mounting locations I have chosen are working.
• Find-U APRS Weather Charts for WS4E-1 - this is another site that shows APRS Ham Radio stations.

It turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be to get this stuff going.  But, I have only had the station a week so far, so I will have to watch it to see how well it works where I mounted it

Cheap and Easy To Build Antennas Presentation

March 2012 ARTS Ham Club Meeting Presentation - Cheap And Easy To Build Antennas

I did the program for this past months W4CN ARTS Club meeting on "Cheap and Easy to Build Antennas".   I wanted to share how fun and interesting building your own antennas can be compared to buying pre-built antennas.  Hopefully, it will encourage others to try to do some on their own.

Here is a copy of the presentation, I gave on the subject.



The importance (not so much) of SWR Sidebar


I also did a sidebar discussion about how high SWR does not necessarily mean that much loss of power radiated in your antenna, and just how important your feed line is when it comes to such situation

As I have learned more about designing and building my own antennas, one thing I have learned is that SWR is not the most important factor.  After all, your dummy load has perfect 1:1 SWR.

For example, most people think that at a 5:1 SWR, the antenna will always consume about 56% of any power given to it and it will always return the remaining 44% to the antenna tuner, and then  point to the 44% returned power and call it lost power.   But here is the important bit – the antenna tuner says “No problem, I will just send it back to the antenna again!”.  The antenna tuner adjusts the electrical length of the antenna and coax #2 so that the reflected energy has the exactly correct phase to be re-reflected at the antenna tuner.  The first time, the tuner forwards 100 watts and gets 44 watts back from the antenna. It then forwards the 44 watts and gets back 20, it forwards 20 and gets back 9, and so on.  This goes on until finally the full 100 watts is delivered to the antenna and nothing is returned.  The real losses in all these power reflections come from traversing the transmission line, back and forth, and the losses that are inherent in the transmission line.  Except for the losses in the coax, 100% of the energy that leaves the transmitter will be radiated out of the antenna, no matter how high the SWR, because of the re-reflections.

I had created a spreadsheet awhile back to do some of my own calculations and play with the numbers to see what types of transmission line, brands of coax etc have on your output power... and I showed that spreadsheet during the presentation.  It accounts for the losses of the forward and reflected power through the feed line, which is the greatest source of loss due to high SWR.  It does not account for the loss that might be inside an antenna tuner, but from my research those are actually quite negligible compared to the transmission line losses.

Eham.net had an article last year that discusses some of these things as well, and tries to dispel some of the myths about SWR as well: http://www.eham.net/articles/26720

The formulas I used in creating the spreadsheet are not that complicated, but there are multiple steps involved in calculating the actual losses, because you have to calculate the numbers for various forward, reflected, and re-reflected signals.  First I calculate the initial loss of power going up the transmission line, based on the published db losses for that type of cable.  Then, I calculate how much of that power is radiated, and how much is reflected.  Then I calculate the losses of the reflected power back down the transmission line which gives us the amount of power that arrives back at the tuner, and will be re-reflected back up the transmission line.  The losses of the re-reflected power from going back up the coax are then calculated, and we get how much of the re-reflected power arrives back at the antenna and gets added to the power from the initial radiated power.  You could run this calculation a few more times, since there are few more reflections and you could calculate all the way out until there was no more power being re-reflected, but after the first big one, your talking about some very small portions of the initial transmission power, sort of like fractions of fractions of fractions...but for the sake of doing a little simpler math, you can assume that eventually all the re-reflected power should even out to be very close to these calculations made from the first couple of power reflections that occur in the antenna system.

If you would like to run some numbers yourself, here is a copy of my spreadsheet.

OCF/Windom Antennas

I thought I would take time to share my HF antenna experiences since I am very happy with the antenna I have up now.  I built an 80m OCF/Off Center Fed antenna and have found it to be one of the best mufti-band antennas you can use.  Most people are familiar with G5RVs and I think many new hams are steered in that direction as the solution for the best antenna to use for beginners to get them on many bands.  But, after my experiences with the OCF antenna, I think if your requirement is to have a single wire antenna, and be able to work multi-bands then maybe this might be a better choice then the old G5RV.

I built mine using a 5:1 balun, the dipole fed off-center with approx 95ft on one side and 45ft on the other(give a take a few for trimming/tuning).  It's up in a tree with the center hung at about 50 feet, and the ends coming down into another tree on the long side at about 15 feet tall giving that side of the dipole a gentle sloping down, and the shorter side goes down at about 30 deg and tied to the top of a 6 foot wooden privacy fence.  It is fed with about 80 feet of LMR-400 Coax with about 60ft of that underground in the yard going out to the base of the tree in the corner of the back yard.

When I first started out, like many one of my first antennas was a 80m G5RV, it worked ok but it required a very good wide range antenna tuner such as the LDG I had at the time just to get it tuned to be usable.  Now I don't need an external tuner at all, and the simple internal tuner in my FT-450 can tune nearly every band to 1:1 with ease. In fact chances are that you could work this antenna without any tuner at all in some cases, the SWR match is quite reasonable on most of the bands.  I know that SWR is not the end all of antenna performance measurements, but it helps.

Here is a plot from my antenna analyzer:

You can see its 2.1-3.0 on 80m, 1.5-2.0 on 40m, ~4.0 on 30m(too high for my internal tuner), <1.5 on 20m, ~2.25 on 17m, <4.0 on 15m, <1.5 on 12m, and 2-3ish on 10m, its also 2-2.5 on 6m which is not shown on this chart.

Compared to my first antenna which was a G5RV, which had many bands with SWRs in the 5-10+ range, this antenna seems to be much less work to tune and a better all around multi-band performer.


I am not going to try and say that this antenna will save the world, but I do think it's worth thinking about if your goal is like mine to try and sneak in one good multi-band wire antenna in a restricted neighborhood back yard.

Picture of Ye Old Ham Shack

Well, since I spent the time cleaning up, I figured I would take a picture of the ole shack.  So here is what it looks like when its clean and I don't have a project all spread out in progress. It's nothing elaborate, just a couple of folding tables really. But I am finally comfortable with the layout of having one work space for radio work on one side and having a project building area and test bench on the other side. I find myself really enjoying being able to work on building a radio kit and be and able to swivel over and work the radio at the same time. Besides we all know that solder smoke makes you sound better on the radio while also makes you able to hear that rare DX better at the same time.