I built a X450 quadcopter (X450-02 quadcopter (21/05/2014 build) which proved to be difficult to tune, principally the Level control loop, though there were issues with Roll and Pitch. Continue reading A quadcopter tuning story – symmetry is important
In a QST column in 2008, a correspondent asked the question
… I have the ladder line terminated to double coaxes that run about 12′ (4m) inside the house to an antenna tuner. Should this pair of coaxes be grounded at one end or both ends?
The Doctor gave a detailed diagram (above) and his advice was… Continue reading Spoiling balun action with ‘shielded twin’
Some four months ago I sent VK3FI in Mildura a QRSS keyer to try on his 600m beacon. The keyer hardware and message content are described at Simple Morse beacon keyer for VK3FI on 600m.
Above is a capture with Spectran received at my location in Bowral tonight 760km east of VK3FI, QRSS3 on 473.000kHz (well perhaps 2Hz higher, Dial freq 472.2kHz USB for the above display). Continue reading VK3FI QRSS on 473kHz – 19/06/2014
Martin Ehrenfried (G8JNJ) conducted some interesting experiments on a small transmitting loop.
The loop above is 3.45m perimeter of LDF4-50A Heliax, and uses the full length of the Heliax as a stub for tuning the loop to 5MHz. Continue reading Thermograph of small transmitting loop
I have been concerned at slowly degrading performance on my web sites, coming to a head with migration to WordPress (this blog) about six months ago.
To improve performance, I have migrated all content to a new hosting service on Godaddy’s latest cPanel hosts.
It is a substantial amount of work, and I think everything is working properly. It is certainly much quicker and consistently quicker (at the moment) on the WordPress application.
Though I have taken care in specification of character sets, it appears that special symbols have been trashed in the migration. I have done some global search and replaces and think I have found and fixed all (or most) problems. Credit to the Search Regex add-in.
The Double Bazooka seems to have popped up on several fora recently, QRZ, eHam and VKLOGGER.
The Double Bazooka employs a pair of coax stubs as a device for compensation of feed point impedance, extending the VSWR bandwidth, principally to reducing loss in the feed line. Continue reading Double Bazooka magic
For some years I have used Ceramica muffin fans for low noise and long life. They use ceramic bearing which are quieter than ball bearings, but longer life than sintered bronze bearings which dry out.
That said, I was annoyed to find the fan I have replaced in a one year old computer power supply fail after another three years. The original was a bronze bushed fan which dried up. Continue reading Fan frustrations
This article explores the radiation efficiency of KP4MD’s (Milazzo 2012) small transmitting loop (STL) using a set of NEC-4 models of the loop at varying heights above ‘average’ ground. Continue reading Ground effects on KP4MD’s 0.9m loop on 28MHz
A ham posted online:
I spent several happy hours this weekend building the DE of the 6M Quad described in the June 2014 QST, p 30. When I got it completed, I put the antenna analyzer on it, expecting to find a nice resonance in the 50-51Mhz region and an impedance of 120 ohms or thereabouts. To my surprise, the radiation resistance in the couple of dozen ohm range, and resonance, if that is what I can call it, depends on how am I holding the loop.
After a bit of QST bashing in the thread, he later reveals:
The trial with the analyzer was about 2′ of RG-8X with PL-259s on each end, to BNC jacks on both antenna and analyzer with adaptors.
Much as the chap expressed his lack of confidence in modelling tools, NEC reveals what is happening. Continue reading Analysers – help or hindrance
I thought it interesting to compare EMR calc with NEC-4 on my lossless octagonal loop (top tuned), 1m across on 40m in free space radiating 1W. Continue reading Small transmitting loop EMR safety – EMR Calc predictions