Category: Amateur Radio

PD7MAA’s BN43-202 matching transformer for an EFHW

End Fed Half Waves have certainly captured the minds of QRP aficionados, and there is a steady stream of ‘designs’ appearing on the ‘net.

A recent article by PD7MAA describes such a transformer using a BN43-202 balun core for up to 20W PEP from 7-29MHz.

Above is PD7MAA’s graphic for his transformer. It is a little confusing as an 11t wind will start and finish with ends as the blue wind, so the red winding must have and odd number of half turns which suggests the windings are actually 1t and 5.5t (pity he did not show a picture of the real transformer). Let’s proceed under that assumption. Continue reading PD7MAA’s BN43-202 matching transformer for an EFHW

Last update: 14th April, 2024, 1:36 PM

Exploiting your antenna analyser – contents

A convenient list of ‘Exploiting your antenna analyser’ and short subject sub-titles, a table of contents for the series as it grows.

Exploiting your antenna analyser #30 Quality of termination used for calibration

Exploiting your antenna analyser #29 Resolving the sign of reactance – a method – Smith chart detail

Exploiting your antenna analyser #28 Resolving the sign of reactance – a method

Exploiting your antenna analyser #27 An Insertion VSWR test gone wrong

Exploiting your antenna analyser #26 Find coax cable velocity factor using a very basic analyser

Exploiting your antenna analyser #25 Find coax cable velocity factor using an antenna analyser without using SOL calibration

Exploiting your antenna analyser #24 Find coax cable velocity factor using an antenna analyser with SOL calibration

Exploiting your antenna analyser #23 Seeing recent discussion by online experts insisting that power relays are not suitable to RF prompts an interesting and relevant application of a good antenna analyser Continue reading Exploiting your antenna analyser – contents

Last update: 28th May, 2019, 10:28 AM

Earth electrodes in parallel

I came across an article giving guidance to hams about antenna / station grounding, presumably for lightning protection.

The question is, what is the ground resistance improvement of one electrode over the two shown above. Let’s ignore the issue of earthing conductor size and deal only with the issue of parallel electrodes.

We don’t know the soil type, and we need to guess the spacing… it appears to be one house brick which is 9″ or 225mm in a lot of the world, perhaps that applies to the pic.

By way of an example, let’s make some assumptions that are likely to apply in lots of practical implementations. Continue reading Earth electrodes in parallel

Last update: 23rd January, 2017, 9:17 PM

G4YDM balun

G4YDM described his balun at Ham Radio – What Is a Balun and How to Make One Cheaply.

With a title like that it is sure to have wide appeal, but it isn’t anything too novel, it is simply an air solenoid of 50Ω coax cable as a common mode choke, commonly known as an Ugly Balun.

He gives some instructions for one of several constructions:

When wrapping your coax around the pipe don’t use too much force as it may damage the inner braid and space the turns away from each other by a millimetre or two. R-G-2-1-3 coax around 21 feet used with 5 inch pipe will handle 400 watts pf power.

Above is a pic of the third construction which appears to be 21′ of RG213 on a 5″ PVC former:

He gives some performance measurements adjacent to the pic above:

Using a dummy load connected to the choke and transmitting 100 watts from my transmitter indicated an S.W.R. readings of around 1.5 to 1 at 3.5 Megahertz when testing 28 Megahertz the S.W.R. reading came down to 1.1 to 1 which is an excellent match. …

The test described above seems to simply be a dummy load connected to one end of 21′ of RG213 and the transmitter with VSWR meter feeding the other end. To be meaningful we need to know the impedance of the dummy load, indeed to be meaningful it needs to be 50Ω, so lets assume that is the case. Continue reading G4YDM balun

Last update: 20th January, 2017, 5:13 PM

Another speaker mic modification to reduce RF interference

Remote speaker-microphones and DMR portables discussed RF ingress to Speaker Mics (RSM) used with DMR radios in digital mode.

The problem

I purchased a RSM branded Kenwood but obviously a Chinese fake for an MD-390 for about $5 posted, but it turned out to be lousy with RF interference in the form of the ‘motorboat noise’ on transmit audio.

Dismantling the RSM  I found there is precious little RF filtering, just a single SMD cap near the electret capsule.

A solution

Above is the modified RSM. Continue reading Another speaker mic modification to reduce RF interference

Last update: 17th January, 2017, 7:54 AM

Rigexpert Antscope v4.3.1 dowload link?

At Rigexpert Antscope v4.3.1 released I commented on a new release of Antscope.

Correspondents have asked where I obtained v4.3.1.

Well, it seems the Rigexpert website is broken again, the URL to list the Antscope downloads produces garbage. Nevertheless, you can get a directory listing at https://www.rigexpert.com/files/antscope/ and yes, you will note that v4.3.1 is not listed… so it seems to have been either pulled due to defects or it is just a consequence of the web site problems.

Little loss, I use v4.2.57 on Rigexpert’s advice as it has better scales for impedance plots… and v4.2.57 is still published (at the time or writing) https://www.rigexpert.com/files/antscope/antscope040257.zip .

 

 

Last update: 15th January, 2017, 9:16 AM

End fed matching – VK3IL design on LO1238

A correspondent asked about the use of a Jaycar LO1238 ferrite core in VK3IL’s EFHW matching unit for 40m and up. The LO1238 implementation would use 3t primary and 24t secondary on the core.

If the transformer is simply used without an ATU between it and the radio, and we assume that the antenna system is adjusted to present low VSWR50 to the radio, a simple approximation involves calculating the magnetising admittance of the 3t 50Ω winding, and calculating the portion of total input power that is dissipated in that admittance.

Using the calculator at Calculate ferrite cored inductor, the admittance (G+jB) of the 3t winding is 0.00177-j0.00204S. (The impedance of a sample wind could be measured with a suitable analyser and converted to admittance.) Continue reading End fed matching – VK3IL design on LO1238

Last update: 14th April, 2024, 1:36 PM

LP-100A impedance measurement

A correspondent wrote seeking clarification of the Telepost LP-100A claims re impedance measurement in the context of some of my previous articles on the sign of reactance.

I could see several mentions in the LP-100A manual and the LP_100Plot documentation and they do seem a little inconsistent.

The LP-100A manual states very clearly:

Note: The LP-100A cannot determine the sign of X automatically.

and;

If you QSY up from your current frequency, and the reactance goes up, then the reactance is inductive (sign is “+”), and conversely if it goes down, then the reactance is capacitive (sign is “-“). A suitable distance is QSY is about 100 kHz or more. The LP-Plot program has the ability to determine sign automatically, since it can control your transmitter’s frequency. When it plots a range of frequencies, it uses the slope of the reactance curve to determine sign, and plots the results accordingly.

The first part states clearly that the instrument cannot directly measure the sign of reactance, and presumably measures the magnitude of reactance |X|.

Lets explore the second part in light of the overarching statement of the first part.

Above is the calculated R and X looking into 7m of Belden RG58C/U with a load 25+j0Ω. Also shown is |X|(as would be measured by the LP-100A) and calculated magnitude of phase of R,X, |φ|. Continue reading LP-100A impedance measurement

Last update: 10th January, 2018, 9:04 AM

Rigexpert Antscope v4.3.1 released

It seems yet another new version of Rigexpert Antscope has been released, and it maintains the scale limits available for R,X plots to +/-2000Ω, it still does not allow the range permitted by v4.2.57 (+/-5000Ω).

No change details provided by Rigexpert.

Back to v4.2.57, though it is very likely it has undisclosed defects fixed in later releases.

Bottom line is that if you want an analyser with direct graphing of impedances over 2000Ω (eg measuring common mode choke impedance), think of a different analyser.

 

Last update: 31st December, 2016, 6:11 PM

Tytera MD-390 DMR portable evaluation

Recent advertising of the Boafeng DM-5 DMR portable prompted a review of available products at the low end of the market.

The Boafeng DM-5 was dismissed on a desk study that revealed that advertisements were misleading and deceptive in that the claimed Tier 2 support was not yet delivered and was not included in the advertised price. Previous experience with Boafeng also factored against that solution.

Tytera have produced several DMR portables, and the MD-380 has gained a good reputation. I borrowed one for a trial, and it performed quite well… well enough to proceed with purchase of an MD-390 which appears to have similar internals but revised packaging to obtain IP67 protection.

The MD-390 was purchased on eBay for $162 delivered. It came with a US power pack (earning bad feedback), programming cable, two antennas, an earpiece mic set, a disk of all sorts of drivers which aren’t needed, out of date CPS software and Chenglish manual. Continue reading Tytera MD-390 DMR portable evaluation

Last update: 31st December, 2016, 2:46 PM