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Showing posts from 2020

Antenna Configurations at Home and the Lake

 Dyer St House -  I’ve had moderate success this summer with the ‘stealthy attic’ loop antenna but almost all of my contacts have been limited to North America.  This fall I installed an OCF Windom as my permanent antenna.   The Windom is 132' long - 44' on one side; 88' on the other and easily tunes 80M-6 with my internal ATU.  I currently have it mounted 20ft high, with plans to raise it to 40ft with the Spiderbeam HD 12m fiberglass pole. Also on order is the OCF/Windom Vertical Radiator from Amateur Radio Supplies.  I expect these changes will get my signal out to Europe, Asia and South America. -  https://www.amateurradiosupplies.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=11202 -  https://www.amateurradiosupplies.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=11203 Lake House -  For temporary access to HF bands I have the end fed half wave antenna.  Permanently I will install the double bazooka from Maxcon.   I have good tree supports and will hope to to get the center installed at 40ft!

KI5JBP is now .... WX7V

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On 11/3 I got the great news over email that FCC has approved my application for WX7V! I’ll have to buy a new RWK hat, and will have to update my QRZ and LOTW pages. I used the excellent website I guess I won’t need all these backup applications now. Waiting for AE7Q to update so see if the others get flipped to Not Needed prediction or if I need to manually cancel the others. I highly recommend any who wants a vanity call sign to use the excellent tools located at  \ http://www.ae7q.com/query/

Amateur Extra - Two Updates

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 After much study this summer I successfully passed my Amateur Extra exam on 10/2.   I used Herb’s remote VE testing group which was administered by Michael, WT9V from the local Ham Radio club K5RWK.   The remote exam was completed Friday evening via zoom meeting, at the lake using my laptop and phone’s hotspot!

Antenna Modelling

Scott Anderson, NE1RD, Guide to Antenna Modelling https://www.n1fd.org/2018/03/06/antenna-modeling/ TechNight Slides https://www.n1fd.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2018-March-Tech-Night-Antenna-Modeling-1.pdf Usefull Links https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/antennas-linux https://www.qsl.net/5b4az/pkg/nec2/xnec2c/doc/xnec2c.html https://www.eznec.com/  (Windows) http://www.w7ay.net/site/Applications/cocoaNEC/index.html (MacOS)

Running WSJTX with Flex 6400M (FT8)

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 From command line: $ nCAT -station KIFJBP $ nDAX - station KI5JBP  To increase or decrease AGC-T: $ rigctl -m 2 -r localhost:4532 L RF .30 $ wsjtx Radio Config: