Tag: wire antenna
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Off to Oak Island!
Up early, final packing (and unpacking!) almost finished. This is just a quick post before I turn this off and pack it up. This Lenovo Chromebook running Linux Mint is the only device that I have no means of charging for the next couple of days, so battery conservation will be crucial (assuming that I…
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X6100 and EFHW at Wildcat Mountain
The weather today was a lot more pleasant than when I last activated K-1480, but I was using the same equipment. I planned to trim a few inches from the QRPguys EFHW to improve the SWR while I was setting up but it seemed to have the opposite effect … now I am wondering what…
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It was snowing lightly on Wildcat Mountain …
as I worked 24 hunters this morning at Wildcat Mountain State Park, K-1480. It drizzled all night, on & off, it was still drizzling as I loaded the car and drove to the park; as I was unwinding the antenna wire I saw the first few snowflakes. There was a brief period of snow pellets,…
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Making a common-mode choke
Over the winter I bought a couple of different EFHW antenna kits, not all of which are assembled yet. (More about these in the weeks & months to come!) I have been wishing for a common-mode choke to work with them because of all the stories that one reads about RF-on-the-coax-shield interfering with the operation…
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Coulee Experimental State Forest, K-5578
Woke up this morning thinking “activate a new park today”, but which one? In the end I decided to try Coulee Experimental State Forest, K-5578 again. (for my previous attempt, click here). It was an ideal day for a wire antenna and I quickly hung my 20 meter dipole from some sapling trees and turned…
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Slingshots
I have always liked a slingshot of one kind or another as an aid to getting a wire up in a tree. I still have the Wrist-Rocket that I bought from L. L. Bean back when they were an obscure sporting-goods store in Maine, and it has served me well all of those years, (allowing…
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QRPguys Multi-Z Tuner kit arrived last week
I have been wanting a really small tuner to use with the Penntek TR-35, and I have had my eye on the QRPguys Multi-Z tuner for some time. It was kind of a toss-up between this and the Emtech ZM-2; they both have good word-of-mouth. Haven’t even opened the bag yet. More to come, soon!…
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The trees know that spring is coming …
Yesterday I was in the neighborhood of Mill Bluff S. P. (K-1463) and the weather was unusually mild for this time of year, so it seemed like it might just be time for a quick hike through the woods! The Camel Bluff trail was slippery with half-melted snow and irregular semi-ice and I was glad…
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No more antenna in the tree
Back in June when I had just received the X6100, as soon as I had charged the internal battery I improvised a quick random wire antenna off the deck: a small round rock carried some mason’s line over a convenient limb of the northernmost pine tree, which served to hoist up a lightweight insulator and…