My Even Smaller Radio Project

[DBK]

Decided life is too short to scrimp
Just bought this

View attachment 453600

That looks posh. . My new radio arrived this morning and I'm currently charging up its internal battery and attempting to understand 10% of the manual. It is very complicated with lots of bells and whistles I will probably never use.

I hope to string it up to an antenna later this afternoon after a lockdown dog walk. The 40m band might be worth a try. I've got a portable dipole rig which can do 20, 30 and 40m.

 

[Jaws]

That looks posh. . My new radio arrived this morning and I'm currently charging up its internal battery and attempting to understand 10% of the manual. It is very complicated with lots of bells and whistles I will probably never use.

I hope to string it up to an antenna later this afternoon after a lockdown dog walk. The 40m band might be worth a try. I've got a portable dipole rig which can do 20, 30 and 40m.

40 is running ok at the moment.. Not sure I will hear much right now ( with the constant s7-8 on 40 ) but it would be great to try a sked

 

[DBK]

40 is running ok at the moment.. Not sure I will hear much right now ( with the constant s7-8 on 40 ) but it would be great to try a sked

I'm having a play at the moment but I'm still learning how to use the radio. I did here a bloke in Italy but he couldn't hear me.

 

[Jaws]

I'm having a play at the moment but I'm still learning how to use the radio. I did here a bloke in Italy but he couldn't hear me.

Are you loading the antenna through an ATU Dave ?
If not what is the swr ?
Small radios = small heat sinks on output trannys = quick smoke ejecting of said output transistors !

 

[Jaws]

I struggle on 20 John, S7 all the while but get to hear a quite a few on 80 in the daytime.

I have bit the bullet and sold off part of the house and my food ration for three years and bought the MJF 1026 phasing filter..
Had an SEM one years ago and in all honesty it was so fiddly, by the time it was set the contact was lost...
I will let you know how the MJF works out..

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[Jaws]

I'm having a play at the moment but I'm still learning how to use the radio. I did here a bloke in Italy but he couldn't hear me.

How you getting on Dave ? My filter arrived and a basic set up showed me it should be really good

 

[DBK]

How you getting on Dave ? My filter arrived and a basic set up showed me it should be really good

I set up the antenna differently today and it seemed to improve reception quite a bit but there are other ways to string it up I can try. I heard someone in Croatia very clearly but I couldn't hear anyone he was talking to, which included people in the US from what I understood of his end of the QSOs. Annoyingly I seem to struggle to hear people in the UK which is probably due to the low hill to the north of us. I'll set it up again tomorrow morning, I was on 20m this morning but didn't try 40m which I will tomorrow.

John

 

[Jaws]

I set up the antenna differently today and it seemed to improve reception quite a bit but there are other ways to string it up I can try. I heard someone in Croatia very clearly but I couldn't hear anyone he was talking to, which included people in the US from what I understood of his end of the QSOs. Annoyingly I seem to struggle to hear people in the UK which is probably due to the low hill to the north of us. I'll set it up again tomorrow morning, I was on 20m this morning but didn't try 40m which I will tomorrow.

John

You would be hard pushed to hear anyone in the UK on 20 Dave.. You are relying on skip for anything 10 megs and up.. Really need to be on 40 or 80 for inter uk.. Had a quick chat with some one on Lewis Isle in the Hebrides this afternoon while checking out the MFJ filter
Knocked my QRM down from s9 to s4 and made the qso a pleasure rather than a chore !
Stringing an end fed 1/2 λ at 40 to use as an auxiliary antenna just as an experiment tomorrow and see what happens with that

 

[DBK]

You would be hard pushed to hear anyone in the UK on 20 Dave.. You are relying on skip for anything 10 mega and up.. Really need to be on 40 or 80 for inter uk.. Had a quick chat with some one on Lewis Isle in the Hebrides this afternoon while checking out the MFJ filter
Knocked my QRM down from s9 to s4 and made the qso a pleasure rather than a chore !
Stringing an end fed 1/2 λ at 40 to use as an auxiliary antenna just as an experiment tomorrow and see what happens with that

I thought that might be the problem with 20m, the skip distance prevents me hearing stations too close.

I'll set it up for 40m tomorrow and see how I get on. I don't have an 80m antenna - or a garden long enough.

 

[daveandsan]

I'll set it up for 40m tomorrow and see how I get on. I don't have an 80m antenna - or a garden long enough.

John, DBK I don’t have a garden long enough for an 80m wire antenna but I use a Sigma LW-10 wire antenna which is supposed to be resonant from 40m to 6m.
For some reason unbeknown to me my radios internal ATU tunes it up on 80m and in the daytime I hear quite a few stations in the uk. It gets a bit noisy after sunset when all the foreign stations come on.

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[Jaws]

John, DBK I don’t have a garden long enough for an 80m wire antenna but I use a Sigma LW-10 wire antenna which is supposed to be resonant from 40m to 6m.
For some reason unbeknown to me my radios internal ATU tunes it up on 80m and in the daytime I hear quite a few stations in the uk. It gets a bit noisy after sunset when all the foreign stations come on.

I thought that might be the problem with 20m, the skip distance prevents me hearing stations too close.

I'll set it up for 40m tomorrow and see how I get on. I don't have an 80m antenna - or a garden long enough.

I made my own ATU about 35 years ago
It is the size of a wendy house !
2 x variable caps that are physically BIG,, around 6" long, 3" wide and 3" tall, and a full size roller coaster ( about 12" long and again 3" x 3" )..
I can load up any thing from a bit of wet string, a glass ( well plastic actually ) tube full of water, to a 200 ft bit of wire just chucked on the floor with no counterpoise !!
I have in the past chucked 400W through it with no flash over..

It is always nice to have the room to put up a log wire, but not essential
My home brew G5RV is MAINLY straight, but about 12ft from one end it dog legs 90 degrees and slopes down a bit.. just did not have the room
But I have been using it for 38 years and worked all over the place.. AND used it on top band through the ATU

 

[68c]

Sadly I never studied hard enough to understand even a part of transmission theory and the skip effect determining how far, or close you can transmit.
Back in the late 1980s I was a helicopter engineer working in the northern areas of Pakistan. Halfway between Gilgit and Chitral we had the misfortune to capsize our aircraft while attempting a landing in a snowstorm, no one hurt but the helicopter was badly damaged. The Pakistan Airforce rescued us the next day and took us to their base in Gilgit. I asked if I could send a brief report to our base in Islamabad. I wrote it out and was amazed when they started to tap it out in morse. I fully expected James Stewart to walk in at any moment! The operator explained he could talk voice to Australia at that point but as Islamabad wad only 250 miles away only morse would work due to the mountainous region and the position of the Ionosphere.