According to K5WL, the antenna got blown down and sustained some damage, but nothing too severe from what I can see. A few of the aluminum tubes are bent a little bit, and one has about 2cm broken off. I think it should be easy enough to straighten the bent tubes and I could probably find a replacement for the shortened tube. If I have to, I’ll see if MFJ will sell me some replacement parts.
Very excited to get working on this and get it on the air.
Had a really great time at this year’s Charleston Hamfest. With a few more hamfests under my belt and a better idea of what I’m looking at, it was easier to be more targeted with my shopping/browsing.
I sat in on the ARRL forum, where an update on ARRL activities was provided by Jim Boehner/N2ZZ, the Roanoake Division vice-director. Not really a whole lot I hadn’t already heard or read about on the ARRL website but still nice to hear the latest news. His update was followed by a very interesting behind-the-scenes look at the ARRL Lab given by Bob Allison/WB1GCM.
In the afternoon, I helped out with the CARS amateur radio licensing test session. Very good turnout for the testing session. Had 13 people in the room to take the test for upgrading or new license. Several new hams with Tech licenses left, and a few other hams walked out with new privileges. Very pleased to have been able to be part of that.
There were a lot of things that were very tempting to buy. One person had a lot of Morse code keys (mostly bugs and paddles), including a straight key that I was very tempted to buy (the one with the red knob in the lower left corner).
Table of keys at the 2014 Charleston Hamfest
Instead of spending most of my hamfest budget on just one thing though, I decided to spend it on lots of little things, which turned out to be the better choice I think. I came back with a pretty good haul today.
Hamfest goodies
There’s a couple bags of diodes I picked up (I think I have a lifetime supply of 1N4148 diodes now…100 for $1 was a deal I couldn’t pass up), some BNC and SO-239 panel connectors, a 4:1 balun, a couple of center insulators for making dipoles and a couple bundles of test leads.
From the “Free Stuff” table, I grabbed a couple of antennas (or bundles of wires that used to be antennas), some random pieces of RG-8 coax and some C battery holders.
Bundles of wire
Random assortments of coax
C battery holders
I recall a while ago one of the local hams telling people to use these to make battery packs for HTs, because in an emergency situation AA and D cells are going to be the first thing stores run out of. I figure I can get some C batteries and put them to work as a power supply.
Someone had put an old Heathkit oscilloscope on the free stuff table, but by the time i went by for a second look, someone else had grabbed it. Note to self: If it’s on the Free Stuff table and you think you might want it, grab it.
I also added a couple more Forrest Mims Engineering Notebooks to the bookshelf.
Forest Mims books
I think I have everything I need to build at least a couple dipole antennas. Now to build them, and find a place to put them up…
All in all, a very good hamfest, even though it is small.
This year, I hope to be able to visit some other hamfests in the SC area (within an hour or two drive) and see what they’re like.
After a night of rain, sleet and ice build up, I was pleasantly surprised to see the antenna was still up in the tree. It was covered in ice which I think must have affected the performance of the antenna because the radio seemed to have a harder time tuning on some of the bands.
Icy feedline
Icy feedline
Still seemed to work ok, although I don’t think I was able to melt any of the ice while I was playing radio today. I probably need moar watts.
As an experiment, I left fldigi running listening for PSK signals on 10m (28.120 MHz) for most of the day to see what could be heard. Fldigi can scan the passband and send the callsigns it finds to pskreporter.info, where it gets displayed on a map. Between about 07:30 and 20:30 (EST) today, this is what fldigi spotted through the antenna and radio
10m PSK31 spots from FM02as
A total of 25 stations sending out PSK signals were spotted by fldigi. The European stations were picked up mostly during the day, with South American stations coming in later on in the afternoon and the smattering of stations out west late afternoon/early evening.
Not as much 10m PSK as I thought I’d see. I know there was more PSK activity throughout the day, but either the radio wasn’t hearing them or fldigi wasn’t spotting them. I think I’ll try this a few more days and see how things go.
Helping out with radio communication support during the Charleston Marathon was a lot of fun yesterday. The weather was on the chilly side with a breeze that didn’t help much. At least it was a sunny day which helped a bit.
I was assigned to the 23 mile mark which, for the marathon course, was also the 17.5ish mark too. It was a while before I saw the first marathon runner come by, about an hour and 40 minutes into the race. There were a few runners trickling by, and then a pretty steady flow of runners over the couple hours going one way, then coming back the other way towards the finish.
The runner in the Superman Underoos outfit gave me a chuckle as he ran by. There was another person wearing a Spiderman shirt, and a woman wearing a 1800s period dress complete with parasol. Probably the most impressive were the two firefighters walking the course dressed in full gear.
Fortunately there were no major incidents (not that I heard over the radio anyway). Had to call for some assistance when a runner broke down at my location but that’s about it. A few other runners broke down at other points in the course but nothing severe.
Just before 2:30PM, the net wrapped up operations and I secured my location. There were only a handful of stragglers walking the rest of the course by that point.
All in all, aside from the temperature, it was a lot of fun. I found out that my HT can reach the repeater on the Yorktown from 8 miles away and that even when broadcasting the time calling signal at max volume pretty much continuously for 4 hours, the battery held out for the entire time. Good things to know.
