One of my worst fears became realized this morning when I discovered, at some point in the past few days, that the lower half of my 40m vertical dipole antenna had worked itself loose and fell straight down into my downstairs neighbor’s fenced yard. It stuck like a dart and bent to lay in the […]
Category Archives: Amateur Radio
Charlie Bravo To Go
I’m not sure why Citizen’s Band (CB) radios have gotten a bad rap in the US, but my hypothesis is that because it was a fad, a craze, in the 70’s and everybody went over the top with the novelty of it, we laugh about it as a relic of ancient history in this modern […]
Dumber Faster
Y’know how a quarter-wave stub of coax feedline has interesting properties? Like, if you attach one end to an antenna analyzer and left the other end open at 1/4λ down, then the open circuit looks like a short on the analyzer; zero Ohms resistance. And if you short the end, it looks like an open; […]
Visual Mismatch
Sonofabitch. As it turns out, the 60-ish feet of 50ohm RG-8 coax feedline I “rescued” from the disused tower at my last office is actually 75ohm T-1253A. I should’ve looked at the silkscreen more closely. I’m a blind fool. That might explain some of my inability to match my antennas on some bands. The SWR […]
4 Meters Up, 2 Meters Out
The store-bought 2m/70cm groundplane antenna I’ve had mounted on a broomstick inside my apartment now has a home outside where it can reach so many more places. After some brainstorming sessions in the hardware store, thinking of methods to mount 3 sections of military surplus fiberglass poles to my balcony railing, I figured out how […]