The KE0VH Hamshack for October

October 2018

Welcome to Fall! To start off with, I want to congratulate Matt KEØLNU for his BEAUTIFUL blue LED display Kenwood TS-2000, which he bought from a ham in Louisiana from the QTH.com classifieds section

REALLY GREAT LOOKING SCREEN! I may do this myself for mine!

There was a lot of work done on the KEØVH QTH the past couple of months, we had new windows, siding, and a roof installed. Then I had to paint the exterior with 2 coats, BEFORE the work on antenna’s and upgrading some of the hamshack ops were done. Looks beautiful and ready for winter!

So with that, one beautiful late day in September, Harold W6IWI came over and we put up the Alpha-Delta DX-LB Plus 160 thru 10m dipole for the KEØVH antenna farm. It fits my space at 100 feet long with loading coils along its length for 80 and 160 meters, in a fan dipole configuration for 40, 20, 15 and 10 meters. I ordered mine from HRO (https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-005123) and it arrived in a few days, then with busy weekends on the house had to wait a bit for getting set up.

W6IWI unreeling the antenna and separating the fan section elements

KEØVH Hoisting up!

Hoisted up to about 25 feet. Yes is needs to be more but for now this is its home. Is quieter than the vertical and tunes fairly well on all bands!

Plus its much quieter on receive than the vertical. And since the work on the house was done, it was time to remount the 6 meter/dual band j-pole antenna pole (after sitting on the ground for the past couple of months, see last month’s article). Once again Harold W6IWI came over on a Sunday afternoon with a mount that he had in his junk box and helped me get the antenna back up and properly mounted to the hardibacker siding we had installed.

Installed and it ain’t goin’ nowhere! That Hardibacker is tuff stuff!

You may remember from a previous hamshack article the “lazy susan” rig for tilting my 5 BTV vertical antenna. To see that go to: http://www.ke0vh.com/hamshack/archives/TheKE0VHHamshack201703Mar.pdf . I have been wanting to improve on that for some time so I thought and thought about it, and after looking at some commercial offerings (pretty pricey all the way around I came up with this:

A couple pieces of zinc coated angle iron (cut from 1 piece purchased at the Home Depot, some self-tapping screws and some planning resulted in a much sturdier, MUCH less expensive tilt mount for a vertical antenna!

The beauty here is that it will tilt both directions to make the coax mounting point easily accessible! COOL and STURDY! AND did I mention Inexpensive?

Harold W6IWI with the antenna tilted 1 direction, then….

Tilted the other way! Really more versatile than anything commercially I have seen! KEØVH designed homebrew!

Also in the month of September my wife and I hiked 11,000 foot Estes Cone, seen here from the trailhead at Lily Lake just west of Estes Park CO. 14’ner Longs Peak is to the left in this pic. Lots of fun but PAIN coming down. The last .7 mile is very steep up the rocky slope of the summit. Ham Radio fun here as with my TYT handheld I could hit the 449.450 repeater back in Denver and worked W9BNO, K0GPA, and KC8GPD. Great day with my wife and ham radio!

KEØVH ON THE SUMMIT!

My good friend Lee NØVRD submitted this recently. 3D printing a KU Feed horn! Will let you know how this works out. What a cool idea!

And, seen on an episode of “Star Trek Enterprise”!

An alien version of a Heil Classic Pro? J Really interesting they should use this!

And, I got this “fortune” at a local Chinese Restaurant during lunch with my wife! We HAD to LAUGH! Only ME!

AND, FINALLY, Ham Radio across the Colorado Connection repeaters back to Rich W9BNO in Denver from 11,000 feet Castle Peak north of Eagle Colorado! What a great Field Day site someday!

See past editions of the newsletter at:

2 YEARS AGO:

http://www.smpte-sbe48.org/wp/2016/08/

3 YEARS AGO:

http://www.smpte-sbe48.org/wp/2015/08/

4 YEARS AGO

http://www.smpte-sbe48.org/wp/2014/08/

5 Years AGO:

http://www.smpte-sbe48.org/wp/2013/08/

6 Years AGO:

http://www.smpte-sbe48.org/wp/2012/08/

Don’t forget the SBE Chapter 73’ Of the Air