W3GMS Monday Night Workbench Net

Harvey (KC3NZT) hosts the W3GMS Monday Night Workbench with a Winter Field Day wrap-up and a solid technical discussion focused on vertical HF antennas and “ground plane kits” for antennas like the Antron 99 and IMAX 2000. The group digs into what a ground plane is really doing (and what happens when the antenna “finds” one through your coax or tower), shares real-world results with and without radials, and connects it to practical RF-in-the-shack symptoms like USB glitches and RFI. There’s also troubleshooting from Winter Field Day—including a radio that kept rebooting (cold + battery/power sag), dipole layout considerations (flat vs inverted-V for multi-station setups), and how to track down suspected power-line noise.

What is W3GMS Monday Night Workbench Net?

Every Monday Evening at 8pm Eastern Time, the W3GMS/R Crew get together on the repeater at 146.985Mhz and discuss technical questions and sometimes do lessons related to Ham Radio for newer Operators to learn from experienced Elmers. The Workbench was set up to be a safe place for any technical questions to get asked and good answers to be given.

All right, jumping jacks it is. You got one minute. Oh, man. All right, well, thank you for your service. W3MFB on the side.

Anytime, anytime. We're going to let it warm up here. Maybe I'll catch another couple degrees. KC3NZT until 8 o'clock.

30 seconds, but don't come back, Mike. I did see you talking about shoveling, but you didn't show me what you had to shovel. I saw your video. Now we've got about 20 seconds left. AF3's up.

Close enough. Good evening, and welcome to the 146.985 Monday Night Workbench. My name is Harvey KC3NZT from Malvern, Pennsylvania, and I'll be your net control operator for this installment of the workbench.

The workbench is a directed technical net that operates every Monday night at 8 p.m. on the W3GMS repeater in Parksburg, Pennsylvania.

The goal of this net is to answer questions and discuss topics of a technical nature to further the aim of amateur radio.

Information regarding the repeater, its owner, repeater operating practices, and our regular get-togethers both on the air and off can be found at the website,

www.w3gmsrepeater.com. The repeater uses a minus 600 kHz offset and is accessed with a PL tone of 100 Hz.

There is a three-minute timeout timer on the repeater. Please let off your push-to-talk for a moment if your transmission will exceed three minutes.

Please wait about one second between hitting the push-to-talk and speaking. Otherwise, we will miss the first part of your transmission.

Occasionally, the repeater has Intermod present. Please run high power or be prepared to check in digitally. If Intermod is present, please call out and ask the host if you... Oh! Screen saver. Screen saver.

Please call out and ask the host if you are making it so we don't miss your transmission. Tonight, we will begin with digital check-ins followed by RF check-ins. When you check in, please indicate if you have a question for the net.

Once check-ins have completed, I will begin by asking stations to make a brief comment on what you did this last week in amateur radio in a round table style format.

Please note the station that follows you in the rotation so you know whom to address following your comments. After general comments, I will begin the directed question portion of the net. Newcomers are very welcome and we encourage all stations to check in even if they don't have a question. Let's begin. This is Harvey, KC3, NZT, asking for digital check-ins. Please call now.

Call now.

Whiskey 8, Charlie Romeo Whiskey, CR, no question.

KD3EE, Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo, John, with a small question.

KD3EE, Kilo Delta 3, Echo Echo, WA3, ZEE, no question.

W3 KZG, no questions.

W3 PZY.

W3 ILS, no questions.

W3 KFTG, no questions.

KC3OOK, no questions.

NA3CW, no questions.

F3Z, no questions.

KD3BPI, no questions.

NA3GLI, David on the Welsh mountain, no questions.

W3KZG and then W3G ends in G. I missed that one. My fingers got cold on that one. Can you please call out your before Keith and after Scott? Please give me your call sign one more time, please.

Got you on the input with Zulu Yankee. Again, please, one more time. Kilo Bravo 3, Kilo Bravo 3, Papa Zulu Yankee. I believe there was another call I missed then. You might have been a double. There was a W3NZNG. Are you out there right before Keith?

Nothing heard.

Okay, we'll go with that. So from the top, WA3VE, W3MFVE, W3KZG, KB3PZY, W3ILS, WA3KFT, KC3OOK, NA3CW, AF3Z, KD3BPI, KA3GLI. Are there any other check-ins or mistaken calls? Please call now.

Okay, nothing heard. We will call for check-ins at the end of our roundtable section to see if anybody is showing up late. We're going to start from the top with our two digital stations at CR and John. And then John, please turn it over to Ron and we'll start the RF.

The RF comments for the week in ham radio. So over to you, CR. Please tell us what you did this last week in amateur radio. This is KC3, NZT.

Very good. Good evening all. Harvey, thanks for taking the chair tonight. This week in ham radio was just mostly the normal things, 985 activities.

I did make a quick stop by the field day site on Saturday, check things out. And when I got back home, I tried to contact W3R. No success with that. But I did make some other contacts when I heard people calling CQ.

With that, let's go to John. KD3EE, WHCRW.

Thank you, WHCRW. This is KD3EE. It was a quick week. The only thing notable was stopping by the winter field day for like half the day.

I spent most of my time logging for CW Ops and listening along in my own headphones. I could get like two, three characters. I'm getting there. It's helping.

So, let's see. Back to the net and WA3VEE. Ron, this is KD3EE.

Good, John. Excellent. KD3EE and the net, WA3VEE. Well, first of all, John, I want to thank you for helping with the new hams, especially Kiana, who I hope is listening tonight.

So, if she is, I give a shout out to her. She's our newest ham on 985 and her call sign is KD3CJH, Charlie Juliet Hotel.

So, all very good. Great, great field day. I operated the most of any field day I've ever been in in 53 years.

The first hour, Scott, excellent logger I had next to me, pretty much stayed on 40 meters all day.

And we knocked out 69 contacts in a little bit less than an hour. So, just a lot of fun.

Two notable ones, really phenomenal. I just about fell out of my chair.

We worked N3FJP, actually three. We worked N3FJP, the actual author of the software we're using for logging.

And that was really great. He and I had a short side out of winter field day chat, and I worked him with my own call sign.

So, I'm here filling out a QSL card right now for him.

We worked W1AW up in Newington, which was another pretty cool contact.

I'd worked them here from the home QTH before. And we worked a station that I'd like to make everybody aware of, our YouTube channel.

And that is W2AEW. That is Allen up in New Jersey. And we had a nice short chat there, too, as well.

So, besides the field day fund, this kind of light added icing to the icing on the cake, all puns intended with all the ice outside.

And for anyone who's listening who was hesitant to come up to field day because it was cold, of course it was cold outside.

But in the shelters, we basically baked. It was hot in the shelters to the point to where when I was visiting Scott,

he literally had to open the door to 14-degree weather to cool things off.

So, looking forward to summer field day, looking forward to getting the new operators on board with us as operators for us.

And that should be an awful lot of fun, that's for sure.

So, let's see. Mike, it goes over to you, W3MFB and the group WA3VE.

W3MFB, just the usual little bit of 985 and a little bit of HF and listening.

But that's about it. I did not make it the field day.

Besides all the shoveling and digging out and just being around the house in case Mom needed me during the storm.

Last Wednesday, I got a nice laceration on my middle finger, of all places.

That was kind of preventing me from getting that wet and dealing with that.

So, that's about it for me. Over to Scott.

W3KZG, W3MFB.

Did field day up there. Had my trailer worked out. Everybody did a good job.

I think it turned out well.

I don't know why my dog was barking in the background.

But it was real fun. It was real fun.

The cold was a bummer, but we made do and had warm shelters, like Ron said.

And that's pretty much it for me.

I was doing some snow removal and working on a radio here in the shack today.

And no road rage for MFB Mike with his hurt middle finger there.

So, with that said, it goes to KB3PZY.

KZG.

And this is KB3PZY.

Thank you, Scott.

I just, well, basically it was my first field day.

So, I had a chance to go up to the site and learn the ropes, so to speak.

And got familiar with the software and so forth.

And Harvey was a great mentor.

So, I appreciate that, Harvey.

We had a little bit of QRM on the band.

But we were able to get, I guess it was around 30-some-odd contacts.

So, that was pretty neat.

And I had a good time getting a chance to meet some of the folks.

So, but this basic snow removal today, and that's pretty much it.

So, I'll send it back.

This is, let's see who's next.

I think it's KB3ILF.

No, wait.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, it's KB3ILF, I think it is, Keith.

This is KB3PZY.

KB3PZY.

Thank you, KB3ILF.

Howie will have to update his documentation because KB3W3.

So, it was a field day as well.

First of all, I want to thank the field day setup team.

They built dipoles.

They installed ropes in bad weather.

Those ropes will last for years up there, getting our dipoles way up in the air, which will work very well for us for summer field day, winter field day next year.

They installed multiple dipoles.

It was really nice.

It was Saturday morning with Scott.

I rolled in early, about 8 o'clock.

Scott was a bit earlier.

But the coax was laying out there.

The power was laying out there.

And the heaters were installed.

Not on.

They leave them on overnight.

But the heaters were installed in the shelters, the campers, and the trailers and things to get it warmed up.

So, very, very nice to see there.

And we were ready to go at 11 a.m. when it started, which is three hours earlier than summer field day.

Our stations were full on the air and going.

Scott touched on this a little bit.

Camaraderie.

He touched on it in the email there.

It was really nice to see the stations full of operators and logging partners working together to get the contacts.

We got to all participate in some way or another.

And some of the logging partners got to see how it works and learned quite a bit.

We had great services from a network team, laptops, and power from Dylan and Greg.

We worked 59 sections.

And it looks like we got about 450 contacts.

Just about 475.

If you got the update that I sent out, I apologize.

I credited the Sideman team with 21 contacts.

I dropped the zero.

It really should have been 210.

Sorry about that.

And then this Wednesday, we're having a Zoom call to do our Winterfield Day wrap-up and what worked and what didn't work.

So please join us if you want to.

Other than that, I did work at Street Seat Century Club.

I have three Zed.

I'll talk about it.

My two big wins this week were I got Puerto Rico on six meters during that big event with the sun.

I guess a solar flare, six meters picked up.

And somehow I got Puerto Rico with an attic antenna on six meters on CW.

And then Jim encouraged me not to give up on getting Alaska.

They weren't on very much.

They were very hard to find.

But late last week, I picked up Alaska on 15 meters.

Very quiet contact, but we got there.

So a good week between Winterfield Day and wrapping up the Street Case Century Club sweep.

I will turn it over to WA3, Kentucky Fried Turkey, KB3 ALS and the group.

This is WA3 King Fox Tango.

All righty.

Well, I was also at Winterfield Day with a different club.

I was running 75 meters, and I didn't hear anybody in the afternoon.

Well, at the beginning of the contest, we'll say that.

Lots of noise on 75 meters, but I didn't hear any stations.

But then late afternoon, early evening, we started getting contacts.

They came up out of the noise.

I don't know whether you fellows experienced that or not,

but I just didn't hear anybody at the beginning of the contest on 75 phone.

So let me know.

KC3 OOK.

Bill, your turn.

WA3 KFT.

KC3 OOK.

Thanks, John.

Harvey, thanks for taking the chair tonight.

It's good to hear everyone on here.

I really wasn't all that radioactive this week, the 95 activities.

I did do SimplexNet Saturday night, and that was really good.

And I guess I hosted the welfare net, the Red Rose Repeater, last night.

Other than that, just working on parts for the ham shack.

So with that, I turn it over to Mr. Chuck, NA3CW, KC3 OOK.

Thank you, Bill.

KC3 OOK, NA3CW.

Well, good evening, one and all, and especially welcome, Al, in our group here.

Let's see.

I was part of the stomping through the woods group, putting up ropes one day and then putting up the dipoles another.

Ron was there.

John Cantriai was there.

Steve?

Memory fails.

But there was a bunch of people up there.

So we were stomping up through the woods, and we got the antennas up.

And it was actually the first time I used the how to cut a dipole second time every time.

And it worked pretty well.

So I wrote a little piece on that.

I don't know if it's – I sent it around to some people.

But, hey, rocket science is just proportioning.

But it's basically the first time you put it up, you find out where it's resonant.

It doesn't matter where it's resonant.

Just find out where it's resonant.

And you have to know exactly how long the antenna is.

And then once you know where it's resonant and how long the antenna is,

then you can proportion it to where you want it to be resonant and how long it needs to be.

And that worked pretty well.

I was happy with that.

The other story in action news is I got Joe's tuner to the point where I got some RF through it,

put 100 watts through it on 75 meters.

It tunes the 80-meter band.

It does not tune the 40-meter band because it's the wrong impedance arrangement for –

my antenna is very different than Joe's.

But the thing does work.

it's getting close to completion to the point where we've got to talk about stuff like paint pretty soon.

And the usual 985 activities and hosting the PMAM pre-net.

So you guys did really good operating.

Congratulations.

And that sounds like a good time was had by all.

It was great.

I was tired.

But I had a very busy day Saturday and had a busy day Sunday preparing for today.

And also in fear of an ice storm, which didn't really develop.

But I dragged out my generator.

And, of course, it didn't work because I haven't used it in years.

So I had to take the carburetor apart, clean it out, and it starts first time now.

So there you go.

On to Jim.

AF3Z and A3CW.

All right.

Thank you, Chuck.

AF3Z.

Good evening to everybody.

Good to hear you all.

And, yeah, Straight Key Century Club's Straight Key Month ends on Saturday at the end of January, UTC time anyway.

And I do a lot of coordinating kinds of stuff and scheduling people and working with the computer.

The behind-the-scenes stuff.

And I'm about ready to get done with that for the year.

But the event is a cool event.

So, anyway, a lot of CW.

I've worked about, I think it's around 240 contacts with the special call sign we use here in the third call area.

So I have been on the air, too.

Winter field day, I was with the Cornwall Ranger Station Amateur Radio Club up on the Cornwall Mountain, as they call it, just south.

Excuse me, south of Lebanon and even less south of Cornwall.

And we were two.

I had two stations.

And I proved that I could be a total lid.

I don't know if you all know that term, lid.

You don't hear it as much anymore.

But that was sort of a derogatory term for a poor operator.

And at 11 o'clock, I started operating with a K3, Elecraft K3, which I've used occasionally.

But every time I used it, I have to almost get out the manual to figure out what I'm doing again.

And so I got set up on CW, and I was on 40 meters.

And, John, you were talking about 75.

You didn't hear anybody.

I heard very few on 40.

The noise was pretty loud, but I didn't hear many.

But I did hear W3R, wherever they were.

But I was having problems.

I'd call, and normally I don't have trouble getting through with people, but I wasn't doing well.

I'd call, and they wouldn't answer me.

And I finally thought I did have a contact with W3CRS, but the timing must have been just right to fool me into thinking that.

Because what I discovered later, the K3, you have to have Vox turned on for it to actually work on CW.

But even with the Vox off, it was still keying.

The side tone was ringing in my ears, and I could hear that.

It didn't have a power meter or anything there, but I'm not sure what it was reading, but the meter on the rig was bouncing around when I was sending.

And I got fed up with it.

It was like I didn't have an antenna or something, and I finally just quit for the morning.

And then later in the day, I got on 20 meters, and I wondered, I wonder if the Vox is on or not, because it didn't seem to tell me.

So anyway, I discovered when I turned the Vox on, it hadn't been transmitting all that time.

But it sure felt like it was, but it wasn't.

So I was a total lid up there and did some contacts in the afternoon, not too many.

And some other people took over that radio to do some sideband and stuff.

So that was my experience.

And let me see.

Simon, over to you.

KD-3 BPI AF-3Z.

KD-3 BPI.

Thank you, Jim.

And good evening to everyone on the net.

Glad to be here.

And I'm sorry I didn't make it out to the field day, but it sounds I'm glad no one froze.

Glad it was nice and warm.

I was a little suspicious that it was going to be cold, but I should have known better.

I should have known that it would have been quite comfortable.

Fortunately, I had to do painting.

And while it was a productive Saturday, it would have been fun to get out there and see what it's like at a field day.

I've never been to one before.

But painting.

Painting went well.

It went well.

And I'm still planning where the antenna is going to go at the new house.

But that'll come later.

That'll come later.

And I'm sorry to say I neglected to note who came after me.

So I'll send it back to net.

And if you wouldn't mind sending it on, sorry about that.

But this is KD-3 BPI.

No worries, Simon.

It goes over to David, KA3GLI.

All right.

Thanks, Simon and Harvey.

KA3GLI here.

Let's see.

I did more listening on the repeater than usual this week.

So, and I saw the email with the link to the photos from field day.

And I really enjoyed looking through all those.

And it looks like there was quite a crew there.

That's about all I have.

Back to you.

Harvey, KC3, NZT, KA3GLI.

Thank you, David.

And a real quick note.

Sorry, Keith.

I butchered your call sign.

I wrote it down correctly.

But I didn't say it correctly.

So apologies for that.

I'm going to do a call for additional check-ins before we go over to the question portion.

Because I have two questions down.

And sometimes people remember a question that they want to ask that they didn't remember to say I have a question.

So right now I have KD-3 EE with a question.

And I have W3MFB with a question.

So I will call out for additional questions if there are any.

But first, additional check-ins, digital or RF, please call now.

This is KC3 NZT.

Alpha, Alpha 3, Lima Hotel.

No question.

I knew you were in there, Leon.

I had a feeling.

No question from Leon.

So are there any stations that have a question other than John and Mike?

Please let me know now.

This is KC3 NZT.

This is KD-3BPI.

I just thought of a question.

As you correctly surmised.

I'll send it back to you.

Thank you, Simon.

So we have three questions.

That's excellent.

Well, before we get started, Leon, we only got one tail gunner.

We got to hear what you did this last week in amateur radio.

Why don't you go ahead and give us your comments and then turn it back to me.

This is KC3 NZT.

All right.

This is AA308.

Come on, Harvey.

It's cold out there.

Open the bus door.

Turn the heater on.

I did a quick look underneath the bus.

Now I cannot lose tailpipe because it's getting his rattle.

So let me in the bus.

All right.

What did I do this past weekend?

Well, we played around field day.

I played at it here at home.

I made a bunch of contacts of 40 meters and 80 meters.

And, no, I did not hear John in there.

I don't think I did.

But played around field day and talked out to Costa Rica, believe it or not, this past week.

I was surprised about that.

But we did that.

And this morning we iced up antennas.

I took care of that.

But that's what we did.

So, okay.

So, Harvey.

I hopped aboard my old snowboard.

I ride to your place.

Man, pour me another cup of coffee because I'm a snowboarding man.

AA308.

We need a designated tail gunner award for you.

For sure.

Wonderful.

Glad you had fun.

All right.

Over to the questions.

We got three here.

We're going to start with them in order.

I'm turning it over to you, John.

KD3EE.

This is KC3NZT.

Please give us your question.

Thanks, Harvey.

This is KD3EE.

John, Lancetville.

All right.

So, it turned into, like, maybe two baby questions or two parts.

First, what was the problem with the 80-meter antenna at field day and the radio that kept rebooting?

Did that ever get resolved?

Like, what did you guys find out?

And second, how significant is the dipole arrangement up at the field day site?

Specifically, the flat dipoles versus inverted V dipoles when operating multiple stations.

Back to net.

KD3EE.

Question, John.

Do we have any comments for John on the net?

Please call now.

This is KC3NZT.

KZG.

I'll do the radio rebooting issue.

At first, we thought it was an RF problem getting into the radio.

But after further analysis and switching the radio over to an AC to DC power supply instead of running it on the battery in the trailer,

we found out that it was a power supply problem from the battery.

I think the lithium-iron phosphate battery in my trailer was being affected by the cold temperatures.

And it was running the other radio just fine by itself.

But when both of them would key up, it would put a 70-amp load on the battery.

And the voltage and amperage would just fall off.

And the CPU-controlled radio, the DX10, would reboot because it can't handle an amperage drop and voltage drop without rebooting.

Whereas the older analog FT950, it probably just rolls back its RF output power slightly and it doesn't really care.

It just keeps on chooching away.

So that was the problem with the radio rebooting.

The dipoles, we found out that the CW dipole had a very strange high SWR in one narrow frequency band.

We don't know why.

We're going to investigate that some more.

Maybe Ron can enlighten a little bit more on that.

I don't know.

But that's my input for the radio rebooting.

We found out it was a power supply issue.

I'm going to equate it to cold temperatures and high amperage draw.

I ran that same battery in summer field day and never had a problem.

But it was 89 degrees.

The cold, anything under 30 degrees, those lithium-ion phosphate batteries, their output power,

their capacity of putting out high amperage and high voltage kind of falls off.

So they struggle.

So that's what I deduced from that.

And once we put it on another power supply, it was fine for the rest of the night.

Back to you, Harvey.

W3KZG.

Scott, very thorough on the power supply.

How about the antennas?

Any comments?

Please call now.

WA3VE.

Go ahead, Ron.

Good, Harvey.

Thanks so much.

KC3NZT WA3VE with the group here.

Yeah, all very interesting.

Well, when the weather gets better, we had quite a discussion last night here on 985.

Scott, myself, Joe, and Keith.

For those of you who don't know, by the way, KB3ILS is his call sign.

He's our field day chairman.

So he is the one who herded all of us cats together to pull this off.

So I think everybody on here knows him, but I see a lot of people who don't get his call right and so on and so forth.

But KB3ILS, great CW op.

He's the one who kind of herded all of us together.

George, of course, WA3LVR is our summer field chair.

So he was not present.

He's up in northern Pennsylvania snowmobiling with his wife, Deb.

Wonderful lady, by the way.

So you'll see plenty of him.

And coming up in the springtime, we plan the summer field day.

Anyway, antennas.

Stand by one second.

Great.

What I'm going to do, and I invite the new hams and anyone interested to join me when I do,

this, it probably will be on a weekend when the weather gets a lot better and a lot more friendly up there and the snow melts because I need to get into the antennas and so on.

And I need to dig coax out of the woods and berms and everything else.

I'm going to run a complete antenna analysis on all of the antennas up there.

And I'll be delighted to explain what I'm doing.

I have an AA3000 antenna analyzer, which we used up there to begin with.

And it performs wonderfully well.

That will give you the complete sweep of the band of interest on the particular antenna.

And it will tell you where the resonant points are.

It will also tell you all the characteristics, the inductance, capacitance, and so on and so forth, the real components and all that kind of good stuff.

And, of course, hopefully in my traditional way I'll explain what all that stuff means in plain English because if it's any more complicated, I don't understand it.

So, anyway, I will run an analysis on that.

Somewhat tangentially related, we've got an interference problem up there somewhere, and we believe it is an insulator on the transformer that feeds John Line's residents over there.

So that's another thing.

I will have my laptop spectrum analyzer, which is called a signal hound.

It's kind of a funky name, but it's a very serious piece of equipment.

It can even be NIST certified.

But I will be running spectrum analyses up there to find out, okay, where is this noise coming from if possible?

So that's a whole different thing.

So these are the very things I love to do.

It's bench work, except it's remote bench work.

And I just did some of that at my remote at my alma mater this past week.

It was a tremendous amount of fun.

But I invite anybody to come along and actually see what's going on.

So we will ring this out.

That's the bottom line in all that.

A long comment to a very good short question.

Great question, John.

Absolutely.

Let me turn it back to Harvey.

KC3NZTWA3VEE.

Thank you, Ron.

There was a double with the beginning of Ron's transmission, so there might be another comment out there.

Other comments for John.

Please call now.

V3ILS.

Yes.

More comments.

I heard the topic about the verticals.

So, yeah, I think where we ended up probably, and Scott and Crunk made it up wrong.

We were outside with his MFJ analyzer.

We had DuneStar, man fast filters.

We were trying radios, all kinds of stuff.

So I think what we probably ended up is the 80-meter dipole, which is new and cut for sideband.

It worked pretty well.

Scott and then I'm sure Harvey was on that band as well.

A lot of contacts came in that band.

In the evening, that worked out well.

I ran down to the CW in the 40, which is fine, because by the time the evening came around, only two of us CW ops were in the area.

But he and I were looking at the CW 40-meter in the corner, as we call it.

And that one probably needs some work, but we're also seeing a lot of activity on it.

So Ron will test these.

He'll test these in a quiet environment where no one else is around, which is important, because all you're testing is that one dipole.

But when you've got four stations going in close proximity, things happen.

Scott and I were having his MFJ hooked up, and we could see.

We couldn't hear Harvey's voice, but we could see it going up and down on his MFJ analyzer.

So more than likely, the back of the beam, the 20-meter beam, was aimed right at the 40-meter corner dipole.

I'm probably only 30 or 40 feet away.

I'm going to drop before I go down to the other dipoles.

So for the 40-meter dipoles, the uphill one was in great shape.

I was quiet.

Joe and Luke and myself with a lot of contacts on 40-meter CW.

It was sweet.

It worked out really, really well.

We had seen high noise on the 40-meter side band, a little closer down.

It could be close to that noise.

But, yeah, I asked Joe last night.

The legs of it are kind of dragging down a little bit.

The feed point is much higher, or the center point is much higher.

And when you go vertical, you do get a little bit more noise, Joe.

So that could be part of it.

It could also be proximity to the noise generator we think is over there somewhere.

And I also asked Joe today.

That's not a dipole we replaced this year.

The up-the-hill one we did replace.

And it has some balance and chokes up near the top that might have helped.

So we have some more experimenting to do.

It's always a learning process.

But overall, we made a lot of contacts.

Even on the dipole 40-meter sideband, the team of Ron and some other people made a lot of contacts.

So back to you, Harvey.

Keith, any other comments for John?

Please call now.

Chuck.

Yeah, this is NA3CW.

A couple things.

That power line interference was something that we've had ongoing for summer field days as well.

It's been going on for a long time.

And, yeah, it's just that antenna was closer to it.

What I would suggest, just to confirm it, I have a little Moxon rectangle I made with a couple of yardsticks and some wire.

And it's tuned for 137 megahertz, which is the highest AM frequency that my HT will listen to.

And it needs to be AM to do this because that's an aviation frequency.

And airplanes use AM primarily.

And when you look for a noisy power line something, they put out noise across the spectrum, including VHF.

And you can get a much better directivity as to finding out where the problem is.

I recently had a bad lightning arrestor at the end of my block and was tearing things up.

And I went tracking it down with my little Moxon.

And I was one pole off.

But I finally got Pico.

I told them, you know, here's the pole number.

Here's where it is.

I sent them a picture of the pole number.

Everything.

Just, you know, come and fix this thing.

And so I was one pole off.

But they found it with their equipment and took care of the problem.

And that was that.

So I'm pretty sure that needs to be done.

It's a helpful thing to do.

As far as inverted Vs versus flat, the idea, the intention was flat dipoles end-to-end have very little radiation off the ends,

which means they're not going to couple very well, which is a desirable thing when you're trying to put two antennas in the same band.

An inverted V has a significant vertical component.

And, like, if you had two inverted Vs, they would talk to each other like mad.

But if they're flat and end-to-end, all they can see is the end of one and the end of another.

Very little cross-section.

Lastly, these antenna analyzers are extremely low-level signal devices.

And they can be faked out by external RF sources like other transmitters, obviously,

but also things like power line noise, broadcast stations, QR Nancy, you know, atmospherics, and that sort of thing,

because they're, you know, a very low-level signal.

Therefore, they're listening to a very low-level signal, and you can swap them with a big signal.

An extreme case was one of our dipole curtain arrays on Guam, which is basically you take a football field,

cover it with a mesh of wire, stand it up on edge, and hang it like a blanket between two towers.

It's 240 feet high.

That's going to pick up everything.

And so if you look at it with a regular impedance analyzer, the needles are just banging back and forth.

So the only way I could actually read out that antenna was to use my TS-140S, which is modified to transmit everywhere,

and use that as like a 100-watt signal generator and look at the SWR of the antenna at power.

In that way, my signal was much bigger than anything that was interfering with it.

So all by way of saying every piece of test gear has its benefits and its limitations,

and for antenna analyzers, they are very low-signal devices,

and so you've got to be a bit aware of the surrounding RF environment, what's happening.

End of whatever.

Back to NET, NA3CW.

Thank you, Chuck.

Are there any other comments for John?

Please call now.

Question for Chuck.

So Chuck, when you build us this dipole curtain array,

which way are you going to point it for Summerfield Day?

Just curious.

NA3CW, KV3ALS.

Put it on a big, you know, put it on a giant pole, and you can rotate it whichever way you like.

Somebody actually did that in Germany.

They put a full-size shortwave 4x4 dipole curtain array with reflector on a big rotatable pole that's enormous.

So, yeah, it could be done. It's been done.

...2 from NA3CW. Any other comments for John, please call now.

Hey, nothing heard. Back over to you, John. What do you think? KC3NZT.

I have lots and lots of notes. Thank you.

And the inverted V, I did realize as we were talking that I forgot to find out what happened with those antennas and that radio.

So thanks for the report.

The inverted V versus flat is sort of what I intuited.

I think I mentioned this to Keith as well on the day of to get his opinion.

But it seemed like I wouldn't have thought of it. I would have put them up inverted, you know, just for less wire, less strings or something, but then not realize that it would have...

...they would interfere then. So thank you. Thanks for all the explanations.

Back to that. This is KD3EE.

Well, very good, John. It was a good question. Let's see. Next we have Mike, W3MFB, with a question. Go ahead, Mike. This is KC3NZT.

Okay. W3MFB. This is kind of a question for Scott from our three-way QSO with Keith before.

But anybody else could answer as well. Ground plane kits for the Antron 99 that Scott has. I have an IMAX 2000, which does not have a ground plane kit.

I know by doing a little digging, one of the reasons to have one on an HF antenna like that, we're not talking about dual-band VHF, UHF here, is to thwart common mode current.

So you don't want that on your coax. You want it on the antenna. But I was wondering, Scott, because you said that yours is 60 feet up. And why did you get the ground plane kit?

and particularly for that antenna.

So an Antron 99 10-meter antenna or IMAX 2000, one or the other.

I know if you have ground-mounted antennas, like some people do,

that they do put radials down on the ground, which totally makes sense,

because it's ground-mounted.

But on a mast or a tower, that's what I'm curious about.

But only because I know a lot of people that don't use them,

and they work just well locally and for DX.

So that's the question.

Ground plane kit, good or bad?

KC3NZT in the group, W3MFB.

Question, Mike.

Open it up to the group.

Who has comments for Mike?

This is KC3NZT.

We started with a real simple comment, Harvey.

This is WA3VEE.

Go ahead, Ron.

Very good.

Ground plane is the other half of your antenna, period.

Back to you, Harvey.

KC3NZT.

Said it was a short one.

WA3VEE.

Very good, Ron.

I'm going to call for more responses here, but I will add to what Ron said.

That antenna is going to find its ground plane one way or the other.

It's just whether or not you give it a good one or if it finds its own.

But either way, it's going to get it, whether it's from the coax or from the tower or from whatever you have it hooked to.

But it's going to find one.

It's just a matter of how good is it.

Let's open it up more to the group.

Ground plane.

Anybody with comments, please call now.

This is KC3NZT.

Fox Tango.

Go ahead.

KFT.

This is WA3KFT.

I have one of those A99s, and I do not have the ground plane kit.

But it is mounted on top of a tower.

But right below the feed point, I have a 10-foot TV mast.

That would probably act somewhat like a ground plane.

That particular tower has five vertical antennas, and the A99 is in the middle.

So the other antennas and so forth, DC connection and so on and so forth,

probably take the place of the ground plane antenna.

Ground plane half of the antenna.

But 35 feet in the air.

I don't have any problems with it.

And the other day, I was talking to Arkansas on 10 meters.

So it works.

This is WA3KFT.

Well, there's some real-world information for you there, Mike.

Any other comments, please call now.

This is KC3NZT.

KC3KZG.

Go ahead, Scott.

So, Mike, I had an IMAX 2000 for probably seven years in the air.

It was about 50 feet off the ground.

And it did not have a ground plane kit.

But the mast that it was on was galvanized steel pipe, and it was grounded at the base.

So that was its ground plane or whatever it wants to reverberate off of.

And it did just fine.

It worked great.

I talked a lot of distance, DX with it, and a lot of local and everything else.

That antenna degraded so much that when I took it down, I didn't want to put it back up because the fiberglass, the coating had wore off of it.

And it was just fiberglass shards sticking out, and you didn't want to touch it with your hand at all, believe me.

Found out the hard way.

So I had the Antron 99.

The main reason it has a ground plane kit was because when I bought it from the gentleman that bought it brand new and never took it out of the box,

it happened to come with a ground plane kit.

So I decided to put it on there because it was there.

That's why it has it.

Does it help?

I don't know.

I'm sure it does.

But, like, today on 10 meters, I got British Columbia with it.

And then on 12, or no, I'm sorry, I got British Columbia on 12 meters, and then I got Loveland, Colorado on 10 meters.

So it functions just fine.

On those antennas, I'm not sure if it's that important.

I put it on there because I had it, came with it, and I think it looks cool.

I'm sure it helps some.

Back to you, Keith, or not Keith.

Harvey, back to you, W3KZG.

K3OH.

Very good, Scott.

Thanks for the comments.

Over to you, Leon.

This is KC3NZT.

We have an Amtron 99 up right now.

But I want to say this.

In Colorado, we use hamsticks to talk back here.

And we put out.

I went to Ralph Radio Shack and bought a roll of speaker wire a number of years ago.

And some of it's cut into, like, 20-foot length.

Some of it's 10-foot length.

Some of it's, I think, some of it's 35-feet length.

And at the end, where my hamstick, these hamsticks to talk home.

Talk home with, at the base of where that is, I take a vice grip and I fasten it on the metal portion.

So it goes back into the, so that the counterpoint goes back into the radio where it's supposed to.

And we run that on a balanced frequency.

I don't run a tuner in it.

I run it straight through.

Because a hamstick, you can tune down to the frequency you want.

And it will work.

On that.

Talk back here.

I just put the plain old hamstick.

But it needs counterpoids.

And, I mean, that worked wonderful when I talk 15 or 100 or more miles away on a hamstick.

Back to here.

With nice, you know, 5x5 signals that I'm getting some 5x9s back.

I mean, it works wonderful.

But you've got to have a counterpoint.

That's what I would say at A308.

Thank you, Leon.

Any other comments for Mike?

Please call now.

KD3EE.

John.

I don't think about the radials too much or the ground plane kits until the vertical is messing with my radio.

So, like the RF coming back into the radio and getting to the computer and messing with the mouse or causing USB disconnects and all that sort of thing.

That's when I'm reminded that I need to put more radials out on that vertical antenna.

Back to that.

KD3EE.

Good comments.

Any others for Mike?

Please call now.

This is KC3NZT.

Everything heard. Back over to you, Mike. What do you think? KC-3, NZT.

KC-3, MFP. Well, I like Scott's answer, too. He put it up because he added it. It looks cool.

No, I get the whole point of it. I was just curious with that particular brand of antenna, two brands, 99 and the IMAX.

I know with the IMAX, the further you are away from the ground, physical ground, meaning the dirt, the more that you actually need it.

Mine's not that high off the ground. It's 15 feet off the ground. It's mounted to gas pipe, solid gas pipe. That stuff's heavy.

I'm going to need some strong hands when I change it out soon.

And the antenna is grounded as well with a ground rod, 12-foot ground rod.

So, like Chuck said, it's going to find ground somewhere, right?

So it might be that gas pipe for all I know.

Works pretty well local, not so far, but enough for me and the bride and for my compadres that are nearby.

But for DX, it works like a champ. I mean, I've worked Australia with that antenna, so I don't know.

I was just curious. Aaron had one on his IMAX years ago up on his roof.

And that was on a chimney mount, 10-foot mast, you know, conduit or whatever off his chimney.

So he had one on there.

But I could see, like you said, about having any RF come in, your reflective power.

Mine on 10, 11, and 12, reflective power's, I don't know, real low, really, really low.

So maybe about a watt and a half or whatever, so nothing major.

But I also have 125-foot of coax coming out of that thing.

So I don't know.

I like what Chuck said about it's going to find a way for the other half or the other 5-8s or whatever it is.

And, yeah, thank you guys so much.

I know it's a simple question, but, you know, we all can learn from simple questions.

KC3NZT, W3MFP.

100%.

That's very true, Mike.

Thank you for the question.

We appreciate it.

Last question right now is slated for Simon.

Go ahead with your question for the group.

KD3BPI.

This is KC3NZT.

KC3NZT.

KD3BPI.

A quick and simple question to finish things off.

I was planning for antennas on my house.

It's on a, it's two stories high, but it has a walk-up attic.

So it's pretty high up.

And I was planning on mounting my antennas to the roof.

There's a dormer that faces, I guess, it faces west, if I'm thinking correctly.

It faces towards the borough of Westchester.

I'm just outside.

And, um, so the dormer faces west.

And I was going to mount them adjacent to that dormer so that it's easy to get out there and maintain them.

Thinking of mounting them on a plate, a horizontal plate that, um, well, it's, it, I guess it negates the slope of the roof.

But, you know, that's all, that's all just thinking about it.

So I'm just wondering if that's a good plan to have a plate and then mount antennas to that.

Or if I should plan on each antenna having a separate mounting point, um, for interference reasons.

Um, because I'm thinking of, you know, a, a dual band, um, two, seven, two and 70 centimeter.

And then a, um, you know, 20 meter, 40 meter, you know, whatever I end up getting into.

I'm not really sure yet.

Um, but just whether I should have, I guess the, the crux of the question is whether I should plan on having multiple antenna mounting points or just one.

So, um, I'll, uh, send it back to you, Harvey.

KD3 BPI.

Thank you, Simon.

That's a good question.

It's a little difficult because you don't have it ironed out quite yet what the intentions are.

But, uh, the normal, the normal precursor questions would be what bands and what are your intentions?

I guess two meters and 70 centimeters is pretty self-explanatory.

That would be local.

Uh, 20 meters, uh, you might want to give the group a little bit of an idea of what your plans are with HF.

If it's, uh, DX or regional, um, things like that.

It might help them, uh, formulate a better answer for you.

Do you want to make some comments on that real quick, Simon?

Sure, sure.

I'd be happy to.

I, well, I'd like to, I guess, try regional first.

I wanted to try the digital, um, which I can't think of the name of it right now.

It's the one that, well, I guess, I don't know if there's, I guess they all kind of sound like, uh, a creepy song on the airwaves.

I'm just remembering, um, uh, VON's demonstrations in, um, at Del Tech.

And it was the one, uh, I won't, I won't subject everyone on the net to my interpretation, my, my vocalization of the, of the sound.

Um, uh, but, uh, I would like to try that.

And then maybe, and I think that really would be it.

That and phone, um, and, uh, yeah, regional to start out.

Is there a big difference between HF antennas for regional and for, like, DXing?

I guess there would be, but I'm not really sure.

Um, so, yeah, we can stick with regional for now.

That'll be where I start.

Back to you.

Very good.

Let's open it up to the group.

There's, uh, quite a few good questions in there.

Uh, I think there'll be a lot to discuss there.

Uh, comments for Simon.

Please call now.

This is KC3NZT.

I have to get my former students started here.

WA3VEE.

Come on, get us started.

KC3NZT.

By the way, great to see you this weekend, Harvey.

That was a phenomenal, phenomenal field day.

Okay, on topic here.

Okay, Simon, first of all, um, I personally don't like to have antennas on the house because of lightning.

Uh, that's one thing.

But let me go back and forth here with the indulgence of, of our esteemed, uh, net control operator, Harvey, here.

Let me go back and forth for a couple of clarifying things, which will, which will kind of help.

How much land do you have, uh, do you have any trees?

As for land we have, it goes back. It's an interesting sort of lot. It L, it has sort of an L shape around the back of our neighbor's house. Um, I think it's a third of an acre total. And, uh, there are a couple of trees. But the thing is, the trees that remain on the property. Um, I think it's a third of an acre total. And, uh, there are a couple of trees.

but the thing is the trees that remain on the property are not actually in our parcel.

They're directly adjacent, but the only tree that is on the parcel has already been removed,

which it was quite rotten.

So nothing, I'm assuming you're thinking of like hanging a wire,

and sorry to say that wouldn't be quite an option.

But yeah, yeah, back to you.

Very good. I can flip over there sometime and take a look at it once you guys get settled.

But definitely where I was going with that is that if you're talking about regional,

you're talking about probably 40 meters.

That's 7 megahertz, and we just went through this up at the site.

468 over the frequency in megahertz to get started, at least.

That will give you the length of the dipole that you're considering.

So that's one thing.

The other thing is that if you really want to put an antenna on the house,

the grounding is absolutely imperative for lightning protection.

And if you're thinking about an antenna, VHF, UHF, dramatically different than HF,

especially in size, unless you're talking about a vertical.

And a vertical, for instance, the only verticals that are relatively viable would be a 10-meter vertical.

Other than that, you're looking at either wire, usually wire antennas.

Let me stop there and let others chime in here for sure.

I know you'll have a lot more questions coming up.

Back to you, Harvey.

KC3NZT WA3VE.

Thanks, Ron.

Any other comments for Simon?

Please call now.

This is KC3NZT.

GMS.

GMS and there was a double.

Can the doubling station please chime in with your call sign?

You can go after Joe.

W3MFD.

All right.

Very good.

Over to W3GMS, followed by MFB, Mike, and then followed by John KFT, if you please.

KC3NZT.

Very good.

Just been listening as usual.

And I just wanted to give Simon another suggestion for HF.

You may want to look into the Hustler 5B TV.

I just got one for Ron.

I have one myself.

I use it all the time.

It's 80 meters through 10 meters.

It works exceedingly well, especially 40 meters and above.

I think I needed some more radials under it for 80.

But 40 meters and above the Hustler 5B TV.

It's not a monstrous antenna.

It's pretty low profile.

It looks good.

And all that.

And on a small lot like you have, in line with HF Communications,

I would certainly look at that.

The second thing I want to mention is I have your ICOM 718 and an LDG tuner here for you, which the donor had given to me at the last breakfast.

So at some point in time, Simon, I'd like to get that over to you.

But I do want to check it out quickly on the bench to make sure everything is fine with it.

So you have a rig.

You have a tuner.

Put a vertical up in the backyard for HF, and I think you'd be very happy.

W3MFB.

W3GMS.

W3MFB.

Thanks, Joe.

W3MFB.

Simon, yeah, that's a good idea.

If you've got a weird-shaped lot and issues with trees.

Joe had that antenna.

I believe you had it, Joe, at the summer field day site.

And it's not going to take up a lot of space.

And like he said, you could just put some ground radials down on the grass and have them down there.

And then once the grass grows, you don't have to worry about it.

Don't worry about mowing because they'll get buried.

The grass will take over.

I've done that with coax.

I just, like, this time of year is perfect because the grass is dormant, you know.

And you just lay it across the lawn and, you know, come spring and summertime, you don't even know where the heck it is anymore.

And little lawn stakes, they sell them at the hardware stores.

They're like, they just look like one half of a paper clip.

It's good for pushing down, like, tarp and stuff.

When you put mulch down, you know, like, before the mulch, little lawn stakes, or clips, or pins, they call them sometimes,

will help hold that down, the wire anyway.

But I was going to suggest about those two trees that you mentioned that are your neighbors.

You know, this is common law, any limbs, depending on the tree, of course,

but any limbs that are over your property are your limbs.

So you can use those antennas.

Or you could use that for your antenna, whether it be an NFED half wave with a transformer box closer to the house,

and then the wire going up to one of those limbs that are over your property.

I do that here.

A neighbor's got a silver maple, and there's a bunch of branches hanging over my property.

So they're my limbs.

So that's, if I wanted to cut them down, I could.

But I'm not going to do that because I use them.

I know Harvey, he's got an NFED half wave at his QTH that he runs from the house to the trees, and it works just fine for him.

So many, many options.

But, yeah, what Joe was saying, without the hustler or any other ground-mounted vertical, might be good.

Last comment, one last comment.

When you're saying you wanted to work regional, that would be, like, on 40-meter, like Joe said,

N-vest antennas, basically keeping them low to the ground.

And that's fun and all, but if I were you, I would just go full bore and set it up for a long distance so you could set it up once and forget about it

and then play with other experiments or whatever as you choose.

Over to Mr. John, Kentucky Fried Turkey, W3MFD.

A little clarification.

What frequencies do you want this antenna?

HF bands or VHF bands?

Over.

WA3KFT, KDE3, BPI.

I was thinking HF primarily because I figure with VHF, as long as I can hit, as long as I can hit 985, I'm doing pretty good.

So back to you, KFT, BPI.

Okay.

Very good.

I have five verticals on top of a tower.

And the base of the antennas are 35 feet off the ground.

And it looks like a candelabra.

Two meters, 220, 10 meters, 440, and 6 meters.

So I have found that all of them work well.

In terms of a ground-mounted vertical for HF, and if you want to put ground radials in, I've got a good trick for you.

Get yourself or borrow or whatever.

Get yourself or borrow or whatever an edger tool, an edger that is used for trimming the edge of a sidewalk.

It will cut a nice groove in the sod.

Put the wire down into that groove, and within a week or two, nobody will ever know where the groove is, and the wire will stay in the sod, and you won't have to worry about lawnmowers snagging it or anything like that.

My brother, also a ham, did that on a ground-mounted vertical antenna.

Use an edger, slice the sod, and with a screwdriver, poke your ground radio into the slot.

And you don't have to use any pegs or hairpins or anything like that to hold it in the slot.

It'll stay there.

And you can mow the lawn around it and never worry about it.

This is WA3KFT.

Excellent comments all around.

Please, more for Simon.

Call now.

This is KC3NZT.

WA3VEE.

3KZG.

Okay, Ron, over to you, and then over to Scott, if you please.

KC3NZT.

My pleasure.

Absolutely.

Simon, check your email.

I sent you the link, the DX Engineering link, to the Hustler 5B TV.

Highly, highly recommend it.

You don't have to worry about tree limbs.

You don't have to worry about neighbors.

You don't have to worry about any of that.

And as I wrote to you in your email, I just sent you.

I had that down in Wilmington when the VEE operation was just getting started back in the early to mid and late 70s down there.

I worked over 130 countries.

And further to what John just said, fantastic idea, because we will be doing that with the 5B TV that I was gifted by Joe and the 985 repeater group at the last breakfast.

And, again, thanks again, again, and again.

Very humbled by that.

I will be doing exactly that over here in the springtime.

Hard to imagine now with about 10 inches of snow on the ground.

But, yes, that will be taking place here.

Instant HF, absolutely.

Obviously, it's not directional, but it doesn't matter.

You could work a lot.

And what you were trying to think of going way, way back to an earlier comment, you were thinking of PSK31, which is almost defunct these days, and FT8.

Those were the digital modes we were looking at back to college when we had K3 DTS in our classroom back there.

So highly recommend the 5B TV vertical and trenching like the – or edging the radials into the soil, as John's saying.

Very, very much looking forward to getting that on the air over here, maybe even as a remote station.

Back to Harvey.

W3KZG, WA3VEE with the group.

W3KZG, thanks, Ron.

Yes, Simon.

So it looks like you could have yourself a demo of how to install it if you go over and lend Ron a hand at his house when he puts that in.

And then you'd know exactly how to do it at your house, and Ron could return the favor.

And, of course, we could get some other antenna gurus to show up to both and help as well because we have a pretty good tower install, removal, antenna install, removal crew on this repeater.

So with that said, I – for a dual-band antenna, if you're just looking to get into 985 or maybe some other local repeaters,

the antenna I'm talking on right now is actually up on my tower.

It's a Ringo Ranger, but that's mute.

The other antenna that I have on my radio in my garage, I have a mobile rig mounted on the wall in my garage.

It's literally a dual-band antenna on a car mount that would mount on the lip of your car hood or trunk lid.

It's just a lip mount, NMO, and it has an NMO dual-band antenna on it.

And I have it clamped to the rain gutter on my shop.

It's about, I don't know, maybe 16 feet in the air or 14 feet in the air, something like that.

And I can hit the 985 repeater with one watt out of that.

So you could literally do the same thing at your house.

Put a dual-band mobile antenna, click it to the rain gutter somewhere on the corner of your house,

and you'd be surprised how many repeaters you could hit with that little antenna.

And it's low profile, and it won't stick out, and you don't have to do any.

You don't have to drill a bunch of big holes into your house or brackets.

And if that doesn't, you know, and that's a cheap alternative.

And then if it doesn't do what you want it to do, you mount it on your car,

and then go buy a bigger dual-band bass antenna.

But that's just my recommendation maybe to get started.

Back to you, Harvey, W3KZG.

Scott and Ron, those are great comments there.

I'll throw a couple in there real quick.

I don't want to repeat anybody.

But I will say, Simon, I'm getting you full scale here in my garage.

My garage is not my main station.

It's not my main antenna.

I have a copper pipe J-Pol about four feet above my head inside in the attic of a garage.

So probably total 10 foot off the ground maybe.

And I'm getting you full scale on the input.

So you're close to me wherever you are.

I'm near Immaculata.

Anything you put three stories up in that attic for BHF, UHF, it's going to get into 985.

You're really close to me, and I was doing that for a while with a 5-watt Baofeng hooked to an attic antenna in the main house.

My main attic antenna for BHF, UHF is up at about like 30 feet inside in an attic.

So for BHF, UHF, you'll be just fine.

I wouldn't worry about that too much.

For HF, though, you've gotten some great suggestions.

I'll throw a couple other ones in there.

It sounds like you're going to have an ICOM rig,

and you have access to a third-story dormered attic.

That's pretty high up, especially if you're interested in starting out with digital.

You have quite a few options that you could do inside that attic if you chose to.

Outside is better.

But if you chose to do something inside the attic, there are lots of options for you.

With an ICOM rig, you could run an AH4 tuner.

That would be very easy to put basically a dipole fed by that tuner in the attic, and that would work most bands for you.

There's also, in my attic, I also have a fan dipole where it's kind of like a radial configuration.

So if you look at it from a bird's eye view, it would look like a ceiling fan.

And that does 20, 15, 10, and 6 for me.

So that's another option for inside the house.

Again, other people have given you outside the house options, which are better than inside the house options.

I'm just trying to give you more options.

So you have lots of options in that area.

So are there any other comments for Simon?

Otherwise, I'm going to turn it back over to him.

This is KC3NZT.

Additional comments?

Please call now.

You know I have an additional comment, Harvey.

W-A-3-V-E-E.

Nothing less.

Over to you, Ron.

Very good.

Simon, a couple things, too.

And this is particularly pertinent to people in HOAs and also new hams.

Just getting started.

My son, KB3MNA, who some of you know very well, lives up in Lionville.

And he can put antennas on the outside, but he's going to get started with one in the attic for VHF, UHF.

And now he's going to do a Diamond X50.

Now, you're listening to me on an X300 right now.

I'm pumping 100 watts out there to the antenna.

50 is reaching the base of the antenna.

But still, nonetheless, with the coax length that I've got.

But, nonetheless, the X50, from his place in Lionville, I can hit 43 different repeaters.

43 repeaters.

So, exactly what's being said.

Height is might.

Get it up there in the attic.

That's a little bit better than having it on the outside.

But I think you'd be surprised at the performance.

So, let me turn it back to Harvey here.

KC3NZTWA3VEE.

CRW.

I have it, CR.

I heard a recommendation for the 5BTV, but I was just looking online.

And I see there's a 4 and a 6.

So, why is the 5 the recommended?

Side comment.

Any comments for CR?

Please call now.

WA3VEE.

5 is kind of like the dotted line on a four-lane highway.

You can go smaller antenna.

You can go a four.

Or you can put a six on there.

I think it's a six-meter capability.

It's just a matter of what you can get or what you want to do.

Not necessarily.

If you want to go six meters, well, I think a 6BTV would be perfect.

I think that's what that does.

It might be work bands, too.

The link I sent you, Simon, for the DX engineering, look at the documentation,

because it will exactly explain what's going on there.

The 5 is the generic one.

The 4 and a 6 are the options, whatever you want to do.

If you're limited in space, you can't operate.

I think the 4 eliminates what's called the 75-meter resonator on top.

But the 5BT does everything from 80 through 10, I believe.

And I think it's the 6 that adds the 6-meter, I believe.

But the documentation will explain that clearly, I think, within the first few pages.

Back to that.

AC3NZT, great question, by the way.

WA3VE.

WA3GMS.

Go ahead, Jeff.

Real quick, kind of backing up what Ron said.

CR, the first number of the antenna series is the amount of bands.

So, a 4BTV is 40 meters through 10.

A 5BTV is 80 meters through 10.

So, if you want to work 80 or slash 75, you go with a 5BTV.

You get 80 through 10 meters.

If you don't care about 80 meters or 75 meters, you get the 4BTV.

Back to you, Harvey.

Thank you, Joe.

The 6BTV, I believe, adds 30 meters, not 6.

So, I think the reason the 5BTV is the go-to is because 30 meters doesn't tend to be as popular as the main 5 bands there.

Any other comments for, on the 5BTV?

Otherwise, we'll call for more comments on Simon's question.

I guess it's KC3NZT.

Please call now.

KA3GLI.

David, go ahead.

Yeah, regarding this antenna, I actually have a question for Joe on that.

I heard you talking to someone a little while back about this antenna.

You mentioned a specific auto-tuner that you have on the base of that vertical.

I was just wondering if you could mention again what that is, perhaps.

Sure.

W-3 GMS.

Yeah, I have an LDG auto-tuner at the base because verticals, especially verticals with loading coils, seem to be somewhat narrow.

They're much higher Q antenna.

And they're a little bit narrower than, say, a dipole you would have for 40 meters.

So what I found out that works very effectively is you put the auto-tuner right at the base of the antenna.

It's waterproofed everything.

And you put it right at the base of the antenna.

And then whatever, you know, when you slide off the resonant frequency of the antenna, the auto-tuner does its thing.

And it presents a 50-ohm match to the end of the coax at the antenna end.

And that's where you want it.

You know, ideally, you don't want the tuner at the rig.

You want it at the base of the antenna to terminate that coax into 50-ohms.

So that's a deal.

And I've had that.

I use the antenna exclusively down in Ocean City, New Jersey.

And it just works fantastic.

It's summer field day.

For the past several years, the guys have worked it at the field day site.

Very, very happy with the antenna.

So it's well proven.

Go ahead.

Okay.

W3GMSKA3GLIF.

Yeah, I was thinking that might help Simon out as well with that antenna.

And I'm even thinking about installing that myself.

Back to you, Harvey, I guess.

KC3NZTKA3GLI.

Thank you very much.

I believe the model of that tuner is the RC100.

If you Google that, it probably will come up.

Any additional comments for Simon's antenna question?

Please call now.

KC3EE.

Go ahead, John.

Someone got to the attic mounting before I did.

But one final reminder, you don't have to wait until you can buy the antenna,

you know, some commercial antenna.

Go ahead and make them.

You know, it's just a piece of wire in some cases, a lot of cases, and a little transformer.

You can wind those transformers.

You can get the little toroids and, you know, some wire, and you can make these things yourself.

That's what I've done.

I have very few purchased antennas, but lots of things that I can just take out in the field

or throw over my roof or string across the attic or whatever out the backyard.

Go ahead and make it and test it out when it's not quite so cold.

Back to you.

KC3EE.

Very good.

Good comments.

Any other comments for Simon?

Please call now.

Simon, back over to you.

This is KC3NZT.

Have we helped at all?

I am, yes, very helpful.

Thank you all.

This is, I've taken notes, and it'll be great to go to reference these as I'm picking out an

antenna, which it really looks like that 5B-TV would be a very good antenna to start with.

Not because of the easy installation, but also, well, I don't know exactly what band I want to do yet.

I haven't done any of them.

So I figure it's better to have a lot of options and have it be set up so then just put it in there.

I don't even have to worry about a tuner, it looks like, with this antenna, with the traps.

At least that's how they're described on the manufacturer website.

What is it called?

But anyway, yeah, that's great.

And it looks like I will be starting on the ground based on advice.

So W3MFB, bury the radials, and KFT, just use the edger.

I love that idea.

That is such a good idea, and I'm definitely going to do that.

Just put them in the ground and then give a good ground, which makes sense, which makes sense.

I'm not real familiar with antenna theory quite yet, but having a good ground seems essential for HF.

And now I'm thinking about it.

Every HF antenna I've seen has radials, whether it's on the, you know, again, I guess if it's a wire antenna, it's just the whole thing is a radial.

So that's great.

That's great.

And, yeah, CR, thanks for that clarification there.

I saw that, too.

I wasn't quite sure.

And it makes perfect sense.

And so, you know, five band, very good indeed.

Let me see if there's any, if I have any other.

So, okay, so this is my final question, I guess, clarifying question.

And it has to do with performance of the 5B TV.

If I put it on the ground and had a nice radial setup, would it perform just as good as if I had it on my roof with a nice radial setup, or would it perform worse?

Like, I guess my question is, is it better to, is height, does the, does the saying height as might apply to HF like it does to VHF, UHF?

And I'll send it back to you, to you for that, Harvey, KD3BPI.

Okay, very good.

One additional follow-up.

Open to the group.

Please call now.

This is KC3NZT.

3GMS for my final, final comment of the evening.

Go ahead, Joe.

Simon, a great question.

The reason that the popularity is as great of ground-mounted verticals is it's easier.

You know, when you put the wire down on the earth, the earth basically detunes the wire.

So the theory is, you know, you don't really have to have quarter-wave radials or radial lengths close to a quarter-wave on the various bands you operate.

Because you're just looking to reduce the ground losses, the RF ground losses.

So the more radials you have on the ground, the better.

The theory is a lot of short ones are better than a few long ones because most of the current density is right at the base of the antenna.

So that's that.

Saying that, elevated radials, in other words, getting radials up in the air, it's an excellent performer.

And I would say it performs better.

And there's been a lot of studies.

There was an article written in QST maybe 10 years ago talking about elevated radials.

The thing of it is, if you do elevated radials, the radials have to be tuned.

In other words, they have to be cut for specific lengths for the band that you want to operate on.

So if you have your antenna up in the air, you're going to have all these wires coming off the base for all the different bands you want to work on.

And they have to be, they just can't be random lengths.

So that's the big difference between a ground-mounted vertical with radials in the ground versus an elevated vertical where the radials actually are cut to a specific length.

And DX Engineering talks about that in their documentation.

So that's the deal.

Now, how much of a difference it makes, I can't quantify it in decibels or anything like that.

But basically, the high current portion, as you raise the high current portion up in the air, the radiator becomes more and more effective.

And saying that, look at your broadcast stations, you know, the AM broadcast stations, they're ground-mounted verticals.

And you can see the job that they do when considering the frequency they're on, much lower in frequency than the amateur bands.

So that's that on that.

Back to you, Harvey.

W3GMS.

Other comments for Simon?

C3WRY, late check-in and comments.

C3WRY, go ahead.

One of the advantages with going ground-mounted is you can always end up moving it up on the roof or higher elevated with the tuned radials, as Joe was saying, or GMS was saying.

Getting used to it, I would do it on the ground.

One of the things I've learned building antennas is anything you have to tune, it's a lot easier when it's on the ground versus 30 feet up in the air.

This is coming from building fan dipoles and things like that that I put up 30 feet.

And even at 30 feet, you've got to keep radials lowering it to get it tuned.

Ground-mounted, you can get away with just a simple, like a lot of DLI antennas are using 17-foot radials.

And they just work.

So, I would try it on the ground.

And if you're happy with it and you want to get more than move it up to height.

Very good points.

Any other comments for Simon?

Please call now.

I worked at an AM broadcast station when they physically relocated.

And when they did, they built everything brand new.

Towers, ground radials, and the whole bit.

The radio system on an AM broadcast station on one tower is 120 radials.

Now, 60 of them are short and 60 of them are long.

And when I say long, I'm talking 150 feet.

Connecting 120 radials at the base of an antenna presents a problem because there's not much space between them.

So, they put a ring around the bottom and then solder them all.

But an AM broadcast station, the next time you see one, think about one radio every three degrees around the compass.

120 radials on one tower.

And I worked at a station that had three towers, so it was three times that.

Just thought you would like to know.

WA3, KFT.

CMS with a follow-up on that.

Hi, Jeff.

That was a final comment.

Keep in mind, in broadcasting, when the FCC issues a construction permit for the station,

there has to be the efficiency has to be such that it complies with the construction permit.

There's very, very, very few amateur vertical antennas that use 120 radials.

The theory is, and if you read a book by the author Jerry Sivak, W2FMI, he goes into the subject quite extensively.

But a bunch of short ones are better than a bunch of long ones.

So, don't think if you ground mount a vertical, you've got to have 120 radials on.

Down at the shore, I put maybe eight radials on.

And I primarily operate 40 meters.

And I've worked like nine or ten countries in the evening on 40 meters with eight radials under the 5B TV vertical.

So, you know, just don't think you've got to put 120 radials down.

And if you look at the efficiency curve or the ground loss curve to minimize the RF ground losses,

you get a big improvement for the first few.

Well, I say the first few, maybe let's go up to about 20.

And then it's like an asymptotic curve once you get above that.

Yeah, you gain a little bit, you gain a little bit more, and you gain a little bit more.

But you get far more performance or benefit, I should say, out of the first limited number of radials that you put down.

That's it.

I said it was before.

I'm going to turn off the radio.

That way I won't have any more comments.

W3GMS.

Thank you for that.

Any more comments for Simon, please call now.

This is KC3NZT.

KD3BPI here.

This is great information.

This is great.

I want to thank you, Harvey and everyone for giving my questions so much time and thought.

I have a whole notebook page of notes.

And it's just going to be a great reference.

Thank you all again.

Yeah, I think I'm going to go with background mounted vertical to start with.

That seems like a great compromise.

And then, you know, I have a roof.

I can put stuff up there.

And it'll be good to go.

But yeah, and KFT, thank you for that bit of knowledge about radials on an AM broadcast tower.

I grew up nearby 1150 AM WDEL.

I don't know if they still have their AM transmitter on.

But that's exactly, I think, AM broadcast tower.

I can see that one.

And then the adjacent transmitters for the FM station at the same site.

And thank you, GMS, also, for the bit of information there about radials.

Many short.

I'll go with many short.

I have that written down and underlined.

But yeah, thank you all again.

That is great.

And I'll send it back to you, Harvey.

KC3NZT from KD3BPI.

Thank you very much, Simon.

It was a good question.

So let that be a lesson to anybody else out there lurking.

If you've got a question, even if it seems simple, it can turn into quite something.

So don't be shy.

Please ask away.

I'm going to be shutting down the workbench for tonight.

It is a little bit late.

My computer is shut off due to temperature.

So I'm just going to wing it here.

But don't forget about the Thursday night roundtable.

I can't tell you who the host is.

The computer shut off.

But there will be a host.

And it will be a whole lot of fun.

So anybody that wants to rag chew on Thursdays at 8 o'clock, please chime into that.

Thank you for all stations that checked in.

And thank you for all stations that asked a question.

That's really what makes the workbench valuable.

I'm going to turn the repeater over to normal amateur use.

And I'm going to say 73.

And good night.

This is KC3NZT clear.

Harvey.

Good job.

Thank you for braving the cold.

And I'll be hosting Thursday night's roundtable of W3MFB.

An announcement.

There you go.

That's your host.

Everybody check in.

Thanks, Mike.

We'll say 73.

And good night.

KDPI, WA3BEE.

Still there, Simon?

KDPI.

Indeed I am.

How you doing, Ron?

We have been missing each other consistently.

And I feel bad.

We've had sicknesses over the holidays here and everything else and so on.

But, yeah, we desperately need to get along.

Are you still at the apartment, correct?

Yes, that's right.

So we closed on our house.

And we're doing some much needed, not repair.

It was in good condition.

The house is in very good condition.

But we're doing painting.

We're getting the floors redone.

We're getting some asbestos remediation in the basement.

There were some tiles.

And we knew all this going into the house.

We even decided to add on getting the kitchen redone.

Because there was a horrendous drop ceiling in the kitchen.

And underneath the drop ceiling was an equally horrendous plaster ceiling.

Pink peeling paint patches.

You name it.

So all that to say that we're having a lot of work done slash doing work ourselves before moving into the house in April.

But, yeah, still at the apartment.

Still have my gutter mounted vertical here.

But, yeah, and no problem.

I understand.

I've been busy with the house, you know.

And so no problem.

We'll have to get together, though, I think, for doing that demonstration up at the field day site.

I still want to do that if you have time at some point.

Anyway, back to you.

KD3BPI.

It works so well up there.

The big problem right now, of course, is the snow and trying to get around up there, especially on that upper level.

We got out of there just in time on Saturday night.

I got back here about, I think it was about 1030 and still had to unpack the van, the porcupine and stuff like that.

I got things put away.

And it didn't start snowing here until about 4 in the morning here in Westchester, so not bad.

But, anyway, back on the antenna.

So you guys, you and Summer are doing the painting at the new place right now.

Is that correct?

That's right.

Every room and every ceiling.

And it's been, like, about 60-40.

Summer's doing a lot.

And then I've been cutting in now and then.

No pun intended.

And doing some electrical work as well.

Every switch in there is about 50 years old.

And every receptacle equally is old.

So going through and getting that all taken care of.

Back to you.

Well, I know this for sure.

We basically, Deb and I basically rebuilt this place.

Even though it was brand new when we moved in.

We were here and it put the first stick up.

But in Labor Day week of 1988.

Excuse me.

One second.

As Chuck would say, hairball.

But, you know, the builder was, let's just say, less substandard.

Let's put it that way.

And because we're both fairly handy.

We basically reinforced walls and put in all kinds of stuff.

And my wood shop was in full swing at the time rebuilding this place.

And Deb and I finished half the basement here.

The other half is the shop in my lab.

And we just did so much here.

That's for sure.

I know the feeling.

And it's funny.

The division of labor, too.

I did the carpentry.

Well, first of all, the carpentry, which I distinguish from woodworking, from fine woodworking, which I do both.

But the carpentry is the framing out.

This entire shack, the entire what used to be the family room and all that, it was all framed out here.

This was pretty much a bare basement when we moved in.

So we did all that.

In fact, she actually put the duct work in and stuff like that for the HVAC down here, which isn't even open.

I don't even need heat down here.

It's so well insulated.

I did all the electrical work, of course.

And then after that, and then, of course, upstairs, we did our library and all the fine woodwork in there.

But I did all the electrical work in that, the first floor, the second floor, heated floors in the bathroom, all that stuff.

And it tires me out thinking about it now.

But nonetheless, did all that.

But she does the painting.

And she could actually finish drywall, believe it or not.

So we are people who like to get our hands dirty.

We do not mind doing that.

So I admire you and Summer for doing what you're doing.

Plus, this is your home.

It's going to be fun.

It's, I remember, I look now and I say, oh my gosh, I don't remember, I don't believe we did all this stuff.

And it's like, wow, it's unreal.

So now it's more small projects.

But you guys are having fun.

And that's great.

So back to the antenna stuff.

Yeah, I could slip over some time.

You guys are right there at the Acme.

I mean, that shopping center I use a lot.

I usually shop, though, at Giant and Wegmans.

But in a pinch, I'll go over to the Acme and grab something really quick.

And, of course, Chick-fil-A, naturally.

Who could not like Chick-fil-A?

I was so happy that they put a Chick-fil-A right there at West Coast.

So that was great.

And I actually drove by your place the other day.

And like I wrote, that's my shortcut when I'm going down Westchester Pike into Westchester.

And I say, oops, I forgot I got to get something at the Acme.

So I literally drive right by.

So I know exactly, exactly where you're at.

Nice, nice little place there.

So you guys should have a nice time there getting started for sure.

But, again, I think you can see the recommendations coming loud and clear.

The 5B TV is probably your best option.

And like I said, there's got to be one over here to supplement the two wire antennas I have over here.

KD-3 BTI WA-3 VEE.

Probably timed it out, but go ahead and pick it up.

Yes, indeed.

Sorry to say, the last thing I heard was that you used that the Concord Road as a shortcut to get to the Acme.

Which, yes, it is a very good shortcut for that.

And it even has a signalized intersection at the other end, which makes it actually viable to use.

Many of these shortcuts, at least the ones I've discovered around here, end in no signal.

And then you just have to wait.

And you might be waiting five minutes.

But anyway, I'll send it back to you to finish your comments there.

I'll send it back to you to the Acme.

There, if he's got a long enough, strong enough arm and a long enough wire.

If you throw a wire in the ocean and all that salt water, you've got the entire Atlantic Ocean for a ground plane.

Anyway, very interesting.

So I've worked him on that antenna from here when he was down at Ocean City.

And definitely a Q5 copy all the way.

So that's what I'd recommend.

That's a great antenna for a station like Drexel has, for instance.

And they're going to have a lot of time.

They're going to have a lot of time.

So if the air is down and everything else and the station's pretty much been taken apart, but if they wanted to get it restarted, the 5BT vertical would be perfect because it's not directional like a beam.

However, it gets you on the air.

And they're up about four stories above street level.

They're at 32nd and Chestnut.

Second and Chestnut is where I took my FCC exams, but 32nd and Chestnut in Western University City.

And that would get them on the air as well as a good Diamond X300 like you're listening to me on right now.

They would have capability from 75 meters all the way up through 70 centimeters, and that would work very well.

We had a vertical at the college, but it was at Delaware Tech long before I took over down there.

And that was a butternut antenna.

But the 5BTV is a much more robust solution.

Go ahead.

Well, that is great to hear because I've heard, so it seems like the 5BTV is a well-respected, well-regarded antenna, which is good to hear.

It is, well, it's pricey, but it seems like it's going to act as sort of a Swiss Army knife of HF exploration.

So I'm thinking that I'm going to go with that and then ground mount it for now because of the radial length, which makes sense.

It makes sense having to do different radial lengths.

Now, I'm curious what you think. If there's a way, is there like a, I don't know how to put it, like a compromise radial length where if I did want to mount it on the roof, I could just set my radials at, you know, for, I don't know, let's just say for the sake of argument, 30 meters?

If that's a band, I really should familiarize myself with these. No, it's not a band.

But let's just say I wanted to set my radials for like 20 meters. Would that be, like, would the operation be significantly compromised on, say, 10 meters?

Back to you, KD3BPI.

What you would need for both 20 and 10 are radials for each. And I had this back at mom and dad's place in Wilmington. I told you before that I was born and raised in the city. But we moved, when I was five years old, we moved out to Ashley Heights over there by Banning Park, Newport, basically.

And, uh, where I spent most of my life before I got married, moved up here to Pennsylvania in 1985. Um, I had elevated radials there and I just paint the picture. If you're looking at, so I had a flagpole out back and I had a weather vane on top of it.

And that's a whole other story. And I'll tell you that sometime. Uh, you know me, I'm loaded with stories, but nonetheless, uh, uh, I took the weather vane off and put the antenna on top of the flagpole, which was up about 20, 25 feet to begin with.

And I had all these wires strung out from the base of the antenna. It was a rat's nest. And it worked, but, uh, it was just a rat's nest. So this is why I'm recommending definitely ground mount. It makes it a lot, lot simpler and a lot, lot better.

Uh, 10 meters works when it's open. Um, it's not always open. And like I said, sometime we'll get together and I'll explain this to you. Maybe we'll get some of the newer hands, especially the one I'm Elmering right now, to listen to this as well.

Uh, she was very successful four days after getting her call sign and working eight countries on our beam up at, uh, the field day site. But we just, we just got on and operated. I didn't do a lot of explaining about, well, why does this work? Why this doesn't? And so on. But this is the stuff that both you guys need to hear as well as anyone else who's interested on 985. But nonetheless, stand by.

Uh, 10 works, uh, 10 works, uh, 10 works during the day. But the band that's really what we do the field day stuff call the money band is really the 40 meter band. That's the seven, uh, to 7.3 megahertz. You could talk to somebody anytime, uh, somewhere on that band.

Uh, like about this time at night, you're talking, let's see, what is it? Oh, it's not, oh, it's almost 10 o'clock. Um, you're looking at talking probably Midwest to the West. The later it gets, the farther it goes. It's called that band. It's called a band going long.

And so what happens is, uh, the ionosphere, the layers combined. So you have greater skip, greater propagation, longer distances, and so on. Uh, and this time of night also, um, uh, Europe is not a problem. I've worked, I've worked South Africa from here up to about 11 o'clock at night on 40 meters with no problem at night.

Uh, so, uh, so, uh, that band is the money band. But your best bet is to, well, pick a location for your 5B TV in your backyard and then, uh, measure out where the radials would be.

And what we're telling you is what we've learned from experience and also some of the books out there, like Joe had mentioned, the ground, the ground itself, uh, has a conductivity to it. It's not very good, of course, as we know. Uh, but nonetheless, it tends to detune the radials. So the length on the radial, the ground radials doesn't have to be as critical as, as they are in the air.

And you do really, on a house, you really don't want all that kind of rat's nest coming off the bottom of an antenna. KD3BPI, WA3VEE.

WA3VEE, KD3BPI. Thank you for that, Ron. That's, that's good to hear. That's good to hear. I definitely don't want a rat's nest quite yet.

I'm sure the time will come. But, uh, uh, uh, much easier to work with it just ground mounted and, uh, with the, with the ground radials that I can just edge into place, as, as, as KFT pointed out.

Uh, so, perfect. This is, this is, this is good. I think I'll be getting ready to get my hands on one of those G, wait, wait, 5B TV. 5B TV.

Sorry, I was looking at, Hustler has the G6-144B, but now that I'm looking at that, that's not even rated. That's a 2-meter antenna.

Uh, that was, what, before? Uh, that's just when I went on to DX earlier today. Anyway. This is good information indeed. And, um, I think I'm gonna have to be getting on to bed.

You said it was 10 o'clock and I, I was, had been watching the clock while we were on the workbench, but then, um, you know, time, time can get away quite quickly, especially when you're having fun, as we all do on the workbench.

So, um, uh, I think I'll say, I'll, uh, send it back to you. And, um, yeah, we'll have to get up there. Um, whenever, whenever it's, uh, if you plan anything out, let me know. I'll see if I can, uh, uh, make the, uh, make the opening and the schedule there.

I think it'll be getting a little bit less. We're getting ready. The asbestos guys are coming this Thursday. So that'll be that. Um, and then the floor finishers are coming in, um, early February, I believe February 9th.

Um, so we have to do our rush to get the paint, the painting finished up before then. But, um, then after that, it should be pretty, I should be pretty open. So, uh, do let me know whenever you're heading up with, uh, with the new hams. And let me know their call letters.

I have, I've been designing a 3D printable badge that lights up. And, um, uh, you know, prototype. I have, like, sort of a prototype. Um, but, um, you know, hopefully by the time we get this thing together, let me know. And I can do, uh, you know, print everyone a nice little badge.

Uh, but anyway, I'll send it back to you for a final. KD3BPI WA3VE.

W-A-3VEVE. Well, very, very good. Um, couple things here. First of all, 1150, uh, W-D-E-L. I'm actually listening to them in the background on my 7610 right now. My, uh, my main HF rig here in the, in the station. And they are hale and hearty. And they are a very, very, uh, they have been a signature Delaware AM station since, uh, since dirt was invented. Um, yeah.

Yeah, so they are very much still on, still on, on the air. And of course, you probably know they're in the same location on Shipley Road down there as WSTW. Uh, if you look at the towers, you'll see the, the, uh, FM broadcast array on the side of the, of one of the towers. Uh, there are little, there are little antennas that, well, they're not little when you get up to them. But, uh, because the wavelength of an FM broadcast station is about 10 feet.

But, uh, but nonetheless, um, you remember that stuff that we talked about back at the college. But anyway, um, you'll see the bubbles on the side of the, the, the, one of the towers. That's WSTW. That's their broadcast, uh, FM broadcast array.

And then the other four towers are the directional phased array for, for, for 1150. They're hard to get up here, believe it or not. Even though they're just about 10 miles down the road in Delaware over the border, as you know, you live there. Uh, but their, their pattern is so tight.

in the evening after sunset because, as you know, AM broadcast goes long in the evening.

So they're protecting some station up here somewhere that's on the same frequency.

Their array is so tight that it's hard to hear them.

The same was true for WAMS, WAMS, which I grew up with pretty much down there,

and I actually have one of their two finals over here that the station went defunct.

Sort of as a nostalgic thing.

That's one thing.

The other thing is I sent you that MP3 of your signal.

It is phenomenal.

And the reason it's phenomenal and it never used to be is because the ground has greater conductivity with snow on it

than it normally does when it's dry.

So you're coming in here like I almost thought you were at your new place.

That's why I asked if you're still at the apartment because your signal is the best it's ever been,

and a large part of that is because of the ground conductivity with the snow.

So the other thing is, one last thought.

I promise this is it.

But one last thought is I'm basically at the northern end of Montgomery Avenue.

You go to Montgomery Avenue.

You turn left at the Acme.

You head into Westchester.

Go down to McDonald's.

Turn right.

Take Montgomery Avenue.

And you end up at the hospital, and I can give you the rest.

And I'm just a couple turns there.

So you slip over here, and I can show you some of these bands and stuff.

Or we can get up to the site.

So sooner or later, I'll have new hams over here to do this.

By the way, our newest ham on 985 is Kiana, and her call sign is KD3CJH, if I haven't mentioned that already.

And she was making contacts for us over the weekend, Saturday, up at the field day site.

So coming along very, very well.

Very, very, very advanced for being a tech less than a month, that's for sure.

Anyway, I'll let you go, Simon.

Good to talk to you, as always.

Always think back to the classroom at Dell Tech when we talk.

Always fun stuff, and I want to hear how things are going with your avionics stuff as well.

We have a lot to catch up on, for sure.

Take care.

You have a good evening.

As always, give my very best of summer, for sure, okay?

And we'll talk soon.

And very happy for you guys in your new home that's about to happen.

KD3BPI, WA3VEE.

KD3BPI.

Thank you much, Ron.

Thank you much.

Always good to catch up.

Always good to talk.

Indeed it is.

And, yeah, definitely.

Definitely.

One of these weekends.

Or even probably an evening.

I could make it over there.

It's not like you're far away.

But, yeah.

Yeah, we'll have to work something out.

And catch up.

And there's been some interesting radio developments at the avionics company.

But I'll save that for another time.

And let you go.

And, yeah.

Stay warm.

How about that with the snow increasing the ground conductivity?

It makes sense, though.

I mean, it makes perfect sense.

So, glad I'm coming through nice and strong.

Anyway.

Yeah, you have a good night.

And good to talk to you, as always.

And thanks for your advice on the antenna.

Certainly putting that in my notes for later.

So, yeah.

7-3 to you.

And have a good night.

K-D-3-P-P-I.

Clear.

Simon.

Yeah, you're 10 over.

I've never been 10 over on the input over here on 385.

So, that's what it is.

And watch when the snow melts.

That'll fall.

I guarantee you.

Take care.

And always great.

Absolutely.

You guys are, you youngins are keeping me young.

That's for sure.

That's pretty tough to do.

But you're succeeding.

Take care.

Always a pleasure.

7-3.

K-D-3-P-I.

W-A-3-V-E-E.

Now clear.

And going QRT.

7-3-V-I-N.

I'll see you.

It's hard to keep a guy that's been a ham for over half a century young.

That's just about impossible.

A-A-3-L-H.

Hey, when am I going to work you on your trick stick when you go out to Colorado again, Mr. Bus Driver?

Hey, great to hear you, Leon.

A-A-3-L-H-W-A-3-V-E-E.

How are you and Gene doing out there on Gobbler's Knob?

Gobbler's Knob has five inches of snow.

I mean, yeah, we had five inches.

This time we got seven inches of snow.

So our driveway is plowed out.

We can go.

But we like staying on the warm side of the door.

So we're doing good.

Thank you for asking.

But, yeah, I just had to throw that out there, Rod.

I have a question.

Since you seem to have a lot of answers, I want to ask you a question if you have time.

I have time.

I have time, and I have answers.

I don't know if there are good answers, but I have answers.

Way back when I was a tech, and I joined Red Roots, the president of Red Roots, N2DYK, who is now a silent care, told me he has a 5-8 wave tram magnet mount antenna.

And he can set that on a—he didn't show me how it works, but he put this tram on a wooden table, a park bench somewhere, and he can talk.

He says, 5-8, it doesn't need a counterpoint.

Now, you know, everybody here knows I am a counterpoint person.

If I have an antenna, it's got to have a counterpoint.

Was he really saying the truth?

5-8 wave with VHF don't need a counterpoint?

What do you think?

A3LH.

Halfwave doesn't, but I've always used a 5-8.

When I used 5-8 wave antennas, I've been doing dual band for so long.

I first got into this, and back in 73, 74, I had a 5-8 on my old Toyota and a collinear as well.

I have always used a ground plane with a 5-8 wave antenna guide.

Okay.

Well, he didn't show me how it works.

I, you know, I started out, well, I had quarter waves.

We had counterpoises, which was back then was a car, a van that we have.

We put quarter waves on there, and it worked fine.

But he would say, oh, yeah, he would say, I thought he said 5-8.

Maybe it's that half wave doesn't need a counterpoise.

And I thought, eh, I don't know.

I just like counterpoises.

Because I got out in Colorado, hamstick.

I worked you last year on a hamstick with about six counterpoint wires going on.

Some of them were cut for 40 meters.

And it worked.

Because we worked.

I'm just a counterpoint person.

That's all.

And he said he didn't need that on his, like what Debbie said, halfway.

That's a lot of years ago.

I was attacked.

Maybe he said half.

Okay, over.

I got the expert stuff here.

And I just Googled it.

Yes, it does need a ground plane.

What it does is it probably worked.

A lot of antennas will work half-baked.

They will not be efficient.

And the SWR is probably, they could be very, very narrow.

When we say narrow, for anyone listening, what we're listening, what we're talking about is very narrow bandwidth.

Even, it might only be a couple kilohertz.

It might be that tight.

And so when you start transmitting, you'll notice on your radio, your SWR is going crazy.

Because the sidebands you're creating from your single sideband signal and your voice modulation are even,

may even be outside the bandwidth of the antenna.

So the ground plane helps immensely, immensely.

And to me, well, not to me, it's a fact that it's essential.

You really do need it.

That's why I put that short comment out there tonight when Mike first posed a question to, I think, Scott,

about the, I think, Antron or some such antenna like that, whatever.

I'm not familiar with that antenna.

But basically, the ground plane or the counterpoise is really, truly the other half of the system.

Go ahead.

Yeah, he said Antron 99.

That's what he was talking about.

I have one of them.

I had it in 10 meters.

And I put it up.

It was recommended.

I, back, way back when years, put it up.

It did not work.

It did.

They just didn't do what I wanted it to do.

So I took it on and put something else up that does work.

And, again, we have counterpoise on this.

That one, we didn't have counterpoise on.

I might put it back up again and have a counterpoise on it.

It'll probably work real well.

But, yes, I'm a counterpoise person.

Over the years, I've learned I need counterpoise.

And the other half of it, the other half of it, the dipole is the counterpoise, which works rather well.

And I have an inverted V right now, a G5RV up that I'm playing with.

And I'll tell you what, it's working well with a one-to-one balance.

And it's inverted.

So that's working well.

So that would be another good travel antenna.

Over.

3LH.

I know.

KC-3 HQ said listening in.

Hi, Gene.

At WA3.

V-E-E over here in Westchester.

Very good.

Very, very good.

Well, are you and Gene going to be heading out to Colorado again this season?

Yeah, we're looking about May, going out about May, somewhere in that area.

We don't have any definite dates yet, but we're looking at May.

That's great.

What we can try this time is maybe even later on 40 meters, like 10, 11 o'clock local time here.

That would be 8 o'clock your time out there with mountain time.

And I'm used to this because my good friend Ed, N3CMI, I went to Drexel with, he lives in Sundance.

So he's in mountain time.

So I'm quite used to the adjustment.

And I used to work with all the folks at HP at Silicon Valley out there.

And that was three hours.

Anyway, yeah, we could try that because it might give us a little bit better propagation.

Because 40 by that time should be going long enough for us to be able to make it to the high prairie lands of Colorado.

Go ahead.

Roger, roger.

We are almost 5,000 feet in the air on the prairies.

If I ever go further west, I would be one mile high.

But we're sitting somewhere right around 5,000 feet.

5,000 feet 100.

Just a little further west, we'd be at one mile in the air.

Yes, yes.

But I was wondering, should I take a 20-meter hamstick along and play with that?

20 meters, that wouldn't work earlier, wouldn't it?

Absolutely.

We could try both.

In fact, what we could do is we could coordinate.

I don't think your cell service is that good there, but we could coordinate on that.

We'll talk more when the time comes closer.

But, yeah, I've got MFJ hamsticks.

In fact, I'm about ready to do some demos with some students over in the Philly area and stuff like that.

And I'm going to equip the porcupine with hamsticks.

I've already tried them with my FTDX-10 on 10 meters.

And I made the contact I made.

You're going to love this.

I talked to Mike, MFB, and Barry, KD-3X.

And I just need a much, much better ground plane.

I have to ground the radio to begin with to the frame of the car.

And then make sure that the antenna is similarly single-point grounded.

So that should help immensely.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, take the 20 meter.

Take the 40 meter.

And you know what?

If you're out there, you may as well take the 10 meter just in case 10 happens to be open.

You might be able to make some contacts for yourself out there.

Go ahead.

Roger, I'll probably take three hamsticks along.

I was thinking of taking two 40s out there.

I think out two 40s and make a rotatable dipole.

I have a Gizmo.

I can stick two antennas end-to-end and make a rotatable dipole.

How do you think that would work?

I would experiment that up on Turkey Hill there first to make sure.

Because you've got to get some distance between them.

Even, and you know, you drove trucks a lot and stuff like that.

You know, these guys with CB, they try to get separation even on 10 meters.

And you still don't get enough separation.

They think they do.

With the two antennas, one-on-one west coast mirror and the other on the other west coast mirror,

that still isn't enough separation.

So that might, I don't know, I would experiment with that to see if that would really work.

I know my buddy out there in Sundance, Wyoming, is experimenting right now with phased arrays.

But he's got a 35-acre piece of property in a subdivided ranch.

His property is a couple acres bigger than this entire development I'm in here in West Ocean Township.

So separation might certainly be the challenge there.

Go ahead.

With our trucks, we would put them out.

Yeah, we'd try and get nine feet away from the antennas, between the two antennas.

And you should have had 10 feet.

But we didn't have it.

We just made it work.

And they did work.

It was leading the antenna forward on the mirror mount, which would change the capacitance between the antenna and the truck.

We did that.

And then we got them tuned up and they worked.

And they worked okay.

But they weren't the best, the optimum.

But they did work.

By leading them forward and changing the capacitance.

We didn't change the SWR.

We changed the SWR by changing the capacitance.

Over.

Absolutely.

The issue with those kinds of arrangements is that they become very flaky, where even if you walk close to it yourself, your body capacitance is enough to change the tuning.

So sometimes those aren't very robust.

But I think you do well with a single.

And I'm not trying to discourage you from trying.

That would be an interesting experiment.

And we'd be interested to hear on 985 how you do with that.

But nonetheless, I think you would do quite well with a single hamstick.

What brand hamsticks do you have?

I think I've got the MFJ and I've got the Workman.

I picked them up.

I think I bought the MFJs a long time ago.

But I think I got the Workman's probably from a silent key somewhere.

Go ahead.

Lakeland made the first MFJs I knew of.

I have a couple of Lakelands and I have MFJs.

That's what I have for hamsticks.

I think they work well.

I talked to you probably on an MFJ.

I don't think I had any Lakelands out there.

But I think it was an MFJ I talked to you this last year.

I remember quite well.

Well, we made the contact for sure.

I know one time we had to try a couple times.

But we made the contact for sure.

You were in Colorado.

I was back here.

And all I have here is a fan dipole.

That's going to be fixed, though.

I'm thinking about a hex beam.

And I'm definitely going to put the 5B TV up here in the spring for sure.

And I'm thinking about a remote station.

I don't know yet.

These are all great dreams.

The older we get, the more ambitious the ideas are.

But, you know, execution becomes a little more of a challenge.

Things creep in and everything else.

And this retirement is killing me.

I mean that in a very good way.

I mean, just so many fun things to do.

And especially with Elmering and mentoring, it's just a lot of fun.

And I need to get some courses together.

People have been asking for courses on 985.

And that's supposedly K3DTS.

So I've got some admin work there to do to get that ready.

But we'll be doing some courses just about this kind of stuff.

And I've got a nice cadre of 985ers who can help me teach this stuff.

Or specialize in it.

Chuck, for instance, is on antennas.

I mean, I'd go to him for advice on antennas.

So, and he had a great system.

Oh, you would have loved this.

When we put the antennas up at the site back last Monday, what we did was we measured using the formula, of course, 468 over the frequency in megahertz.

That gets you approximately where you are.

You put the antenna up, and then you see where it's really resonant.

And then you take it down, and you make the adjustments by a ratio.

And then you go ahead, and you put the antenna up.

And I asked him, I said, okay, you put the antenna back up, standby.

We put the antenna back up.

And he says, I'm going to predict it will be resonant at this frequency.

And I'll tell you what, it was amazing.

We put that 40-meter dipole up on the ridge there, on the top of the ridge.

And it was almost dead on from what he said, all by him doing some calculations right there in the woods, in the cold.

But he said, okay, this is how you do that.

Last workbench, you probably remember, I actually asked him to explain what he did.

A-A-3-L-H-W-A-3-V-E-E.

I remember you asked him.

He explained it.

I think a lot of us do it right over everybody's heads.

What I'd like to see you do sometime when you go up there is use an antenna analyzer.

I don't have one, but I know where I can get one.

I can borrow one.

Or maybe I could even buy it by now.

I get an antenna analyzer and understand how they work.

Really see one in use and show me how it's done so I would understand that.

That would really help me, I think, a lot out in Colorado.

I use basic NSWR meter, play with the antenna until the SWR is under 1.5 and I don't need a tuner.

I just shoot it from the radio right to the antenna.

But I want to put a choke mount on it this time.

I want to do that.

Just get a little more of a can out the antenna.

We're talking hamsticks.

On a magnet mount, a triangle magnet that I have.

Put that out there and give that a shot.

We'll certainly do that.

In fact, I'll make it known when I'm going up there.

Obviously, it'll be a much better weather.

If we get access, pretty much.

Things have got to melt, basically.

It's got to be reasonable temperatures up there.

I'm not going up there in this stuff.

Even if there wasn't any snow, I'm not going up there in 20-degree weather, that's for sure.

Because we have to do outside work.

And this is no fun.

But I have an AA-3000.

I also have an AA-600, a rig expert.

And every time I use this thing, I think of the folks in the Ukraine.

because these were designed and manufactured by rig experts in Kiev, Ukraine.

And they're excellent, excellent instruments.

Pricey, but I don't ever expect to buy another antenna analyzer.

This AA-3000 is wonderful.

And we did some initial tests up there when these antennas were put up.

And I tabulated stuff and sent it to Joe, George, Keith, and Chuck.

But we need to go back because we had some problems on Saturday night up there where you probably heard us talking about it,

where the 75-meter dipoles we had, there was a spike in SWR.

Very, very strange.

Chuck wasn't involved in a conversation, but me and Joe and Keith were talking about trying to understand what actually was going on there.

And Joe and I, in particular, did not have any idea or any kind of conjecture technically how what they were seeing could possibly happen.

The only thing I could speculate, and it is complete speculation, is that there's a problem with the coax.

We had, it was so cold up there Saturday, Saturday night, that the coax, the old coax we had, the RG-213, was actually starting to crack.

And that could very well have been a factor.

Go ahead.

This is AA-3-0-8 for ID.

Okay.

Yeah, that was just too much.

I ran field day here at home.

I was looking for you guys.

I couldn't find anybody.

But we were out having fun banging out contacts here, too.

So we had fun with that.

But, yeah.

Ladder line.

Would you guys ever consider some kind of ladder line feed, or is that against somebody's religion to do that?

What do you think?

I use ladder line here.

It's what they call the crappy brown stuff, because a lot of folks like the open wire line.

But I do, I have an 80-meter dipole that I feed with the 450-ohm ladder line stuff with no balance.

I should probably redo everything.

Everything's going to be redone in the spring over here, for sure.

Because the antennas are pretty pathetic.

They've been up there now for 15, 20 years.

And they need some serious, serious work.

And that includes the one I'm talking on, the X300 diamond.

But anyway, we actually have, of course, the one-to-one current balance up there.

So we use coax, pretty much.

And the one thing that I wanted to mention about, on that very note, the one thing I wanted to mention about the antenna analyzers, or any kind of SWR bridge, or most SWR bridges, I would presume that they all operate like this, but I don't know that for a fact.

But like the bird 43 commercials that I have over here, there's one in line right now on my HF station here.

And the bird 43s we take in the field, and the antenna analyzers.

The SWR that's red, when it says one-to-one or close to one-to-one, that is into a 50-ohm system.

And other than that, you start to get errors in the SWR.

So if you have a greatly mistuned system, the SWR reading is somewhat dubious to begin with.

But this will tell you, the beauty of the antenna analyzer like this is it will not only tell you the SWR, but it will also tell you all the components, the capacitance, passive reactants, the inductive reactants, and the real component, the resistive component.

You just go to a different screen, it'll have all that.

You can even plot a Smith chart on this thing.

It's very, very nice all the way around.

WLHWA3VEE.

Good conversation going on here.

Roger on that.

I like to, you know, I have crappy brown stuff feeding my G5RV.

And hey, I worked on Costa Rica the other day.

I mean, we have worked on it.

We have worked hands and knee on this G5RV.

And it tunes up real well from 80s through 10s.

10s don't do so good.

But, you know, all the rest of that I work, it works well.

But 10, the SWR is about 1.7 and I just can't get it lower than that.

But nonetheless, that's a ladder line set and it works.

Absolutely.

I know over here on my van type, well, I've worked in Australia.

I'm usually not up that time of night.

I have come down here in the middle of the night, but just not in recent years.

But once I'm up, in the middle of the night I'm up.

And that's never get back to sleep again.

And then the next day I'm taking naps and it's just not good.

But, yeah, middle of the night I'm quite sure I'd be operating Pacific from here and so on and so forth.

These antennas, like I said, these antennas need serious work.

But they're still resonant.

I mean, I've still got great SWR on them and stuff like that.

And I definitely get out.

I work contests and everything from here.

So not a problem.

But, yeah, I guess we're not averse to it.

It's a little harder to handle because the actual termination.

Sooner or later, you've got it connected to a modern rig, which is pretty much what we operate.

Modern defined even from, like, TS-440s, TS-450s, things like that, from mid-'90s on.

But if we were connecting to a tuner like my Dentron over here, my MT-3000, which does have it,

that's where my ladder line gets terminated.

That's a whole different issue.

But up there, the convenience factor really lends itself to the coax.

Go ahead.

All right.

Just to say this.

I haven't looked this up.

I've studied it and I've played with it.

The G5RV, I have, for a long time, I didn't have any ballon at all in it.

And then I was wondering about it putting a ballon in the end of it.

In other words, my G5RV is 102 feet long.

All right.

And it's 37 feet of ladder line.

It goes to a choke ballon.

Then it goes to Elmar 400 to the tuner.

And it works well that way.

I was wondering if you guys would try something like that.

Or why you guys don't.

I guess maybe it's, of course, some guys are against the crappy brown stuff.

But on the other hand, it works well for me.

I'll tell you what.

In our case, simplicity is the mother of all designs.

It's very simple what we have, and it works.

We put dipoles up, one-to-one ballon, coax to the radio, and we're done.

We don't have to worry about all the radiation and all that kind of other stuff going on.

We have some funny things go on up there on Saturday night, which we can't explain without some more data.

But that system, yeah, that could work.

And it does work, like you said, but we don't need anything like that.

We already have the dipoles, and those are more than adequate.

I was starting to look at the log today.

We're working British Columbia.

I think Joe and Luke on CW, they were working France.

I think there were some other European countries in there.

Going through the log and ended up taking a nap because it got, oh, my goodness.

It's a long log.

We had over 450 contacts.

So I didn't get halfway through the log.

But, I mean, we're working all over the place just with simple dipoles.

Go ahead.

Okay.

But you're saying you guys are running the coax on the antenna straight to the radio, no tuner, except the tuner and the radio.

Is that what you're saying you're doing?

Correct, because the dipoles are resonant.

So, for instance, our 75-meter dipole, one is resonant at 3.85, and the other is resonant at 3.59 or 3.6.

So right there you've got a 50-ohm system directly.

You have 50-ohm coax fed by a 50-ohm radio.

So you have maximum power transfer.

So everything works very efficiently.

We don't need to do anything else.

Go ahead.

All right.

Well, okay.

I don't have 20 antennas up to do all that.

But, yeah, well, I have works for me.

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What is W3GMS Monday Night Workbench Net?