Antenna inspection by drone.

A few windy days have "disturbed" one of my antennas. It's a windom antenna up about 12 meters in a little forest I have next to my house. It's quite tricky to see by eye, and my DJI Phantom 2 Vision needed some exercise, so I decided to have a go. It went well. 

The antenna centre looks okay

The far end seems okay too.

Here I clearly have a problem. Now to figure out how to fix it - using the drone. 

Active as IS0/LA5EKA on Sardinia

I will be active from Sardinia between the 8th and the 22nd of July 2015. Equipment is my KX3 and a dipole fed with TV twin lead, up five meters above the house I'm staying in. Location is Valledoria on the north west coast.

The antenna, 2 x 14.5 meters fed with TV twin-lead and hung up in a five meter fishing pole taped to the TV-antenna. 

The shack. KX3, Begali Traveller Light and a Piglet for connecting to the electronic log on my iPad. The days of paper logs are long gone in my realm. 

Dipole antenna-center, part 2.

I received the antenna-centers from Shapeways today, it didn´t take more than a week from idea to actual device in hand. Initial testing show them to be a success, and just as I expected them. Now I can easily make portable antennas, without having to tie wires in knots and rats-nests to make them. The weight go them is around 5 grams each, so they´re not really noticeable even on hikes in the wilderness with a heavy backpack.

They are made in what Shapeways calls "Strong & Flexible Plastic", which is laser-sintered nylon. How they will stand up to UV I have no idea, but these things are for portable use mostly, and they´ll last for years anyway.

Threading 300 ohm twin-lead inside the dipole-center.

A very simple dipole setup. 

If you want one, they are available online from Shapeways here :

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/gisles

Dipole antenna-center design

A while ago I needed to make myself a new portable mulitband dipole for field use. I decided that I wanted to try twin-lead feeder, giving me an antenna similar to the G5RV. I cut out a dipole center out of some plastic I had lying around, and used strips to fasten the feeder to it. Needless to say it didn't look very good, but it worked. An excellent companion for my Elecraft KX3.

To be able to make more of those antennas, I designed a dipole center in CAD, and had it manufactured by Shapeways. I will receive the first samples in a few weeks, and will post a review when I get them.

If you want to try one for yourself, you can actually also order one directly from Shapeways here:
http://www.shapeways.com/shops/gisles

Cushcraft R8 vertical - five years on.

In 2007 I moved into a new house. I didn't get the chance to put up any real antennas until the summer of 2008. I had already decided on a vertical, i addition to a small beam (MA5B) and a Windom (FD-4). I spent quite a bit of time figuring out which antenna to get, and I at last decided on the Cushcraft R8. Mostly because it had 40 and 30, and also because it is made up of halfwave endfed dipoles needing no radials. The only thing that kept coming back in reviews was the antenna "going banana" after a while if not guyed properly - meaning it started to sag to the shape of a banana. Of course the only people writing reviews, often seem to be the ones that have something to complain about, so I decided to give it a go. I mounted it on the apex of my roof, and used thin braided nylon flagropes as guys to "de-banana" it on two sides. Setting up proper guying on all sides was out of the question, and the nylon ropes I used are not very tight.

R8 - no banana.

The antenna has been up for five years as I write this , and there have been no problems whatsoever. No "bananaing", no corrosion, no breakage, no nothing. I assembled it, put it up, and there it still is. The climate up here in Norway is harsh, ranging from severe rain- and windstorms, via hot very sunny summer days to severe ice-storms - and all in between.

The braided nylon "guys"

Closeup of the matching box

LA5EKA/MM QRV in the Barents Sea

I am QRV in the Barents Sea until October 8th aboard the HU Sverdrup II. Equipment is the Elecraft KX3, LA1IC 2x12.5m trap (W3DZZ) antenna and the Begali Magnetic Traveller Light. Conditions are so so, but right now there is an opening on ten to Southern Europe. 

I had forgotten to bring my KXUSB cable for this trip, so I had to make a serialcable following this pinout :

Image by Elecraft. Works like a charm. Luckily we had a bunch of serial to USB converters onboard, so I can use it with my laptop. I use Logger32 for logging by the way. 

Migrating from website to blog.

I will slowly migrate my almost 16 year old website to the blog-format. Hopefully this will be easier to maintain, and also be more interesting to the readers. See pages with LA-HamBase 2012 for info about and download of the software.