N. T. “Len” Carlson, K4IWL was a long-time DARC member before he retired to Florida, and his article about his favorite multi-band antenna was a popular page on our old website. I’ve looked in the club archives and found his paper for your reading—and on-air—pleasure.
Multi-band antennas can be very tricky to build and tune, but if you put in the effort required to adjust them, you can have a lot of fun.
Have a look at his article here.
During the July 2020 DARC Board Meeting, the issue of noise on the DARC 146.880 repeater was discussed. Tony NT5TM did a street level inspection July 10, 2020 and noted NO issues or apparent damage to any of the antennas. A plan was formulated for an early repeater site inspection Sunday July 12, 2020.
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The response and interest in my presentation was great! Here are the links from the presentation and the details of my antenna build. Remember, we’ll be building this antenna at the July 28th, 2018, Lecture and Lab.
My modifications to the design by F3WM:
If you want to reproduce my design exactly, use CQ-118 from The Wireman.
I wanted full 2-meter band coverage; I used a 19 11/16” (498mm) upper section and a 19 3/4” (500mm) lower section instead. His size will work better in a radome, if you want to weatherproof the antenna.
If you attended today’s Lecture and Lab, I hope you had fun! If you need a copy of Budd’s original Buddipole plans, you can find them here. My add-on page of changes is available in this file. Some of you also had questions about the choke balun that I use. You can find more information in this “RFI-HAM” document; I followed the bifilar choke instructions on page 37. [Edit in 2020: the information about the “radio doughnut” chokes has been moved to a separate choke cookbook.]
Our next club meeting will be on September 5th. NWS radar expert Jason Dunn will present on “Reading Weather Radar.”
Don’t forget to sign up for Lifewalk! Members, check your email! The DARC will be supporting this charity run/walk on Sunday, October 1st. Club members have received sign-up links in their email. Non-members who’d like to help should send us a message using the contact form.
We will have several extra sets of parts at the August Lecture and Lab, so don’t panic if you forgot to pre-register. What should you bring with you to the build?
At the very least, you’ll want to bring your choice of feedline connector. For many hams this will be a panel-mount SO-239, but you might prefer a panel-mount N or BNC. You’ll also need to bring some electrical tape, and possibly some coax if you want to test your antenna. A soldering iron and some solder will help you make much stronger connections.
Our August, 2017 Lecture and Lab will focus on the same antenna we discussed at our July meeting: the homebrew Buddipole. This is a simple, lightweight antenna that performs well, and if you visit our Lecture and Lab, you can leave with a finished antenna for your station or go-kit.
I hope you enjoyed the presentation! I had a lot of fun building and using my Buddipole. Here are the links that were presented at the end of the presentation.
Jim Brown, K9YC, author of a very comprehensive guide to RFI and Baluns http://audiosystemsgroup.com/RFI-Ham.pdf
The July 11, 2017 DARC club meeting will feature an antenna building presentation by Tony Medina (NT5TM). Join the DARC crew for this exciting presentation details on the meeting location are here on this link.
Tony will present about building a homemade Buddipole portable dipole.
If your’re interested in building a clone of the Alphamatch, a.k.a the “magnetic longwire balun” that was discussed at the October 4th, 2016 meeting, here are some links you might find helpful. I’ve added a link to my hand-out from Tech Net on the Hill!
The End-Fed Half-Wave tuner we built at yesterday’s lecture and lab really does work! I disconnected the tuner from my base rig and cut some wires to the “30 meter” length printed on the PCB. The half-wave wire was tied to an old railroad spike that I threw up into a pecan tree. The counterpoise is sort of lying on the back deck.
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