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Ham radio as a hobby can be amazing at times when conditions are right and all of your equipment is tuned right and you are in a low electrical noise location.  And at other times it can be very frustrating when things go wrong.  No sun spots for good propagation.  High SWR for some unknown reason, etc…  I recently experienced both sides of the hobby – here’s my story.

I had a dentist appointment in Green Bay, Wisconsin recently and the 30 mile or so drive from Appleton, Wisconsin gave me time to do some HF work with my mobile HF radio.  Running just 100 watts into a less than sturdily mounted “ham stick” antenna on 20 meters I made an outstanding contact with a ham radio base station in France!  For some time after that I nearly gloated to myself about how lucky I was to be able to enjoy this hobby and how everything was working so well.  Bad move!

A couple of weeks later I was driving home from work and flipped from 2 meters over to 20 meters.  The band was surprisingly quiet!  Was it due to low solar activity?  AND – there was surprisingly little traffic on the band.  A few people, but not many.  Hmmm…  I started to get a bad feeling…  I went to an open part of the band and made a quick transmission with my call sign with one eye on the SWR indicator on the radio’s display mounted on my dash.  There it was – a flashing “SWR” – I probably had an antenna problem.

Well, I had mounted the antenna on the trunk in a snow storm and tuned it when it was around zero degrees Fahrenheit…  Not a time that LockTite epoxy would work on the mounting set screws.  Surely the mount had lost it’s ground connection.  So I popped the trunk and checked it out – good tight connections…  hmmm…

When I closed the trunk I noticed – the tunable radiating element (the adjustable length whip at the top of the antenna) had become a LOT shorter.  A closer inspection showed that the two set screws that held the antenna to the tuned length at the top of the antenna had been shaken or vibrated out.  Made sense.  That antenna is quite long and whips around in the wind at highway speeds quite a bit.  So I presumed I would be in HF withdrawal until I could find someone with an expensive antenna analyzer that could help me re-tune the antenna.

Ahh but I was wrong!  On another drive back from Green Bay, Wisconsin I decided to just listen on 20 meters.  Surely I would hear nothing, but I was bored…  To my surprise I listened to some quite strong and clear traffic between Georgia, USA and Vancouver, Canada during the 2010 Winter Olympics!  To my mind – it shouldn’t have worked, but it did…  It was quite a surprise.  And it gave me cause to check other bands, including shortwave bands, to see what else I was missing!

As of this post, I still have not found the correct size replacement set screws for the antenna…  grumble grumble…  The good news is that the air temps are warming and it will soon be warm enough to cement the set screws in place once I do acquire them.

Stay radio active!

Jon Kreski, AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN

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I attended my first Yo Yo Net annual picnic today and got a nice education on the Carolina Windom antenna for HF ham radio use.  Ultimately it could also be used for shortwave radio listening.  I got interested in the antenna once I spotted a bow and arrow on the picnic table that had a fishing real taped to one portion of the bow.  Of course, I thought, this is going to be used to get that antenna into the trees.  I had heard about the plan on the drive to Oconto, WI from Appleton, WI.

Sure enough.  The arrow (with a blunt tip and weight) was shot up and over branches of the tree.  A stout weedwacker style bright yellow line rolled freely off of the reel.  The weight was enough to allow the arrow to drop back to a height where it could be grabbed.  Eventually the antenna mid-point of the inverted V was hoisted up to the point that the arrow went over the branches of the tree.  I would guess 15 – 20 feet up.  But first more about the Carolina Windom.

This link http://www.radioworks.com/ccwcover.html contains some good information on the Carolina Windom.  It is relatively simplistic design and yet the darn thing radiates on quite a number of bands.  Part of the secret to this antenna is that a large part of the feedline is a radiating element.  I will let you read a bit about the antenna at the link above.  Below I will describe my impressions of the antenna’s performance.

I’ve operated on HF for a few years now.  And I know good signals when I hear them.  This antenna was used with an ICOM HF radio (7 something – no pro I don’t believe) with an MFJ antenna tuner and no amp – and with a 12 volt battery.  This was in a park at a picnic.  If it were not for the lack of neat coils and needed to be untangled the antenna would have gone up in minutes.  It does need SOME height.  A mast attached to the side of a house probably would work like the height used today.

The antenna was tuned to 20 meters.  A contact was made between N9JKX (owner of the Carolina Windom antenna and other gear) and a 6 call (I think it was N6DXO – I am not sure on the first letter).  The 6 call was in San Francisco, CA.  His signal was very loud and clear on our end.  He reported an S9 from us.  That was the first contact.

The sweet thing about this antenna is the number of bands it can operate on and the various configurations you can hang it in.  If you want one antenna that is relatively inexpensive to build, durable and easy to hang and is portable – then consider the Carolina Windom.  I was impressed – I think there may be one in my future at some point…

Stay radio active!

Jon Kreski, AB9NN-9

http://www.HamRadioResources.com