Coaxial Cable Entrance Box

Since the wife is off entertaining her visiting friend, and it's too soggy in the backyard to do much right now, I've been tinkering out in the garage addressing a few items on the "88' Antenna Project" list.

One of which is an "Entrance Box" for the coaxial cable and power/control cable for the SGC-230 autocoupler. Getting cables in and out of a residence can be a tricky thing. Getting them in and out properly, while looking "acceptable", can take a bit more doing. The installation has to be weather proof, and critter proof. I'm going with two 8x8x4 outdoor-rated, plastic electrical boxes. They'll be mounted back-to-back, one inside, one outside, and will give me access to the cables I need, with some "room to grow" in the boxes.

Here's the outside one taking shape.

The box-within-the-box contains a large ferrite core with ten turns of RG-400 teflon coax wound on it, connected to an SO-239 jack. Basically a big honkin' inductance in series with the coax to block any RF currents on the shield of the coax, and keep RF outside the house. There's a 90* adapter on the output jack at the top, and that will be connected via a coax jumper to a long bulkhead feedthrough connector like you see at the bottom of the picture, which will pass through the wall to the inside box.

Since this is a plastic box, I'm using a large stainless steel fender washer as a reinforcement where the bulkhead connector passes through. There's another one that'll be going on the inside of the box after I cut down one side of it. If you look at the bottom edge of the washer, you can see some of it hangs below the edge of the box. That's about how much I have to trim off the other one so it fits in the box. I suppose I could have spaced the isolation choke higher, but I wanted it mounted flat.

The mating box mounted on the inside of the house will have a bulkhead jack on one side of it, and a small cable for power to the SGC coming out. All I have to do to 'safe' the radio is disconnect those two, and we're isolated from the antennas in stormy weather. Both have gasketed lids, and I'll be packing the outside one with Styrofoam for some extra insulation.

These are advertised as "paintable with regular house paint", so we'll paint the outside one to match the siding, and the inside one to match the walls.

So these meet both the Electrical and Wife Criteria, and should work nicely.

And say hello to the newest Radio Stray to take up residence at "Zarkov's Radio Ranch".

It's a little Yaesu FRG-100 General Coverage shortwave receiver in pretty "meh" condition. You should have seen it before the preliminary cleaning I gave it! It was advertised as "Non working because I don't have a power supply for it", so I'm assuming the worst. BUT....seeing as it uses a really oddball DC power connector that even I don't have, I'm temped to believe him. Even if it's mostly toast, I'm only out a little over $40, depending on what's salvageable. If it works, then I'll do a major clean and spit shine on it, as these are quite decent little radios.

Quick update.....I connected the little Yaesu to my power supply with a pair of clip leads, and it works. All the functions work normally, so after a good scrubbing, this little guy will either go on the shelf, or back on eBay, where functional units like this bring ~$200. Not bad for a $40 'investment'.....

30* and Snowing

Quite a change from yesterday when it was 75* and sunny!

My "patio table snow gauge" shows about 4" so far. The ladder up against the tree is so I can get up there and bore the hole for the center mast of the 88' wire antenna. NOT on the schedule today!

And it looks like the trash truck has been by, so time to go brush the cans off and wheel them back into the garage.

The high today was about 45* at 0900, and it's been dropping since then. Expected lows are in the low 20's for the next few nights, with daytime highs in the low to mid 40's.

Be a nice night to crank up the fireplace, pop a DVD into the player, and relax.....

Construction Delayed Due To Spring Cleaning

The wife is having a friend of hers visit for a week, so I agreed to 'stop work' on the antenna after the weekend so I could help with the cleaning required before her friend gets here. I haven't completely stopped, but from outward appearances I'm doin' the Homeowner Thing.

Scrubbed all four bathrooms today; toilets, mirrors, and vanity tops all sparkle. Swept and mopped the floors, too!

Then I proceeded to check the wattage of the light bulbs in the kitchen ceiling fixtures so I could see what was in there, and put in some brighter ones per the wife's request.
10 minute job, right?

WRONG!

Instead of getting my ladder out, I used one of those "light bulb grabbers" on a pole to unscrew the bulb. WELL......the bulb didn't unscrew, the fixture did. Just came plumb apart before my very eyes, it did! I was astonished that someone could have put the fixture together so poorly that the torque requirements to remove a stinking light bulb overwhelmed the prevailing torque of the various screwed together parts of the fixture.

Then I remembered where I was, and started laughing. Every.Single.Thing the previous home owners touched is screwed up. Curtain rod hangers too close together resulting in curtains with huge gaps (and light leaks) to the window sides, towel racks held to the walls with spit-and-spackle, toilet paper holders that ripped out of the wall when you tugged on the roll a little too hard (happened to the wife), and other misadventures of a flip gone wrong.

At least all they touched was cosmetic stuff. Very annoying, but *zero* safety hazards that I've found.

And since we have The Little Guy from early Sunday afternoon to late Monday afternoon, much time was spent pulling his Little Red Wagon around the cul-de-sac, playing with Pebbles in the back yard, and seeing him do his best "WHOA!" when he saw something new out in the garage. We then spent quite some time explaining all the things he pointed at and said "Whazz Dat?". He was bit upset that gramma's car was parked in the driveway instead of the garage, but since it made his wagon (and the stroller) much easier to get out, he pretty much let it slide.

Talked to neighbor about using the auger to bore the hole for the new post that'll be both the end mast and autocoupler mount, and he agreed it was one of those "D'OH!" decisions that we both overlooked until faced with the Magic Disintegrating Fence. And while the post is in the garage, I'll drill some pilot hols for the hardware I'll be using to mount the mast and the coupler box.

And I lucked out and found a Yaesu SP-5 speaker.

This is the "matching" speaker for the FT-1000 and 1000D radios, and looks much nicer than the Palstar I bought to use with the K2. The Palstar didn't work very well with the Yaesu. I had to run the AF Gain (volume) at about 90% or greater to get a decent sound level out of it. If I had the headphones at a comfortable level and pulled them out, you could barely hear the speaker. Very disappointing.

The Yaesu speaker has switchable filters, consisting of capacitors and inductors, allowing you to "roll off" high, low, or both, ends of the audio. They're passive filters, and make a noticeable difference. I also took the cabinet apart and used some stick-on acoustic foam on the insides. It makes the enclosure well-damped, and eliminates annoying "buzzes" and other enclosure resonances.

So we're still plugging along on the "Great 84' End Fed Hertzian Antenna Project", but running at lower capacity for the next week or so while the wife's friend is here.

And I still have two more days to help with chores, and probably get some other home owner issues addressed.

Antenna Delay Due To Construction.....

If you remember the fence:

This is the original fence installed when the houses were built in the mid-to-late 1970's, so it's well over 30 years old, and the wood is disintegrating. I though about getting some replacement pickets, then realized the cross stringers are probably in about the same shape, so I started thinking about replacing the entire panel, and ........WARNING! MISSION CREEP!!

So I stopped, had a cuppa, and thought some more about it.

I've decide to forego mounting anything to the fence, except the counterpoise/radials, which are just #10 wire stapled to the fence, and just sink a new 4x4x8 cedar post.

This will be easier and cheaper than replacing the whole panel ($25 post vs $85 panel), and my neighbor has an electric auger, a bunch of quickcrete, a mixing tub, and is quite well versed in planting fence posts in this soil.

I was going to have our in-law General Contractor drop off a panel this coming week as he keeps a lot of them 'in stock', but thought about it, and by the time he would have taken to get it here, us tearing the old one down and disposing of it, and then putting the new one up, we could have the post planted.

So the next trip to HD will bring home a post, and the neighbor and I can get to work on it.

I also found out my drill bit extensions are for smaller drills, so I'll have to get a new one of those so we can bore the hole in the tree to drive in the mast.

Didn't Get SQUAT Done Today.....

But I did mange to burn through some cash. Made my Home Depot run to get a bunch of hardware, and got out of there about $30 lighter. But since I have to go right past Harbor Freight on the way home.....

Wound up buying one of their new "Hercules" line of 20 Volt cordless drills. Also picked up a spare 5.0AHr battery, as I've been using cordless tools long enough to know very well that you can't ever get a job done on one charge, unless it's home owner stuff. Plus the 8 year old batteries on my 20 year old Makita drill are on their last legs, and nobody here has a reasonably priced replacement. The guy at HF told me their "Bauer" power tools are made by Makita, and the new Hercules line is made by DeWalt. Since I bought the two-year replacement warranty, he also suggested that when it was getting to be two years, to bring it back and exchange it for another one. Our General Contractor in-law tells me that's what all the contractors out here do. Buy a generator or pump, or other $$ item, get the replacement plan, then run the snot out of the equipment, then get a new one right before the warranty expires.

These are "normally" $109.95, but this weekend they're movin' 'em out at $89.95. A 2.5AHr replacement battery is only $25, while the biggest 5.0AHr is $40.

And since cutting that mutant-alien-on-steroids antenna rope is waaay harder than it looks, I popped $15 on a hot knife, specifically made for hacking synthetic rope.

The reason I bought it is because cutting the 5/16" poly rope is a bear. I keep my knives as sharp as I know how, and I could barely hack through it. I also learned you do NOT use a serrated blade on the stuff as it really makes a messy, frayed, wild strands everywhere cut.

This stuff laughed at my aviation snips, mocked a brand new Xacto knife, and taunted my sharpest cable cutters. Just noticed it almost looks like and old flintlock pistol.

So anyway....I got one lousy, stinking end mast mounted on the far end fence post, and two puny backer blocks installed. The neighbor had to bail to take his old dog to the vet (dog's OK. Vet thinks she just ate something too rich for her), so he wasn't around to give me a hand.

This is the mast as seen from where the feed point will be.

 See why we need to go over the tree? Here....let me move to the right a bit....

I zoomed in a bit so you could see the mast. The A-to-B distance between the masts is about 100'. Going "up and over" the tree will add a few feet to the distance, but I should have 15'~20' of rope on the end of the wire.

Better view...

There's an eyebolt at the top, with a loop of the 5/16" support rope holding a pulley. The support rope will go through the pulley, and down to a weight sliding in a PVC pipe. The weight will keep tension on the wire, and allow movement in the wind.

Backer blocks between the fence picket and new fence post.

I'm real close to buying a new panel of fence for this section. This 30 year old wood has about zero strength, and splits as soon as it hears your drill running. My neighbor is very frugal (notice the prop holding a background panel?), and while he put three new posts in, he reused the fence panel.

I have visions of doing this over in the future.....

Let The Recalls Begin!

Our next door neighbor, Weld County, has some serious oil and gas production areas, providing many, many good paying jobs. Colorado voters recently rejected Proposition 112 because it would have crippled (probably almost killed) oil and gas production state-wide.

It would have mandated 1/2 miles setbacks, forbidding oil and gas production within 1/2 mile of certain areas and facilities. It was soundly defeated, except in the urban areas like Denvertopia and Boulderandia.

For the children, you know.....

Well, since the last election put a lot of liberals in office, they decided to just write some almost identical legislation, and get Governor Polluted to sign it, which he'll gladly do.

For the children, you know.....

Uh, guys? You're trying to pass legislation that the majority of the people said "NO!" to. What part of "NO!" don't you understand?

So, concerned people have started various recall campaigns against those elected officials who are violating their oath of office.

Good article here on one of them who appears to have shot herself in both feet.....

IT’S ON: Galindo Recall Effort Gets Green Light 

 

Should be an interesting summer here in Colorado.....

Random Wire Antenna Project -Getting Stuff Staged-

Well I made some great progress today keeping the antenna project rolling. Went to Home Depot to pick up some stuff I erred on the quantity of, and a few other things I just flat forgot. I'll probably have five trips to HD by the time this is On-The-Air, so that makes up for the "One And Done" success of the little kitchen sink.

Oh, and I stopped at Harbor Freight first to get this bruiser.

Since I don't think my 3/8" Makita 14 Volt cordless drill with 8 year old battery packs is up to the task of boring a 1"+ hole 18" into a tree trunk, I popped for the $55 and got this guy. 1/2" chuck, variable speed, reversible, with big handles to hang on to.

 The "drill bit" above it is a Bosch 1-1/4" wood auger. The auger by itself will get us 6" into the tree, and then I have some drill bit extensions from my Home Theater Installer days that can get us down another 18", so we should be able to get the mast driven into the trunk an acceptable amount.

Unless Murphy shows up, and he undoubtedly will.....

And what's the most important part of a wire antenna?

88' feet of Davis RF 12 gauge "FlexWeave" antenna wire. They call it "The Cadillac of Antenna Wire", but it's more of a Cummins Diesel to me. It really carries the load, and lasts forever. With Gen-You-Ine glazed porcelain end insulators. Real Old Skool Radio stuff.

And in any installation-from-scratch like this, there were some bits to mod and fab.

The four redwood (it was cheap) blocks are the 'back up blocks' for mounting the autocoupler enclosure to the fence. Since the fence slats are 30+ year old wood of uncertain background, there's no way I'm screwing the autocoupler directly to it! I bought some construction screws (think mutant deck screws) that will go through the slats on the enclosure, though the fence slats, and into the redwood blocks. That should spread the load over more area, and reduce the stress on the old wood slats.

The little "U" shaped thingies are conduit straps that I modified to use a bigger diameter (1/4") lag screw, along with a flat and a lock washer. I'd much rather use something a bit more substantial than these flimsy stamped things, BUT, I had two sections of mast secured to a block wall with these back in Long Beach, and it held up fine. Out here, I'm doubling the number of straps from 2 to 4, and instead of 18" of mast on the wall, I'm going to slide the mast down a bit so I have 24" in contact with the post, and use four straps with aggressive hardware. We'll see how it holds up.

Ah, the mast! The two sections below with the eye bolts are the end masts.The one with the pulley is the center mast.

Wire antennas sway in the wind, and we get a lot of wind out here. You need to allow for this movement, or you'll be stretching/breaking antenna wire on a regular basis. The wire passes through the pulley and moves with a rolling motion instead of a sliding or rubbing motion, like if I just ran it through another eye bolt. Bad juju! The wire wears through and you're back to replacing it on a semi-regular basis. I shot some synthetic chassis/bearing grease into it, so let's hope that keeps it rolling.

I can't show you how the end masts handle the sway because they haven't been built yet. It's the kind of thing you do in the field during installation, so although I could fake it on the bench, I'll just take lots of "assembly" pix when we put this up.

And I'll be using this synthetic rope to secure the ends to the end masts. This is 5/16' diameter, and has a rated strength of 1,760 pounds. This is another product I've been using in the field for 25 years. I had some in outdoor use at my apartment for 12 years. It was  bit crusty when we took it down, but wasn't falling apart. After 6 years in Long Beach it was dirty, but looked great.

This stuff is like mutant alien paracord. Really strong, doesn't stretch, lasts a long time, and is reasonably priced. There's "better" stuff available, with double the breaking strength, but it also costs about double.

So I pretty much have everything staged and ready for installation. Until Murphy shows up, which he usually does.

And in going through this, and the pix, and writing it up, he just knocked. The far-end mast with the pulley and weight/spring to allow movement, is mounting to a new 4x4 fence post. No sweat.

The feed-end, where the autocoupler is located, is screwing into a fence slat over a new post. WELL.......the slat is positioned away from the post by the stringer is nailed to, so there's a gap, and I don't have any 1x3 or 1x4 filler board material.....RATS!

Oh, well....that's why I stage my projects before commencing. Looks like another trip to Home Depot.....

*****UPDATE*****

Thought it best to have a cuppa this morning, and then inspect the neighbor's fence  construction vs my fence construction. Our new fence was built with premade panels. the 'stringers' that the pickets are attached to are (approx) 1-1/2"x2-1/2" while the old fence uses 1-5/8"x3-3/4". So, the cedar "2x4" I bought will work as a backer for the end mast on the neighbor's fence, and I don't need to buy any more wood.

But I need some longer screws to install them, so yep, off to HD again.....

SGC Autocoupler Enclosure Modification

When this SGC-230 autocoupler was in use in Long Beach, it was in a clear plastic tote tub, mounted under the patio roof. Even though it was completely out of the sun, the plastic degraded so badly in the seven years it was outside that it crumbled and shattered when I pulled it down. For the 33' vertical experiment, I put it in a "Roughneck" plastic tub using a plastic breadboard for a back panel, and just plopped it on the ground.

For this iteration of my antenna "experiments", I need to mount the autocoupler to the fence, so I fell back on the way I did it in Long Beach, using two wood slats screwed to the enclosure, and then screw the wood slats to the fence slats using a length of 2x4 on the backside of the fence slats as a backer block.

Here's the stripped enclosure with the wood slats attached.

The slats are 1x3x36 oak from the Bargain Bin at Home Depot. Nice and straight and flat and CHEEP. I don't care that there's some chips and dents in them, but some people do.


 Inside shot of the box. The horizontal rows of holes at the top and bottom edges of the white plate are the screws that hold the slats on. The vertical rows of holes on the left and right are the attachment points for the SGC-230.

 This is the "Input" side of the autocoupler. The cable contains the RG-58A coax bringing in the RF from the radio, the DC power and ground, and a couple of signaling and control lines for remote control. The autocouplers will work quite fine with just the DC and RF applied, but SGC designed them with a few simple features that are nice to have. There's a "Tuned" signal that indicates when the tuner has the best match it can do, and a line that lets you "Lock" the tuner and inhibit it from automatically retuning when the load changes. This comes in handy if you use these in mobile operation where driving past objects can temporarily cause the autocoupler to 'hunt', and constantly try and rematch the antenna. The big stud on the right side is where the radials/counterpoise/ground system attaches, and where I'll reconnect the four radials I already have fabbed.

And this is the "Output" side or "Hot" side of the SGC. The ceramic terminal is the connection to the radiator. The piece of heavy cable you see is NOT coax; you never run coax on the output of these devices. It's a piece of "GTO" cable, meant for neon signs, and is rated at 25kV. Since this will be mounted out of harm's way, I can connect the antenna wire  to this terminal, taking care to provide an adequate amount of stress relief, i.e. slack.

 
SGC-230 all bolted back in the box, and just about ready to go!

The SGC autocouplers are another item I highly recommend.  I've never had one fail, and I've seen them mounted outside "AS IS", with no additional enclosure, on vehicles and boats, and while they looked pretty sad after 5+ years, they continued to function perfectly. There are other companies out there making very similar products, but I own two of these, and in the twenty-five years since I bought them used, they just keep ticking.

And best of all:

I also laid out and cut the 88' of wire I'll be using. It's #12 "FlexWeave" from Davis RF, and is very easy wire to work with. It uses "Rope Lay", and has 259 strands, making it extremely flexible and limp. This is from their website, and I can confirm you can tie a knot in the stuff, and then untie it months later. Pretty neat wire, and I had about 500' of it. Now I'm down to about 412'.....

So I'm humming along with this project, and have a few bits to gather up before the major stuff starts taking place. I'm going to try and get the end masts and autocoupler enclosure mounted on Thursday, depending on availability of my neighbor. The backer blocks are on his side of the fence, and he wants to help, so I hope he's around.

Random Wire Antenna Project Getting Started

I'm just getting going here putting up a permanent wire antenna. I really do need something better than the BuddiStick I've been using for several reasons. These antennas are really meant for temporary deployment, usually during portable operation. While they're built very well (the best I've seen!), they really don't stand up to 24/7/365 outdoor use here in Northern Colorado. Yes, I know a lot of people use them that way, and they've come up with ingenious ways to weather proof them, I just don't want mine to get all trashed when it doesn't have to. So, I'm tossin' up a big chunk of wire, and gonna load that up!

I can't say enough good things about the BuddiPole/BuddiStick antenna and the people that make them. These things are the Legos of the antenna world. You can almost configure them too many ways, but it's great fun to experiment with. They take a while to understand, and even longer to grok, but once you do you can build some very efficient antennas in a quite small space. Their customer service is exemplary, and the support for these things is phenomenal. Look into them if you need a small, light, portable antenna system and like to tinker with antennas.

While my BiddiStick 1/4-wave vertical is very effective on 20 Meters (14MHz band), it's physically too short for lower frequencies, and presents a non 50 Ohm impedance at higher frequencies. The "antenna tuner" add-on to my little Elecraft K2 is a wide-range "tuner", and can easily handle a mismatch of up to 10:1 VSWR. It's tuned anything I've ever connected to it, allowing the radio to put out full power into a 50 Ohm load. The "tuner" in the FT-1000D is designed to match up to a 3:1 mismatch, which basically means that it only works with an antenna that's already a fairly good match to 50 Ohms. Lots of people more properly refer to built-in "tuners" like this as "Line Flatteners", meaning the smooth out the bumps and ripples in an antenna system that's already in pretty good shape. In these cases, the "tuner" is at the radio, and a length of feedline (usually coaxial cable) runs to the antenna.

Why am I putting "tuner" in quotes? Because regardless of what people call these things ("Coupler" is the correct term), they cannot "tune" an antenna. The only way you can tune an antenna is by changing it physically; Length, height above ground, orienation, these are what you do to tune an antenna.. What all these devices do is to provide an impedance match between the feedline and the transmitter, enabling the transmitter to "see" a matched load and transfer maximum power. How well the antenna accepts that power and radiates it is anybody's guess. The important thing is that the transmitter is connected to a matched load and will happily hum along at maximum power. This also results in the feedline having anywhere from 1:1 VSWR to 20:1 (or higher) VSWR. Depending on the length and inherent loss of the cable used, very high (>10:1) VSWR can cause additional line loss. Coaxial lines with high VSWR also have a reputation for radiating (the cable becomes part of the antenna system), causing whatever pattern you thought you antenna had getting very distoted, and the resulting in RF in the shack, which is a whole 'nother article.

When the impedance matching device (aka "tuner") is located at the feed point of the antenna, different things happen.

#1, the load impedance presented to the transmitter is very nearly 50 Ohms, allowing the transmitter to deliver full power,

#2, the VSWR on the coaxial cable feedline is very close to 1:1, keeping voltage stress down,

#3, the chances of current flowing on the outside of the coax, making it radiate, are greatly diminished,

and #4, It'll tune damn near anything!

So, wire antenna supported as high as I can comfortably get it, fed by my trusty SGC-230 autocoupler.

And after much discussion with my buddy the Wire Antenna Guru, we've come up with some numbers that should work. I'll be running an 88' "Random Wire" antenna, with the ends about 15' off the ground, and the center at about 25'. This will be an "End Fed" antenna (otherwise it would be an off-length dipole!), and my SGC-230 autocoupler will be mounted on the fence at one end, with the wire connected to it. I'll run the ground radials along the fence about 4'~5' above the ground, giving me "Elevated Radials", which mitigates a lot of the ground loss. This is the loss that I saw when I had this coupler connected to the 33' vertical with only 4 radials laying on the ground. It would find a match, but it just didn't radiate very well compared to back in Long Beach where the radials were 8' above the ground.

The approximate center of the antenna will be about 25' high, using the 15' stump of the cottonwood we had cut down as part of the center support. I'm going to bore an 1-1/4" hole in the top of the trunk, and drive two sections of mast into the hole. The wire will come from the feed end, up to the mast, through a pulley, and then on to the far end, where the support rope will go through another pulley, and down to either a weight or a spring to keep some tension on it.

So I made up a list of stuff, and took a trip to Home Depot today. The Brown Truck of Happiness delivered my order from DX Engineering this afternoon, and I now have (I hope) all the bits and pieces to get this put together and in the air.

So stay tuned, pix will follow!

New (for Me!) Radio Installation

Not new as in brand-new, but a new one to me.

When I got back into Amateur Radio in 1995, there were four new radios considered "Top of the Line", and they were all way out of my price range.

The Big Boys were the Kenwood TS-950SDX ($4600), The Icom IC-775DSP ($4800), the Ten-Tec Omni VI+ ($2600), and the Yaesu FT-1000D ($4000).

The following photos are courtesy of RigPix.com

The Ten-Tec was punching way above it's "price weight" performance-wise, but Ten-Tec always did that. Those radios didn't appeal to me because the fit-and-finish on them wasn't what you expected in a serious radio, and they were always built a bit flimsy. It weighed 16 pounds.

The Icom has a reputation of being a very good radio, but several of my friends had problems at the time with a variety of brand-new, right-outta-the-box, high-end, Icom radios either being DOA, or failing spectacularly in the first few months, so I tended to shy away from certain Icom radios of that time period. It weighed 37 pounds.

The Kenwood was (and still is) a spectacular radio. I have one and love it. With addition of a narrow Inrad "Roofing Filter", it can hold it's own against newer radios costing thousands of dollars. Very smooth, sweet "Kenwood Audio", and you can listen to it for hours. Even though it was sold as part of the Kenwood 950-series radios, it was a completely different design architecture than the other three 950-radios. When QST magazine reviewed it, they said it was so different than the others that they were surprised that Kenwood didn't call it the TS-960S. It weighed 51 pounds.

The Yaesu was the heavy-weight champ. These radios weigh in at 52 pounds. They will NOT slide around on your desk when you plug in your headphones! Yaesu also extensively supported all the DXpeditions of the time, supplying these radios to teams of Hams who dragged them all over the world to extremely remote locations, and ran them 24/7 for days while their operation took place. From "Arctic Cold to Tropical Heat", these radios got the snot beat out of them, and took it. Definitely a SOLID radio!

So even though I'd really like a new Flex Radio 6xxx series, or a new Kenwood TS-890, or (drooool) a Yaesu FTdx-5000, I really don't think I can justify spending $4k or more on a new radio and connect it to the compromise antennas I'm stuck with (BTW...got a 'quickie' antenna project brewing) at this location.

I already have a TS-950SDX, so why not look for a good used FT-1000D to go with it? I have comparable rigs from Hallicrafters and Drake, dating to the mid 1960's, so why not get the other 'book-end' to the Kenwood and fill out my mid 1990's collection?

Took a couple of months, but I found this one, and it's a honey.

The "CQ WW WPX SSB" contest is this weekend, so even though solar activity is bottomed-out, a major contest like this brings out all the Big Gun stations, and the bands get crowded with strong signals.

First impressions are....WoW, what a receiver! I'd forgotten what a difference it made to have IF Width and Shift controls available to zero in on a signal with. My little Elecraft K2 is quite a competent radio, but this thing just blows it in the weeds. True, they're completely different categories of radio, designed to different cost and performance parameters, so I shouldn't be surprised, but it's been so long since I've driven a truly high-end radio that I forgot how good they are at digging out a single, weak, signal when there's a much stronger signal close to it in frequency. Or in the case of a contest, an S9+ signal on either side of an S3 signal.

And keep in mind that this is an entirely ANALOG radio. It has a digital readout, digital controls, and uses Direct Digital Synthesis to generate the Local Oscillators and VFO's, but the entire signal path, from the antenna to the speaker, is analog.

No DSP (Digital Signal Processing) either Radio Frequency ("RF"), Intermediate Frequency("IF"), or Audio Frequency("AF") is used. This is where my Kenwood "cheats" a bit, by having some very good DSP at a "Low IF" point in the radio. The Kenwood also uses the DSP to detect and recover the audio, and process the transmit audio. The Yaesu is nothing but filters, oscillators, amplifiers, mixers. At no point in the signal chain does the signal get digitized, fiddled with, and then reconstituted back into analog, resulting in a different sound.

Kinda like playing a vinyl album on a turntable connected to a good amplifier and speakers vs playing a CD on a new stereo. They can both sound "good", but they also "different".

It's a classic design, done right, with quality parts, and careful attention paid to details like proper filtering, gain distribution, mixer drive levels, and low-noise oscillators.

Anyway...it's nice having a "real" radio again, even if I'm stuck with my BuddiStick for now.......

Ford Raptor to Get the GT500's Supercharged V8

For those times when six cylinders just aren't enough.....

Full article describing the rip snortin', Seven Hundred horsepower engine can be found here at the Hagerty website.

And when you open the hood..........