Diggn' Holes, and Settin' Poles!

WELL.....getting ready to do so. It's been raining here the last few days, so hopefully the ground is soft.

We have the Technology.....

And besides the QuikCrete mix we have the 4x4 posts, and the ground rods. Other grounding and bonding hardware, and some 4 gauge solid copper wire, are out of the picture.....

So as soon as the weather cooperates, I'll be digging a couple of holes for the permanent antennas.

But seeing as we went shooting two weeks ago, and the guns hadn't been cleaned, we took some time today to attend to that chore. I didn't snap any pix when we were doing the wife's revolver, as I was in Instructor Mode, but I took a couple of my incredibly filthy Kimber on the bench.....

All the supplies were on-hand, and it only took me about an hour to completely scrub the slide, barrel, and all the other fiddly bits.

All nice and clean, and ready for reassembly.

So how did we do at the family range? meh.....not very well. The small holes are from the wife's 357 and my 45 at 25 yards. We're both terribly out of practice, and used to shooting at more typical "Home Defense Distances", on the order of 10 yards.

The BIG holes are from 100 yards with my slug gun. Not too bad for a standing unsupported position with some wind blowing. This gun will do ~1" groups shooting from a rest at 100 yards, and if I would have properly used the sling on the gun, I would have done much better. BUT...not having shot the gun in over two years, I'd say I could still put meat on the table if required.

Arduino Based Lightning Detector

Moving to Colorado from Southern California resulted in huge changes to the "Radio Environment" I'm used to tinkering in. When we first came here, I talked to some local Hams about the effects of snow on antennas, and they all kind of chuckled and said "The wind will kill your antennas much faster than a snow/ice storm", which was change #1. We can get days of 40+ MPH winds with gusts to over 60MPH, so I adapted to the new wind loads, and beefed up all my mounting structures. We also get much more rain than in SoCal (DUH!), but that's easy to manage with proper weather proofing procedures, so no big change there.

And then we have the lightning, which didn't occur very often in SoCal, but can be a daily event here at certain times of the year. The NWS has charts of thunderstorm activity, and we historically get "60 Days" per year. We don't have as much lightning as SiliconGraybeard has where he lives, but we have enough that I think it's prudent to take some precautions.

Lightning protection is a complex subject, and I've worked at places that had extensive Perimeter Ground and Chemical ("Wet") Ground Systems installed, but that gets really expensive, and would involve tearing up the yard to install such a system. For a home-based Amateur Radio Station, it's nice, but not required.

I've gathered up most of the bits and pieces to provide a minimal (to me) amount of lightning protection, and that part of the station will be installed when I set the 4x4 posts for the permanent antennas. Each antenna will have an 8' ground rod at it's base, with a PolyPhaser Lightning Surge Protector mounted on the rod. The coax will come from the feedpoint, through the PolyPhaser, and on to the entrance panel mounted on the house wall. This should provide some protection from nearby strikes and induced surges, and the antennas will be disconnected and grounded when thunderstorm activity is in the area.

Like this, but with only a single Surge Protector per ground rod:

This probably wouldn't last more than a few tens of microseconds if it took a direct hit, but I have several 60'~70' trees in the immediate vicinity, and according to the "Cone of Protection" method, they should get hit first, and these will be for protection from induced surges.......I just hope they never "get used".

So even though I have some precautions taken, it would be nice to know if/when lightning is in the area. We had high-end lightning detection equipment at Boeing, so I knew equipment was available, but at what cost? Investigating further, I found there were several lightning detection methods in use, with the most common one being a glorified "Crystal Set" very broadly tuned in the 300kHz~500kHz range. There's a burst of wide-band radio energy during a lightning event, and the little "crystal radio" detects it, and then blinks a light or sounds a buzzer. Well, it turns out that there's now a complete lightning detection system on a chip, made by ams AG of Austria. It includes the circuitry for a 500kHz radio receiver, and some fancy Digital Signal Processing to discriminate real lightning from man-made noise. Pretty spiffy, and SwitchDocLabs sells a "kit" (here we go again.....) with a lightning sensor module, a display, a preprogrammed Arduino module, a piezo tweeter, a WiFi module, an "I2C-to-USB" module to commincate with and program the Arduino, and all the cables you need to plug it together.

Here it is up and running on the radio desk:

The three boards in front of the Arduino module are the lightning sensor, the tweeter, and the display.

This is the complete lightning sensor. The chip is about in the middle of the board, and the itty-bitty ferrite bar antenna is at the board edge, with a white sticker on it.

This is the Arduino board with the interface module plugged in.

Most of the time it just sits here displaying "Waiting For Lightning". When it detects a strike, it changes to "LIGHTNING!!", the backlight turns red, and a range estimate in kilometers is displayed.

So far, every time I heard thunder, the board had alerted a few seconds earlier, and when it's alerted and I didn't hear anything, the NWS radar indicated rain activity.

Looks good so far, but I want to read the datasheet 'between the lines', and see what other information I can get from the sensor other than "Event Detected" and "Estimated Range = xx km". At the very least, I need to be able to record and timestamp whatever it triggers on so I can merge that data with the data from the weather station.

Time to crack open the "Arduino for Dummies" book!

Moving Day for The Kids

So we have The Little Guy for most of the weekend. Our DIL's father and mother bought another property in Laporte, a duplex, and now that Dear Old Dad has finished the place (with ample help from The Kids), it's Moving Day!

The kids were living at what I call "The Country House" up in Bellvue, where we first stayed. Their place was a converted double-wide that had another structure attached to it that had the kitchen, dining room, laundry room, and another bathroom. In the back was the big shop with the little 'bachelor apartment' where we stayed the first month after our CALEXIT. Would have been a killer place for a single guy to live in! Anyway.....the house the kids were in only had one bedroom, and now that The Little Guy is well into the toddler stage, everybody decided he needed his own room, hence the Great House Hunt. They're not quite ready to buy their own place just yet; they'll be in the market seriously in a year or so. So when this place popped up for sale at a very good price, her parents jumped on it. Her dad had his crew tear the insides out down to the studs, and they completely replumbed, rewired, redrywalled, repainted, recarpeted, etc, etc, etc the whole place. The roof is only two years old, so they didn't replace it, but otherwise the entire duplex has been gutted and rebuilt.

And The Fence Guy came in a rebuilt the falling down fence around the property so the dogs can run, and The Little Guy can be kept away from the creek that runs through the back of the property. Well, kept away from it until he can climb the fence, and then EXPLORE!

Expecting some rain this afternoon, per the NWS, but I'll believe it when I see it. After last year's fiasco with the lawn, we're sticking to our watering schedule, rather than relying on Mother Nature to do the watering for us.

Oooops.....No Auger, So Garage Shopped

They sold out, and the next shipment is due in Sunday afternoon.

But I got two 4x4x8 posts and three 8' ground rods inside the Jeep, along with the ground rod driver bit, two bags of dense shade/bright sun grass seed, six bags of soil, 1 cuft each, 3 bags of QuickCrete, and some other misc stuff, without punching out my new stereo or ripping up the dash.

I could have fit the auger in there, but no joy at Harbor Freight. I picked up several 4" magnetic parts dishes (never have enough of them!), a new "Bauer" True RMS Digital Multimeter for the garage, another magnifying lamp to clamp on this radio desk so when the wife or The Little Guy wander up with something to "fix" I can see what I'm doing, a combination tire inflator/gauge with a nice hose whip on it to replace my $6 HF hose whip that disintegrated after 10 years, some air fittings, and some of the HF "Thunderbolt" AA and AAA batteries.

And I shopped air compressors and floor jacks while I was there. These are two items I "need" replacements for, as my little "air compressor" is barely good enough for filling tires and blowing (light) dust off things, and my aluminum "1.5 Ton" rated floor jack struggles to lift ONE front corner of the Jeep. These are the "1.5" ton aluminum "Racing Jacks" you see for $60 at HF, and that's about what they're worth. It picks up the Supra and the wife's Hyundai Elantra just fine, but starts to grunt lifting the rear end of the Jeep, and really groans picking up ONE front corner. The wife agrees 100% about the jack, seeing as it's a Safety Item, so I know which one I'm buying "As Needed". It's a 3 ton, low-profile, long-reach model, and even has a foot pedal to pump it up, something I haven't seen on a big floor jack in like forever.

Makes it easy on us Olde Fartes....

Air compressors are another matter. The little "hot dog" (one small tank) oil free compressor I have is better suited for an air brush than garage duty, but I'm severely spaced constrained. If I clean off the bottom shelf of the workbench, I *think* I can fit one of these down there:

Otherwise I'll have to get something like this:

Since I won't be running air tools, I can squeak by with one of these small jobs. The highest air demand will be from the small touch-up spray gun I have, and these two compressors are rated to deliver more air than the gun requires. And either one will be far better for tires and blow-gun stuff than the itty-bitty compressor I have now.

So no hole digging this weekend, and I'll use the time to get Ms. Swan out of the garage so I can sweep it out and do some shelf reorganization that'll require the ladder on that side of the garage.

Almost Friday!

And I'm just about ready to head out to Home Depot and Harbor Fright to pick up some stuff like 4x4x8 fence posts to mount the "permanent" antennas, some 8' ground rods and a driver bit to install them using my neighbor's demolition hammer, and a few bags of "QuickCrete" to set the posts.

Then over to Harbor Fright to pick up an auger:

Yes, I could rent one, BUT...these are on-sale, and I have a "25% off one item" card from Hot Rod Magazine, so I'll 'only' pay about $125 for it. The rental place wants $30/day to rent one, and at the speed I work at, I'll be money ahead to just buy the thing! After we "bore the holes and set the poles" and the QuickCrete cures, I'll be able to drive the ground rods in at the base of the poles, install the PolyPhaser Lightning Surge Protectors, bond the ground rods together with some 4 gauge wire. Then I'll transfer the 20 Meter vertical from the tripod to it's own post, and get the SGC autocoupler and mast mounted to the other post to finish up the 88' wire antenna.

And I haven't forgotten the Supra.

I've cleaned up enough of the "Winter Storage" debris to get all around the car, and I'll take her out tomorrow and blow the dust off with the pressure washer and a 'gentle' spray head. Then I can get back to finishing up the front bumper so I can get the grille, fog lamps, and corner lights back on.

Just Blew Coffee Everywhere.....

Thanks to Kevin over at The Smallest Minority.

New Audio Addition - Heathkit AA-1640 "Basic Power Amplifier" -

Yeah, like I really need another project. But, like Phil at Bustedknuckles, it was "An Offer/Counter Offer I Couldn't Refuse".

Well, I suppose I could have, seeing as I made the first offer, and the seller responded quite reasonably.

This thing had been languishing on eBay for several weeks, with a bunch of watchers, but no sale. It was at a decent price ($350), but the shipping on it was $145! I low-balled him at $175, and he came back with $250. I countered with "Split The Shipping?", and he responded he would. Ruh-Roh! Well, I agreed, and it arrived today.

It's a Heathkit AA-1640 "Basic Power Amplifier" in very nice condition.

One of the reasons the shipping was so high, is that it's another "Analog Godzilla" like the Yaesu, and it weighs in at Sixty Pounds. Definitely a Heavyweight Contender, as all it is, is an amplifier. No tone controls, no equalizer, no speaker or input switching, just a big honkin' stereo amplifier, rated at a very conservative Two Hundred Watts per channel at 8 Ohms. Recent lab tests have shown these really put out more like 275 Watts at 8 Ohms, and 350 Watts at 4 Ohms.

It's built like an Iowa-class Battleship, and I'll bet the power transformer weighs at least thirty pounds. The only option available for these amps Back In The Day was a set of power output meters, and this one has them. You can see the backs of the meters in the picture above, and the front panel in the picture below.

Saying it's "Just An Amp" is a bit like saying a Dodge Demon or Hellcat is a good grocery getter. It's a stupendous amp in terms of clean, wideband power output, and is perfect for driving inefficient speaker systems.

 It was listed as "Won't Power Up", and when I closely examined the listing pix I saw the fuse holder was missing! Since I don't smell or see anything burnt/crispy/vaporized, it's in very good cosmetic and mechanical condition, and it uses an usual type of fuse holder, I'm rolling the dice that it'll work after I replace the fuse holder and do some resistance checks.

Anyway...this will get all the electrolytic capacitors replaced, the output connections for the speakers will be replaced with "5-Way" binding posts, all the connections will be tightened up, the gain controls cleaned and lubed, and I'll give it a very good cleaning.

For now it's sitting over in a corner of the downstairs storage area. I have too many other projects ahead of this one, but seeing as these have reached Cult Status, and go for upwards of $1000 all shined up and ready to go, I couldn't pass it up for $325.

Yaesu Surgery

Well, I got really tired of not being able to use 40 Meters (7~7.3MHz) on this radio, so today I hoisted it off the operating table, had my wife lay a nice fluffy towel on the table, and then grunted this 50-pound beast back on the aptly named "Operating Table".

Off with the covers!

This thing is wall-to-wall packed under the hood(s). From the symptoms the radio shows (looks like power recycling or something pulling a logic bus to zero causing a reset), I went through the schematics to see what got switched, and when. A few weeks ago, I "crept up" on what frequency this odd behavior at, and what frequency it stopped at. I started at 4Mhz, and began tuning up. As soon as I hit 6.5MHz, the radio clicked when it switched filter banks, and started acting up. Coming down in frequency, it started acting up at 7.5MHz.

Gee....that pretty neatly brackets the 40 Meter band. What gets switched when it hits these transition frequencies between "General Coverage", and "Amateur Radio" frequencies? Hmmm....the only thing like that is the Low Pass Filter assembly on the output of the transmitter. Groan....that's on the top side of the radio. Have to flip this beast over again. While I had access to this side of the radio, I turned down the volume on the "Button Press Beep", which was annoyingly LOUD. Now it's a nice, reserved 'beep', letting the operator, and not everybody in the house, know that a button has been pressed.

The Low Pass Filter assembly is in the metal shield can behind the speaker. Let's pop it open!

The coils and capacitors that make up the individual filters for each frequency segment are in the center of the board. The small, grey rectangular boxes are relays, one for the input, and one for the output, that select each one of the eight filters on the board. The large grey cables with silver connectors are the RF cables into/out of the board. On the lower left corner of the board is a small, plastic, multi-pin connector with the wires running to the aptly named Control Unit, which tells what relays to activate. AH!!  A place to split the circuit! Pulling the connector out would remove all the incoming control voltages to the board, resulting in it going into bypass, or "General Coverage" mode. I pulled the connector and inspected the female connector sockets, and the male pins on the board, and all looked well. No pinched wires or chafed insulation, either. Turned the radio on, tuned through the band, and it worked! No clicking, clacking, and resetting. OK! Plug it back in to confirm the problem is indeed with this assembly, and ........uh-oh.....it still works fine, and now when I tune through the previously wonky frequency range, it continues to work, and now I hear the relays click in at 6.5MHz, and drop out at 7.5MHz, just like it should.

RATS! But Jim, didn't you just "fix" it? No, because I didn't find out what "it" was. There's always a possibility that removing and reseating the connector (a very common practice) cleaned off some corrosion through the 'wiping' action of the contacts, or that the connector wasn't seated properly to begin with, but for now I have to write this off as a "No (Hardware) Problem Found", and consider it one of the dreaded "Intermittents".

I still have several issues left to resolve with this radio. Four of the buttons don't work on the panel, meaning I can't 1)monitor my own transmitted audio, 2) get the second receiver to function other than as the "B" VFO, and 3) & 4), the rapid tuning "Up" and "Down" buttons don't work.

All four of the buttons share a common wire/path/circuit board trace on one side, so a fault on that one line takes all four out. Could be (another) connector issue, a "wire" issue, or a cracked/damaged printed circuit board trace or "via" between the two layers of the board.

I'll tear into that tomorrow.....

Final Tally for Museum Ships Weekend

Band conditions were poor, with a Solar Flux Index of 70. This indicates we're right around The Bottom of the current sunspot cycle. It was down to 68 on Friday, which is really low. I can't remember the lowest SFI I've seen, maybe 65, but it should start to increase in the next 12~18 months.

The new vertical antenna works quite well, and has "Textbook Curves" for the VSWR and Reactive Components (aka "Impedance") at and near resonance, and so far, if I can hear them, they can hear me. It also helps that this radio is set to put out about 175 Watts, and my little Elecraft K2 was "only" pumping out around 65~75 Watts. A bit over a 3dB power increase, and combined with the advanced (for the time) speech processing/compression of the transmitted audio, can make "just enough" of a difference to get through sometimes.

So how many Museum Ships did I contact? A dismal FIVE.

W1M at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vermont

NS7DD aboard the USS Turner Joy in Oregon

W8COD aboard the USS Cod in Ohio

WW2LST aboard the LST 325 in Indiana

and NI6BB aboard the Battleship Iowa in Southern California, where I had a nice 30 minute chat with two of my friends.

I also heard, but couldn't contact, the following:

W5LEX aboard the USS Lexington in Texas

N4WIS aboard the Battleship Wisconsin in Virginia

NJ2BB aboard the Battleship New Jersey in New Jersey

N5E aboard the Tall Ship Elissa in Texas

and WA4USN in South Carolina.

I heard people working KH6BB aboard the Battleship Missouri in Pearl Harbor, but I couldn't hear them at all. All four Iowa-class Battleships were on-the-air this weekend, a very rare occurrence.

I heard a lot of DX (distant) stations from Italy, France, the Azores, and Slovenia, too, so even though the band conditions were not good, there was a lot of activity. Signals were weak, and went from consistently weak (S4~S5) but very stable and readable, to "S9 Plus", fading to zero in 15~20 seconds, and then back to very strong (S9) in about the same time. Since I haven't been this "RadioActive" in quite a while, I'm still getting used to cruising around the bands, what they sound like, and how propagation changes during the day. I really have to get into the FT-1000D and see why it goes bonkers between 6.5MHz and 7.5MHz, as that fault renders 40 Meters at 7MHz unavailable to me. I'm suspecting a bad component on the filter assembly, as when it tries to switch in that bank, the radio starts blinking on and off and resetting like the power's being interrupted. Maybe a bad "flyback diode" across a relay, causing a supply to short when that bank is switched on.

Anyway....I'd really like to get on 40 Meters again now that I have a more suitable antenna. The Elecraft KAT100 tuner I use with my K2 could load the 20 Meter Buddistick just fine on 40, but it's a bit short to be an efficient antenna on that frequency. Oh, well....it's apples-to-oranges anyway, as the 88' wire ain't anywhere near being a 17' vertical, so the "pattern" of the wire antenna is anybody's guess. Mostly straight UP under 14MHz due to it being less than half a wavelength above ground at that frequency, good for what's called NVIS use, but not terribly effective as a long-distance antenna. My 33' vertical (the "Long Beach Antenna") shines at that on 40 Meters, just like this new one does on 20 Meters.

Just gotta dig into that radio and get 'er done!

Poor Propagation on 20 Meters

Bands aren't too good today. I've been searching the bands for any and all Museum Ships, and although I've heard 5 of them, I've only managed to contact W1M at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, and NS7DD aboard the USS Turner Joy.

The guys on the Turner Joy told me they'd contacted the Iowa today, but I haven't heard them.

So I'll continue to scour the 20 Meter band looking for other ships. The FT-1000D loads into the new vertical on 17, 15, 12, and the low end of 10 Meters, so while it's probably got a really screwy radiation pattern on those bands, at least I can load it with the 'tuner' in the radio, and use it on those bands.

Just for grins, I tuned in WWV on 15Mhz and compared the signal levels between the two antennas. The vertical is noticeably better, about two 'needle widths' on the S meter, so I'll see how it compares on the other bands that are close to WWV frequencies.

The Continuing Saga of The Antenna....Now With Pictures!

So in between playing Grandpa and installing the new weather station, I did manage to get some (undocumented - gasp! -) antenna work accomplished, both on the end-fed random wire, and on the 20 Meter BuddiStick replacement. The BuddiStick worked extremely well, but I didn't consider it to be an "all weather" antenna, so I took it down during windy, stormy weather. I just couldn't see letting that Really Cool shock-cord whip get turned into a pretzel.

On the 88' end-fed, I wound up removing ALL the counterpoise radials, exactly "As Advertised", and it works acceptably well on all bands except 75 Meters (3.5~4MHz), and 60 Meters (5 "channelized", shared frequencies at ~5.5MHz). I took the radials off in stages, sweeping and recording the antenna response each time, and the "best" it got was with a single 7' wire off the ground connection. I could raise the center another 6', but I really don't want 3 sections of mast on the ends. I'm just afraid it might get 'whippy' in the winds we have here and come down like the Tacoma Narrows bridge did. I might change my mind after I get the new post installed for the fed end, and have a much more substantial mount for the mast, but for now, this is about as good as I think I can make it work. Took me a while to shift-gears, and think about the specifics of deliberately NON resonant antennas, but now I understand why that particular class of antennas can be quite 'counterpoise independent'. What I had ingrained in me about antennas was 90% resonant antennas, and it's wrong for these antennas. So it was a valuable learning experience to understand this new critter, and proves an Old Dog can learn a few new tricks when properly motivated.

And I finally took down the BuddiStick tripod which has been out there for about a year now. Even though the "final" version of what is now called the "20 Meter Vertical" is sketched out, there comes a point where I put the hardware I have together, and test it out. Then I use it, experiment with it, and modify it until I figure it's pretty much optimized for what I have to work with. For now, it's mounted on the 5' tripod and section of mast that my original Davis weather station was mounted on. The curves are "text book perfect" for a 1/4-wave, resonant antenna, and I'm quite pleased, even though my meticulously calculated element lengths appear to be an inch or so too long. Better than too short! It's a simple matter to loosen a hose clamp, slide a section down an inch or two, and retighten the clamp to change the resonant frequency, but that could shift again if I move the antenna. Anyway, it never exceeds 1.5:1 VSWR anywhere in the 20 Meter band, so getting it 'smack on' @14.150MHz is easy to do, but not strictly necessary.

Pix of the aftermath.....

Weather station off the tripod and ready to rebuild. I was going to replace the white plastic OEM enclosure with a plastic junction box from HD, but after examining the damage, I can just glue it back together with some JB Weld, and paint it to slow down any further degradation.

Here's the new vertical on the former weather station tripod. I'm going to put a few guy ropes on it later today.

Yes, it's "Pebbles Approved"! The branch is from the crabapple tree. Once it dries out, I'll strip the leaves and twigs from it, cut it up, and we'll have a bit of hardwood to toss on the fire.

Truly a gorgeous day outside today.

This the feedpoint assembly showing the coax-to-studs box I made, and the line isolator coax choke I threw together last night. The coil of coax adds some "Common Mode" isolation between the feedline and antenna. If you don't use something like this you'll get currents on the outside of the coax shield, and it can cause Funny Things to happen.

The five books I've been pouring over on antennas, transmission lines, and baluns really helped me understand a few things I was more than just a bit hazy on, and solidified the differences between resonant and non-resonant antennas for me. They're both antennas, but quite different in how you feed them, and what you see when you measure them.

This is the VSWR curve for the vertical.

Pretty damn flat!

But will it help get us off the island, Professor? Well, maybe, Gilligan, if propagation is good.

I'll find out both answers this weekend, as it's Museum Ships Weekend, and I'll be on 20 Meters trying to contact as many Museum Ships as I can. The Iowa, New Jersey, and Missouri will be on-the-air, but the Wisconsin is MIA again. They have an Amateur Radio club, but they're not very active.

The USS Nautilus is supposed to be on, and I'd really like to contact them.