We got a really slow start today… I didn’t get rolled out until about 9:00AM… This is becoming a habit for me at home… When I am out working or just about any other bad than my own, I am up by 5am and usually awake about 3am and every hour after but when I get home in a couple of days it is hard to get rolled out by 7am… but heck we don’t get to bed till midnight here either…
I had plans to get out early and get breakfast and do some errands and be back to the house by noon… well those plans died real quick… it took us an hour to get focused enough to get out of the house. I stopped and made my appointment to get my “hair fixed” for next Friday. I then stopped at the County Tax office to pay my property tax… DAMN that HURT!… I guess that is my own fault for owning this big place. Wasn’t so bad on the trailer but this house and property is expensive…
Once that was done we decided to make it to “MOMS” and we could have breakfast or lunch. Turns out it was late enough we just had early lunch. As usual the place was packed but we were able to get right to a table. The service was a bit slow today, not the normal, but we weren’t in a big hurry. This is one of the locals collecting places and you might hear anything if you stay there long enough.
After “Brunch” was over we had one more stop to trade out a shirt that was too small and then home. Once home I worked on some finance stuff for Dad, did a little email stuff for work, then got out and pulled the old tomato vines from the garden box. Cleaned a few things up and then determined I needed to make a run for some parts to do a repair with. The lid on our sewage grinder has been missing a bolt for some time and I figured today was a good day to get that along with a nut for an antenna I was testing out. I gathered up the sized and took off to a local Hardware store that I figured would have the stuff I needed. The fella that runs that particular hardware place is also a Ham Operator and we generally have a few things to discuss when I get there. He was busy when I walked in so I headed on back to the bolt bin and was looking when his wife came and located all the bolts and nuts I needed for my projects. Then I had a chance to visit and it seems he had a big question for me. He wanted to know what antenna I had just put up. He followed with he heard me come on as he was on the same band a few weeks ago and heard me answer a “1” call but he could not hear nothing, not even a blip and we were both on PSK31 mode so if there had been any bit of a signal he should have seen it, so he was amazed at what I had put up for an antenna that would work things he couldn’t hear when we were only a few miles apart (maybe about 15 but still at that distance he should be able to hear what I hear). I explained that I had just finished putting up the Carolina Windom 160 and was pleased with it’s operation but was unsure as to it being a lot better than my old inverted V. I had done a lot of flipping back and forth and it did show at times about 1 to 2 S units better than the 80 meter V but orientation and all might effect some of that, so I was not convinced yet that it was that much better… in the literature on this page:
It says it can have as much as 10db gain… I always find those claims hard to believe but after our discussion today I must admit it works better than the G5RV that he has up. I was afraid that my installation would degrade that a lot due to the fact that they advise to not put it on a metal tower (I have a pipe tower) and they advise it needs to be 40 ft. in the air and flat top for best performance and mine had to be sloped down from the feed point not the mid point. All that said, I am now pretty happy with that antenna and figure it is a keeper. I know on 40 meters I listen to a group on 7.195 mhz. They are all over and a lot of mobiles in the mix so they give it a really good test as to coverage and so far I have been able to hear everyone that the others hear, including nearly all the mobiles from Arizona to Colorado to Mississippi. I even had a couple of base stations in far south Texas and Colorado that almost always are 40 to 60 over, any time of day…
I have a lot more testing to do with this one but would guess it is going to work out real well…
The Windom with stand-offs for the coax line.
With that I got home and did one more antenna project. Swapped out the top-hat on my mobile antenna to a 3 ft. extension and compared that to the plan 7ft whip… the 3ft with top-hat was winning by several S units but I have made no contacts with it yet, only monitored the 7.195mhz bunch and swapping whips back and forth… now to get that damn pesky spark noise grounded out. My next project is load up with ground straps and see if I can’t get some of that melted away… The things works fine when the engine is off but on it has spark popping noise… I do not have alternator whine or anything like that but do have a lot of ignition noises and maybe some computer noise, white hash… I have been reading and find that I probably need to ground strap the exhaust system and seems that after the last tune-up it got worse so I am thinking that one of the ground wires is missing from the block – oh well I don’t do HF mobile enough to worry all that much about it but figure I need to work it out.
That pretty much finished up my day. We have a Basketball Game tomorrow and try to get off the streets before the amateurs get out and about. – WD0AJG