Antenna Psychology and the Ham Operator
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- Do you have a deep rooted issue with DX? Are you ashamed of your antenna? Did your mother catch you putting up an antenna? Are your being piled on in the pile up? MIKROWAVE1 touches the third rail of ANTENNAS, and holds on, in this expose of the Ham Radio ID.
Excellent video! I always buy the coolest looking antenna with the coolest name, especially if it has a snake decal on it! But it's gotta cost a LOT!
Actually, Claude Shannon, Jerry Sevick, and John Kraus are my tech heroes. I was shocked, nay offended when I heard that The Ohio State University had torn down Kraus' Big Ear antenna and sold the land for a golf course. I wanted to punch somebody. I also built what may well have been the world's best LowFER band antenna after spending a few weeks at the NIST library pawing through antenna books from the 1920's and '30's, then spending a couple more weeks winding 2 miles of wire on 3" PVC pipe. My ham friends, (I wasn't a ham,) told me I was crazy. I told them, "Nah. I'd be crazy if I bought a 102" whip with a $270 loading coil."
A windy day is an OK day for tuning such an antenna. But of course it's best if it's nighttime and there is blowing snow. I always wait for that.
BTW, your trees are 'semiconductors'. :)
I love your style, Mike! D.I.Y. Good old equipment [reliable] and a splash of sarcasm! 73 KE8SDS
My hats off Mike, great, inspiring video, and a keeper antenna. Wow...being in a Michigan city, I am tree poor, oh for tall wood antenna holders!!!
Thanks for the knowledge, been thinking about getting my license again, was a tech class 20+ years ago. My interest is mainly in 80 and 40.
You referenced this video in you most recent. I thought I had never see it so I came to watch it and saw my comment from 2 years ago. I got my license this week 2 years ago. This might have been the video where I started cramming for the tech and general after finding the only test I could make it to for the rest of the year was in 5 days.
Great work, thank you for showing this. You create some interesting projects and I learn a lot from them.73
Great video Mike. Your 75 meter vertical with director/reflector is an interesting project.
Things do not stay up in those pines. Wait a minute and a tree branch wipes out all of your glory.
My Dad in the early 80's put up 150 foot antenna for his radio. We were in Southeast TX and he claimed to be able to reach the Eastern CCCP (at the time) Now my father wasn't known to lie, but I always thought he was exaggerating slightly about the range of his radio. Of course he did have a huge radio tower and ten plus grand worth of gear in 1980 dollars, so I really don't know. BTW, we lived in an unincorporated part of the county so he could have put up an Arecibo sized radio antenna if he wanted, of course the nearest hospital was an hour and a half away so any sort of injury was life threatening, so that was fun.
Obviously we don't know anything about your Dad's setup, but perfectly believable. Nit sure how many people we on the bans in the CCCP.
Early 1980s was a good solar maximum.
During this, especially on the higher bands like 15, 12 or 10m, a wet shoestring is sufficient as an antenna to reach the world. I have multiple (trustworthy) accounts of people using 2 hand-held radios to communicate between Europe and the US.
A big antenna makes it MUCH easier, of course. With a good 3 or 5 element at 150ft you can make reliable connections pretty much anytime there is propagation at all (if there isn't, you can pump megawatts into the Arecibo antenna and won't hear anything on the other side .. except you bounce of the moon or so).
What a great project and interesting and witty video, cheers 👍
The car choices were biased a bit towards Europe. But notice that the Peugeot did not show up on the chart!
Interesting study. My first 14 years as a novice/general class ham in high school/college was in rented space in trailer parks. Fifty years later resources are still limited but with a fifty foot tower and six acres of land the possibilities are much greater. 73...jim...WA7VVV
Aluminum is for professionals and those with zero other hobbies and/or those with high incomes. The rest of us sling wire and we sling it all over the place. I have enough real estate for a lot of wire--and if a storm rips it all down--it's just wire. I think I need a vertical with parasiics, but first a 1/2 wave EF on 160 with the 49:1 transformer (slightly different than the one for 80-10). I had one working before but it wasn't good for the higher HF freqs.
Nice overview Mike...have worked YT1AA several times, Vema I a nice guy. Happy holiday weekend! 73 - Dino KLØS
Vema and Zorko are on all the time!
Another great video! 👍
Good video. Love the humour. Reckon that quad chart to categorise hams and their antennas is brilliant. Why go to all the hassle of putting up towers when you have natural wooden masts that will probably still be standing after the metal masts have fallen down? Your expirement shows that trees can work just fine 🙂.
Yet another magnificent inspiring video by Mike
I wonder how you got those wires 70 ft up in the trees?
There are launchers, slingshots, Bow and Arrow devices and enthusiasts ... but I am a fisherman so I use #14 mono on a bass rod with a weight! Then I pull back paracord and finally the line and antenna insulator.
@@MIKROWAVE1 , NOW I can double up on the uses I can put my 16 fishing rods and 20 reels by using them for ham radio! de KQ2E
Thanks for your Video Channel! I know only for sure that I fit in the limited resources half. So, lacking the money, I have to use what I have. I do have the Kraus Antennas book (I was lucky to find it for almost free) and hold all of the Amateur and Commercial licenses. I did the latter on a lark, just to get a better understanding of it all. Chasing a flat match that ISN'T a parabola? Like chasing a Unicorn while heating the worms: Everything is a compromise, always keeping in what I call in my mind "The RF Budget." How are you going to be broadband AND have peak radiation resistance? I don't think that math exists! Besides, it's a lot cheaper to skip on the 220 Volt wiring and an amp, and a tower, and just lay down a LOT of radials instead. They don't involve climbing, and you can even move them around to get a little directivity, not much but some. Never do you have a frozen rotator to finance, and climb and fix. While wire IS getting pricey, it doesn't come close to the cost of an amp. And a tower. And helps the Wife Approval Rate. Indeed, I am amazed at the performance of a short tapped vertical tripod mounted over a decent ground field. Mine is only twelve feet tall, more or less. Half Square is also always a really good good portable performer. They really get unwieldy past 40 metres though, and really past 20 metres unless you have some help. You might have good luck at 10-15-20 metres. You might be able to go with the 80 halfsquare with the land you have, though I think that's going to be potato blunderbuss or slingshot category. I'm not sure about 80, because I've never had the opportunity to try it. You won't have any local coverage, though. It will be all DX. But a "Just above the ground don't worry about it" NVIS dipole and an "AB" Switch" will take care of that! Living right more or less in Central Ohio with the low dipole NVIS setup, I get a nice complete coverage of Ohio as far as I can tell. No Doubt, some enterprising Ham will hoist some monofilament line with a drone, and keep adding larger diameter stuff to that, get a Monster 160 halfsquare up someday, or they already have! That might even help with putting up a horizontal rhombic....That's what Ted WB8PUM and The Gang use at WTWW, so since it works for them, it should work pretty good for you too I would guess? Is it ME, or are some guys actually just heating up worms (or maybe doing their part to fix the hole in the Ozone Layer) with all of that expensive turnkey stuff? 73 DE W8LV BILL
Hey... If you used that mobile whip for fly fishing, you'd just upset a different group!
Somewhat disappointed that the best antenna I've ever had (except club stations in college) was in was in high school when my parents let me put up a tower and tribander at 50 feet. Now living near a major metro area, I choose to live closer in on a 1/4 acre and am doing the "wires and trees" thing. It was the right decision for career and family though.
i dont remeber or didnt hear.... is this pointed east or north east say 30ish degrees ? to go up and over and not over the pond itself.
Awesome. Thanks Mike!
As we are totally thinking the same way, (with a good sense of humor) I feel compelled to say that you hit THIS video out of the ball park! de KQ2E
Your big pines may influence your antenna, Mike but, my apartment managers and apartment's rules and regulations influence mine. LOL
Great video. Have a nice Memorial Day weekend.
My most desperate apartment antenna was when I tried to load up a picture window frame!
Wow, heh heh, Necessity is the mother of invention!
I love the intro!
Very enjoyable and appreciate your references to Dr Kraus, W8JK. He was my professor of EE Electromagnetics at Ohio State in the mid-70's and I bet he would have enjoyed seeing your video, too. 73 de K7ZB. Here's a bit of history of those days... www.eham.net/article/41910
Very interesting video, thank you! But... how did you get your antenna wire to the top of that tree? Do you have a domesticated squirrel? 😀
My fishing rod and a weight! Then I pull up strong twine and finally the rope and antenna. Yes it is silly to watch.
Wow! You must be good risherman! I tried that method last summer, it was silly to watch and it felt silly, but no fish. Only somewhat manageable method i found was using a drone to fly thin fishing line over tree . Took two drones but i got my half wave wire over tall tree. Must be quiet weather, wind makes drone movement unpredictable. This year i will try vertical antenna, because wind broke my half wave wire. It was too thin, but at the moment it was all i had in hand. Any ideas how to make your vertical work on 160m? Trap plus some more wire?
what does "DX" mean?
so for the antenna, you used a single horizontal wire at about 1 meter above the actual ground? ... oh... there are 5 "radials," right? 5 horizontal radial wires to create the artificial ground plane
the diploe is two wires with the connection in the middle and no ground?
The ground plane antenna is kind of like a vertical dipole.
@@MIKROWAVE1 Thank you for the answer! :)
Great video. I have some idea of where I land on the quadrant, but I feel like a 3rd party would really need to identify where I land. I'm off to continue my project of putting up a 6M delta loop. :D 73 de w8tam
I wander around the middle right and never achieve anything fully!
Command AND conquer: Yuri weapon...??.. WOOW..
I think i need an antenna confessional for all the crime and sin i have done. Thanks for a better path. Jack Hreha that causal guy.
i've got antenna envy
Using cars in each of the quadrants made me just have to comment ... I decided I won't say anything about the car choices because I don't feel like being a target today. 😂😂😂😂😂
Talking about our cars or car preferences is the real third rail Vince!
Yep, radio towers are "freudian" fer sure!
I do more with less. Hee.