My Week in Radio
- Wind is nerve-wracking with my “temporary” antennas
- long wire broke
- one 1/4-wave ground plane worked itself loose and disconnected.
- yagi on the aluminum pole is good
- X6100 was having trouble running and charging its failing internal battery
- disable charging and it’s OK again.
- R1CBU 0.29.0 firmeware for X6100
- finding and filing some bugs
- they’re already getting fixed
- will probably need to revert back to the older version
- Norfolk Island, VK9DX, FT8 on 10M, with only 2W.
- Radio with a waterfall is amazing to watch during CW contest weekends.
- something is up!
Others
- N3ILS, Travis:
- setup Allstar node for travel
- KC3SCY, Luke:
- listening to W1AW on Drake 4TRX for code practice
- W3QP, Tim:
- trouble with IC-7300 on battery. blown fuze on one pole.
- all bands on fan dipole have high SWR after wind damage
- KC3RFG, Jim:
- KC3YSM, Steve:
- working on some DX with the cold weather
- needed to adjust some audio settings for TX. much improvement.
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- Steve, good clean audio is so important for breaking the DX pile-up
- hosted pre- and actual PMAM net
- magneto synchronizer for an airplane, rebuild, repair
- KC3OOK, Bill:
- simplex net: east had some trouble, so running late.
- 23 contacts
- drywalling the ham shack
- simplex net: east had some trouble, so running late.
- KC3TYX, Vic:
- weekly nets
- tried a 10M net, went OK
- hard to tell what was happening on simplex net from his station
- KC3TRW, Mike:
- programming up some radios
- WA3KFT, John:
- busy on VHF by his paper log, including a little 6m and 10m.
- sorting parts and cleaning up the benches
- AF3Z, Jim:
- some CW
- working on an old heathkit TRX
- removed some solder and resoldered
- KD3AKZ, Wayne
- getting a rig on the air
- still has a beep
- studying for general
- getting a rig on the air
- KC3NZT, Harvey:
- building an antenna on an off-road magmount
that was previously recommended.
- tested well with nanovna
- very strong magnets
- mapping out some coax: shorter and better coax is better
- building an antenna on an off-road magmount
that was previously recommended.
Questions
- N3ILS, Travis:
- Is it OK to use the internal tuner of the IC-7300 in series with an external tuner at the same time?
- KC3NZT, Harvey: is it an automatic icom tuner connected by aux port
- N3ILS: it is a manual MFJ tuner.
- WA3KFT, John:
- uses both internal and external tuner.
- sometimes one tuner gets you all the way there
- stacking them won’t hurt anything
- but it’s inefficient.
- W3CRW, CR:
- uses Yaesu with 2 tuners in series.
- heavy lifting with the external LDG
- fine-tune it with the internal.
- KC3NZT, Harvey:
- IC-7300 can be made to match 10:1 in “emergency mode”.
- it requires some of your power.
- Does stacking the tuner skew the readings in the radio?
- has used an automatic external tuner for icom. it disables the internal.
- IC-7300 can be made to match 10:1 in “emergency mode”.
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- tune the external tuner with internal disabled to get close
- then fine-tune to get the rest of the way.
- combo could result in weirdo impedance between them, if done in the wrong order.
- WA3VEE, Ron:
- what NA3CW said
- 2 auto tuners will compete and cause trouble
- N3ILS, Travis:
- Dave Cassler has a video saying “never stack them”, but that’s auto tuners.
- KC3RFG, Jim:
- Dave Cassler’s video is about 2 auto tuners.
- KC3RFG, Jim:
- Why does my SWR go up with ice on the antenna? It drifted from 1.2:1 to 2:1.
- WA3KFT, John:
- ice on the antenna changes the diameter. it’s a conductor.
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- water dialectric constant is 80, compared to PVC insulation with 4.
- KC3OOK, Bill:
- observed the same thing. jumped to 3:1.
- AF3Z, Jim:
- 10M vertical dipole fed by old window line with a tuner.
- any time it rains, the normal settings don’t work.
- KC3RFG, Jim:
- he has 40-foot tall bamboo, and he can tap the wire to de-ice it.
- NA3CW, Chuck:
- this Friday is the breakfast
- AWA PM/AM Net 3835kHz