Current balun

For the time-being, I've decided to leave the D-56 in the air. It still works FB on the other bands, and, judging from the 60 QSOs I made in the 10-m contest, the 10-m dipole works FB as well.

I did, however, order a current balun kit from Palomar Engineers. Recall that I have RFI issues on the low bands. I worked around it by ignoring the rig interface connection during Sweepstakes, but I'd really rather not do that for the upcoming RTTY Roundup since, you know, the computer is a key part of modern RTTY.

Anyway, that should be here in time for me to build it and get it installed. If it cures the RFI issues, I'll be ahead of the game even if that trap is broken.

ARRL 10 m Contest, continued

Sunday, the Sporadic-E propagation gods smiled on us. Even managed some short runs.

I know it was E_s because at one point I could work stations in W7 or Georgia - nowhere else.

Anyway:

Call:
Operator(s):
Station:

Class: SO SSB LP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 8

Summary:
Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
CW:
SSB:  60     25
-------------------
Total:  60     25  Total Score = 3,000

Club: Oklahoma DX Association

Comments:

Nada Friday, not much Saturday, Sunday the Sporadic E gods smiled on us ...

ARRL 10 m Contest

Started Friday night. Didn't hear a thing when I tuned through a couple of times.

Sat at the radio this morning for a couple of hours and heard two stations, a WØ and a PY. Worked them both, but that's it so far.

Last year, there was a big Sporadic-E opening and I worked about 70 stations, mostly US. This year, nada, at least not here.

And of course, with the worldwide shortage of sunspots, normal propagation isn't there at all.

Antenna saga, part 42

Got an offer of a B&W broad-banded, folded dipole. Took the offer but changed my mind and re-installed the D-56 with the broken trap.

I emailed the vendor and have heard exactly nothing from him or the manufacturer.

Not sure where I'm going from here. The D-52 works great on 40 and 80, but I need 15 and 20, as well, and I'm running out of convenient trees. :-)

No one else seems to make a straight, 80-10, trap dipole.

Alpha Delta Communications has a 80-40 model with parallel wires for 10 and 20 (15 is a harmonic of 40 even if it's not on the D-52) but I'm not sure I want to experiment - that D-56 just worked on 5 bands (before the trap went).

No happy

Got the Spi-Ro D-52 the other day. It got to 60 F here today, so I left work early and put it up, as always with a ton of help from Spouse.

The D-56 cover 5 bands with 6 traps and is 82' long. The D-52 is said to cover 5 bands with 2 traps and is 105' long.

The D-56 was easy enough to explain - inner traps made it look like a 10-m dipole, next set like a 20-m dipole, third set like a 15/40-m dipole and on 80 m, no traps were visible.

But how would that work with only 2 traps?

So far, not so good. Dips are as follows:

MHz     SWR

3.84    1.2:1
7.24    1.6:1
15.00   3.8:1
22.7    2.3:1
32.65   2.7:1

Kindly note that only two of those are within the amateur bands. :-(

There are tuning instructions which, interestingly, only mention 40 and 80 for the D-52.

I'll see if I can do anything by adjusting element length but the ol' D-56 might end up back in the air ... or I'll buy/make something for 15/20.