Stats
35 mi. SE of Portland
Stats | |
| |
| Call Sign | KN1X |
| Name | James Perkins |
| Licensed | October 2006 |
| Class | Amateur Extra |
| Location | CN85td, Colton, OR, US 35 mi. SE of Portland |
| Elevation | 1050' |
My Father was very interested in 80m/40m CW, antique equipment and its
restoration, and building transmitter kits and power supplies using antique
components ("tubes"). One time he even brought home a working Tesla coil to
salvage the high-voltage transformer out of it. His call was WA7GLZ when I was a
kid, and N1DHY when he lived in Vermont. I never really caught the bug then,
but was primed to catch it later.
VHF/UHF Station
 |
| Granite Peaks Repeater Repair Trip |
Mobile (Walking): My VHF/UHF handheld transciever is a Kenwood TH-F6A which covers 2m/1.25m/70cm bands. I use an earbud/mic sometimes as well. I sometimes use a dual-band magmount antenna.
Base Station: In Sep 2008 I started getting quite active with the South County team of the Clackamas County Amateur Radio Emergency Service. We hold weekly simplex nets, and in order to get through the hilly terrain I set up an ICOM IC-2200H VHF transceiver, a Diamond X-30A Dualband Antenna (photo and a nifty coverage map courtesy of Windows Radio Mobile software.
Packet: In 2010 I set up a HTX-202 handheld transciever with a Kantronics KPC-3+ TNC to operate digital packet radio on 145.770 MHz with the Clackamas ARES folks. It's hooked up to a magmount antenna on my steel house roof, for now. See my notes about interfacing an HTX-202 to a Kantronics KPC3+ - can you believe noone has an explicit picture and notes for this?
Mobile (Driving): Starting in Spring 2009, my pickup includes an ICOM IC-208H 2m/70cm dual band transciever, connected to a dual-band magmount antenna.
I ocassionally help KD7OFU with his repeater projects, and even went
snowshoeing up a mountain to repair a backcountry repeater he has set up on
commercial 2m and 70cm frequencies.
HF Station
Here's the station bill of materials, starting from the Antenna all the way back to the Power Supply. Thanks to W9PJA, KC7RFN, W7TYG, N4KIT, K7UQ, KN6EI, N8UG, KE7GXC for all their advice.
|
Antenna: G0FAH design, derived from G5RV, see the article Five Bands,
No Tuner, Bill Wright G0FAH, QST, June 1995. Its feedpoint impedance is 50
ohms on parts of the 40/20/17/12/10m bands. Another ham describes it here and N4KIT worked up
graphs in an EZNEC model for me.
Finally, with a borrowed MFJ-259B antenna analyzer, I was able to plot the
actual SWR curves, see them here - this allowed
me to finally tune the antenna to optimal resonance.
The axis of the antenna is approximately SW to NE and roughly horizontal. The ground below is a 15 degree slope heading down to the SE so I tend to get more low angle radiation toward the US, Caribbean and South America. I have worked Japan on 20m PSK31 more than once, and heard as far as NZ, AU, and ZA. |
Supplier: The Wireman.
|
Rigging: Select two fir trees ~100' tall, 160' apart. At each tree, hire
an arborist to climb and install an
eyebolt, through which a halyard (a loop of rope) runs to the ground. While he
is up there, remove branches that might get in the way of the antenna raising.
Attached to the halyard is a pully. Through the pully goes the antenna support
rope. The pully can be raised and lowered via the halyard. The antenna support
rope is attached to a free weight at ground level. Click on the image for
pictures of the rigging work.
|
Suppliers: The Wireman had great rope
prices, the rest of the components came from the local West Marine store.
|
| Transmission Line: Connect the antenna to the shack through a window, and ground all the shields to earth ground. | Supplier: Ham Radio Outlet
|
| Inside the Shack: The usual tuner, transceiver, power supply. |
Supplier: Ham Radio Outlet
|