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I have custom boxes made that keep my shipping cost effective, staying under 1.2m in total length.

Kits are shipped in the oblong boxes and single poles in corrugated cardboard.

Trying to find the DX Commander Lite 7m multi-band vertical on YouTube? It’s here:

Click Here for YouTube

Need a quick logger in spreadsheet format?

• DOWNLOAD m0mcx sample contest logbook

Confused? See the film here:

I notice that CamDesk is offline. This is my download which I originally deleted – but since I have discovered that CamDesk is offline, I managed to find it in my recycle bin for others to use.

This is a ZIP file. Obviously take necessary precautions when unzipping etc. I’ve had this installed for about 2-months.

NOTE: It’s a self executing program file. It doesn’t need DLLs and doesn’t “install” itself in Windows. It just runs from the install directory and you can move it around, say on a USB stick if you like.

• camdesk-1.2.1

When is an Ugly Balun just dead weight? Check out my facts and figures for Choke Baluns.

How to make high quality local contacts within a 500 mile radius.

Fan dipoles are the easiest multi-band antenna you may wish to have a go at.

You can buy an expensive switch box to accomplish phased array system. But to test out the theory if you’d like to go down this route, you could try a simple vertical yagi?

Check out my film and decide for yourself.

Make your decision wisely.

Tips for new Ham Radio (Amateur Radio) operators.

We have all made mistakes when we buy the wrong radio.

I give you some tips to work out how to achieve perfection. Well, certainly a balance!

I thoroughly recommend adding a dimension to your club station or special event station by live-streaming your event.

It’s not as hard as you think – and the tools are free.

Check it out.

I have since learned that some radios are more susceptible to causing this problem than others, however in my opinion, keeping your ALC to tick-over and no more will be the best policy.

Check the film.

We’re always told to check our house before accusing neighbours of local noise.

Oh heck, I wished I had listened nine-months ago!

Check my results.

So I had a requirement to connect my RE20 / PR40 / Shure SM58 / SM57 professional microphone to my Ham Radio (Kenwood TS2000 / TS590 / TS990s) and I show you an easy trick.

The pin outs are all over the internet, so I won’t bore you with them here.

But check the video.

There are benefits to both. Height above ground will kill a vertical. But do you have the height?

What a fabulous microphone.

Check back for review and shoot-out of RE20 and PR40 soon.

Many people have got one of these. But what are they really like?

I show you.

Some people aren’t quite sure how easy it is to build a mono-band quarter wave. They are cheap and extremely easy to build.

Check out the video.

Surprise surprise. I was astonished that a cobweb isn’t as bad as I thought it was, certainly in software modelling.

Check it out.

A G5RV is really a doublet, using the feedline to transform (automagically) some pretty nasty impedances to a suitable impedance for coax.

I explain this here:

I’ve discussed this before. 40m band quarter-wave does resonate on 15m.

But is it worth it?

You bet.

An inverted L is just like a vertical apart from the fact that instead of going straight up (like a tuned quarter-wave), it turns 90 degrees somewhere.

I discuss this in this video:

I cover this in my youtube video. CHeck it out.

Here’s the spreadsheet:

EXCEL: <quarter wave vertical calculator> link

In this video, I show you why you shouldn’t worry about height for your wire dipoles and loops.

Unless you can achieve leaps of a quarter-wave in size, just go with the flow (or put up a DX Commander All-Band-Vertical!

All contests have some sort of report, mostly the signal report then additional pieces of information, from your age to your shoe size (seriously).

Here’s me on 15m during IOTA 2017:

(100 Watts, recorded straight out the TS590SG into Audacity)

Antenna: DX Commander Vertical 80m-10m

(read more…)

Compare Red 5/8th -vs- Blue W/wave

Anyone who has mucked about with verticals will no doubt have worked out that a full-sized quarter-wave for the 40m band, more or less tunes up for 15m band.

It wasn’t until my entry in IOTA Contest this year that I convinced myself that they are not a cloudburner (as many people suggest) but compare favorably with a quarter-wave, even producing more gain by 2 dB at 10 degrees above the horizon.

OK, so 2 dB isn’t a huge gain, but hey – it’s free. Take it when you can!

Don’t forget, you can do the same for 10m band too by making an element 6.83m long and folding it back a further 1.11m (for 28.5 MHz). So you’ll need nearly 8m of wire. Don’t forget, that’s insulated wire!

I’ve recently “made” a 4-element Yagi in software for my YouTube channel which should give a great match to 50 ohms.

If you’re into MMANA software modeling, here’s the file:

• lfa 2m band 4-ele

NOTE: This is a ZIP file because my Content Management System doesn’t like files ending in MMA. By all means have your Virus Scanner check this Zip file. There is only one file inside this ZIP. Just the MMANA file.

Here’s a really simple way of double checking how to much to trim your antenna elements.

You only need to type in the numbers in the Cyan boxes.

• For Dipoles: Cut / Add the result to each leg
• For Verticals: Cut / Add result to your vertical radiator

Just type in where it is resonant right now – then type in where you would like it to be resonant and the spreadsheet will auto-calculate the trimming.

• Version 2 Quick-SWR-calculator <<DOWNLOAD HERE>>

Film: How to use the SWR Adjustment calculator.

So I have just taken delivery of a very gently used Tokyo Hy-Power HF linear amplifier.

The previous owner (retired communications and instrumentation technician for a large, multi-national organisation) replaced both fans with ultra low noise “Arctic” fluid bearing units. These are installed in 2 speed via voltage regulation manner: Low speed during stand-by (RX) and High speed during TX. (read more…)

Regulars will know about the DX Commanders very cool results which are now filtering through in real world successful contest scenarios.

My own issue is that I needed just one antenna that would deliver an all-band solution, certainly for the contest bands of 40m, 20m, 15m and 10m – but I also needed 80m in the mix too.

My holiday home has a very compact small garden so the option of putting up a dipole for 80m is out the question, but modelling suggested than exchanging the 30m element for an inverted L for 80m should work.

The 80m element therefore starts vertical, like all DX Commander elements and turns a sharp corner at 6.9m above ground and droops down for around 13m or so, hanging over a bush at around 3m off the ground. Probably not perfect but perfectly adequate to score 44 QSOs inside an hour on the Saturday eve of the IOTA contest. That score includes 16 different IOTA multipliers, certainly a wide spread around Europe.

(read more…)