New Beam Antenna Build at N6QW ~ Part 13

The Mast is in the Air!

Houston we have an Erection (of the mast).

Below is a photo essay of the first time in air of the Spiderbeam mast assembly. This is not the full height -- when I was trying to pull out the very top section it slipped out of my hand right into the nested pipe. So the final height will be about 6 feet taller than what is seen in the photos.

Right now the mast is being supported with out guy wires using only the rotor base and my homebrew house bracket. I strongly recommend the house bracket when making the SpiderBeam Mast a permanent installation.

It will only be up for a short while sans the guy wires but this will enable me to accurately cut and deploy the guy wires (actually magic rope --for what it cost me, it has to be magic). This mast deployment also enabled me to get a feel of how high the beam will reach above the house structure and the aesthetics of how it will look. The photos show the SpiderBeam Mast next to my fiberglass mast used to hold up my current wire antenna. This is getting exciting!

73's

Pete N6QW

January 26, 2024. A simple CW Transceiver/Transmitter

Cruise through the lower part of the ham bands bands and what do you hear? Well, FT-8 and CW. Often you will not hear any SSB stations yet go to the lower part of the bands, and it is a cacophony (I love that word) of bad sounding signals and some high-speed keying. Fast is not so much of the issue as is bad, run together and jerky keying. But none the less our hobby started there. So, you could crank down your ICOM 7300 and watch the waterfall on CW or you could homebrew a radio. Actually, to do CW right you need more thought up front than you do with a SSB transceiver. Often, I will state that a CW Transceiver is much more difficult to build than a simple SSB rig. I published two articles in QRP Quarterly on CW transceivers and all I got was a yawn so maybe history will repeat itself. Yawn! 30M CW Transceiver with RIT! Of interest is that the LO is a Varactor tuned LC oscillator using a NE602. Look closely at the RIT circuit which is only activated on ...

March 31, 2024. Happy Easter to those who celebrate this day.

What a great day to Binge on Chocolate and experience the pain of that filling that has been leaking. I would be in that category with the leaking filling(s) had I not just spent an amount equivalent to one of the fancy new uptown appliance box transceivers on two filling repairs. Well at least I can binge on the Chocolate bunnies without fear of pain. Regrettably everything appears to have jumped in price including the price of parts. Well not so much the parts as the shipping costs. That notably is seen in the eBay treasures. I spotted a nice heathkit DX-20 for about $50 and the shipping was $65. Likely it is a twofer with part being a way to in effect charge a higher price by inflating the shipping and in part by increased shipping costs. Shipping with insurance across the US was about $150 for this jewel and that was three years ago. 6AM on the Left Coast ~ 20M Easter Sunday! My only hope is the cost of Chocolate Bunnies remains steady although a pound of See's Candies f...

August 30, 2024. A PNP 20M SSB Transceiver

Shown below is the Block Diagram for the 20M PNP SSB Transceiver steered in the Transmit Mode . The components shown in the dotted block are relay steered so that the block module is single pass and amplifies in a single direction. The Block diagram show steered in Transmit. Essentially the steering process works so that the IF Module input follows the Balanced Modulator on Transmit and then the input side follows the Receive Mixer on Receive. All done with some relays and a bit of RG174U coax. For those who count things in detail, this block diagram is not unlike what was used for the PSSST Transceiver which can be found on my website . Yes, a warmed over P3ST only using PNP devices. TYGNYBNT. 73's Pete N6QW

A Lame Duck is nothing more than a Left-Over Turkey!

Search This Blog