| Share Your Dream | Picnic Photos | No Tower? |
| Editor's Notes |
If money were no object and you had all the time in the world, where would you
go with your amateur radio hobby? New modes? TV? Special activities?
Public service? Cool gear? Invent a new circuit or system? The September
meeting will be an open invitation to dream big and speculate about the
possibilities. Chances are good that someone else will share that dream. Or
there may be people who could give you some advice or assistance on how to
take some steps toward fulfilling a grand vision. This would be a good
meeting to invite a non-ham friend to because it will showcase the range of
what is possible in amateur radio without getting too technical. Everyone who
attends will be welcome to share a wish list of hopes and ideas big and small.
The RANV Summer Picnic was held Saturday, August 10th at Kill Kare State Park at St. Albans Bay. Concurrent with the picnic was a Vermont Parks On-The-Air activation of Kill Kare State Park.
Preceding the picnic, the St. Albans Amateur Radio Club Hamfest was held at
the Elks Club. The weather was on the cool side feeling more like September
than August. Here's a short video of the club picnic.
I live in a restricted neighborhood. We cannot have any tree, or bush, higher than my one story roofline (about 14 feet). So, I can't have a dipole. I have played around with several verticals, and have finally settled on the Hustler 6BTV.
It is an 80 through 10 meter vertical, which, with a tuner, will work on the WARC bands as well. The prep work required for the installation is: burying a 5 foot section of 1 ¼ inch galvanized pipe in the ground with cement, laying out 30 radials (2 minimum 1/4 wave wires for all the bands) and pounding into the ground a copper coated 9 foot ground rod. The ground rod, the radial plate, the support pipe, the SO-239 mounting box and the antenna ground are all bonded together. Now, to the actual antenna assembly.
DX Engineering sells a mounting plate that allows the antenna to be raised and lowered rather easily.
There are aluminum pipes and traps for 10, 15, 20, 30 and 80 meters. They all go together with stainless steel clamps.
Once assembled according to the factory specs, tuning for each band is done by moving the space between the trap for that band up, or down, on the pipe below that trap. You start with 10 meters, working down through 15, 20 and 30 meters.
40 meters is adjusted by moving the 80 meter trap up or down on the last pipe section (there is no 40 meter trap). 80 meters is tuned by adjusting the whip on top of the trap. Without a tuner, bands 10 through 40 have an SWR no higher than 1.7 to 1 band edge to band edge. 80 meters, well, chose your frequency and live with a very narrow notch with low SWR. However, with the Elecraft tuner, I can get 1:1 SWR from 3.5 to 4 MHz. I did already have a guy ring that fits the pipe section above the 30 meter trap, and have 3 guy ropes tied to ground anchors.
Within reach I have tensioners for all 3 guy ropes to make adjustments and
laying down the antenna a lot easier. I have been using it for several weeks
and it works better than any other antenna I have tried in my yard/house since
I started this hobby. My neighbors seem to be okay with it so far since it's
in the back of my yard near tall trees, which are not in my neighborhood.
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! This is your club newsletter. Feel free to submit articles! Items of interest can be short, long, technical, anecdotal, etc. Share your experiences and stories!
NEWS & VIEWS VIA YOUR INBOX!
Did you know that 36 of our members have signed up for
electronic delivery of the newsletter?
To enroll, just send me an email to gmayvt1@gmail.com. You'll
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pictures look GREAT!