J-Pole Antenna

May 22, 2016Gear, Uncategorizedadmin

On Tuesday, I received the 2M J-pole antenna that I ordered from jpole-antenna.com.

Maybe I’m used to receiving over-packed items from Amazon, but the packaging on this one looked a little… sparse. With some instructions that were apparently not followed:

Which resulted in a box looking like this:

And even worse, an antenna looking like this:

Fortunately, it was no big deal. The soldered connections looked good, and I was able to bend it back into shape:

If the connections had been damaged, I would have been upset. I opted to buy the antenna, instead of making one myself, just to get up and running a little quicker. I’ll hopefully give it a trial run this weekend. I would only offer a friendly suggestion, to KB9VBR, that he package his antennas to survive a harsher transit experience. Never underestimate what the UPS / FedEx / USPS folks can do. 🙂

Weekend Work

May 22, 2016Uncategorizedadmin

On Saturday, sale I sat out on the task of getting my office cleaned up, and my new rigrunner kit installed. That may sound like a small task, but it involved rearranging some furniture in my home office to be sure that there was enough space to move around.

A quick trip to Harbor Freight allowed me to pick up a new ratchet crimper. My hope is to use this for the PowerPole connections. I was too cheap to drop $50 on the Powerwerx brand, so I’m hopeful that these will do the trick.

However, when I went to hook up the RigRunner kit to my 25 amp power supply from Radio Shack, I found that the 12 gauge wire wasn’t able to connect to the terminals in the back. I had the choice to remove the terminals, strip the wire, and run the bare wire into the power supply. However, because electricity scares me – I did not. I will look and see if I can find another solution.

I did check into the 146.88 ALERT Sunday Night Net, on my Baofeng HT. That’s the first time that I’ve done that in a few years. I was told that my volume was a little low, and had to repeat my check-in. I may have just been speaking quietly into the HT. But my second transmission, on 5W, went without a problem.

I had also planned to check into the 146.580 simplex net. However, I have not done any simplex work before. I noticed that I was only hearing part of the traffic between net control and the stations checking in. I have learned since then that only hearing 1 side of a conversation on simplex is common. So I did not attempt to check in.

Expensive Friday

May 16, 2016Gear, KI4EYNadmin

I found myself in Huntsville this past Friday, so I stopped by the Gigaparts store. I’ve been wanting to add my Yaesu 2M (FT-8900) radio to my home setup, and didn’t want to wire the radio directly to my Radio Shack 25amp power supply. So I picked up a RigRunner 4005H Complete Powerpole assembly.

I also bought a portable 6-Meter J-Pole antenna from KC0ZEO, to put into my go-bag that I keep in my truck:

Looks to be a nice little assembly. This will give me an excuse to break out my 6M HT and use it. I’ll let you know how it tests out.

I also ordered a J-Pole antenna, from KB9VBR, to mount in my attic.

Now I just need to start putting everything together. Easier said than done. 🙂

Why Ham Radio?

May 7, 2016KI4EYNadmin

That’s a good question.

I acquired my Technician license in 2004. My original desire was to be active with our local storm spotting group. And I was, for a brief while.

But after that, between work and family, this hobby became something that I let atrophy. I would occasionally hit an active net, but that was it. I had also heard about this warm, welcoming group of people that would be glad to answer questions, and mentor newcomers. Unfortunately, 2 Hamfests (Birmingham and Montgomery) and 1 BARC meeting quickly showed me that wasn’t the case. That left me discouraged, and quite frankly, turned off to the entire ‘world’ of Amateur Radio.

Fast forward to 2016. I’ve decided to work on upgrading my Technician license, to General class. I’ve activated this domain to help stay accountable to others, as well as share what I’m learning along the way.