All posts by Ed Deichler

I recently moved to FL after 30 years in NH and a member of NARC during the whole time. To all the newbees in the club, I say welcome to a renaissance in ham radio as the "old stuff" adapts to the 21st century's "connected" world. I was proud to be involved in the club in many capacities over the years, especially Field Day. Everyone will be hearing from me from time to time as the Tiny Elephant lumbers on!
Antennas, Featured, General, Homebrewing, Newsletter

Moxons in the Attic (Part 1)

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A few months ago, I wrote an article on building a stealth antenna farm. Since I live in the land of CC&Rs, antennas must be “dual use” such as a vertical hidden inside a PVC flagpole, or low dipoles and inverted Vees hidden in trees. I spent many years as an avid contester and DX-chaser to appreciate the logic of stacked beams on towers to enhance the thrill of the hunt. Thanks to Layne, AE1N, I checked out the website of Jeff, AC0C (www.acoc.com) for some ideas of how to build a multi-band station in one’s attic without the condo association vigilantes running him out of town. Jeff spent countless hours crawling around his attic to construct multi-element antennas for 160 through 6 meters. Spurred on by Jeff’s success, I decided to explore the attic of my garage to see what I could do. As I described in the MAY Nashua ARC bulletin, I settled on building Moxon antennas for 15 and 17 meters.

An old adage about antenna building states that an antenna must be built-in lousy weather in order to work right. Thirty years in New Hampshire lent credence to this axiom as I spent many a cold, windy day on a tower doing antenna work. In Florida, a similar law applies: build an antenna in the summer months while sweating profusely rather than during the comfortable winter weather. Again this makes sense: DX and contesting fill up the winter months to have time to mess with antennas. It is also important to remember that, during such endeavors, you will become enamored with you antenna as you take breaks to warm your body (in NH) or drink a gallon of water (in FL), all the while cursing this law of antenna building.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My garage attic is roughly 20 x 20 feet with an apex of about five feet that runs north-south. I had selected the Moxon design because a conventional 2-element beam would not fit in the space available. I elected to build a Moxon for 15 and 17 meters that would fit in the space available without having to encounter obstacles like the ventilation duct work. I was also fortunate in that my home is one of the older models that do not have foil-backed insulation inside the roof that creates a radiation-proof box. The joists junctions are reinforced with metal plates as part of hurricane building codes. My plan was to attach the wires to the roof trusses and stay away from these plates as much as possible to avoid interaction.

The 17-meter Moxon is a little over seven feet between elements while the 15-meter Moxon is about six feet between elements. I used a piece of half-inch PVC pipe as a template to mark the joists for the 17-meter antenna. The antenna is about 2.5 feet above the attic floor for a total height of eleven feet above the ground. I had modeled it at 13 feet so I figured it would be close enough. The 15-meter Moxon is about 15 inches above the 17-meter one. When viewed from the top, the antennas look like concentric rectangular loops.

Over the course of several weeks, I grunted, groaned and sweated my way back and forth measuring and installing the wires. I worked during the morning hours before I was soaked before 10:00 AM. I found myself wishing I could have my five-year-old grandson help me. He can stand upright and is plenty flexible to maneuver around the joists. While I did not have to worry about the obvious safety issue of working on a tower, I did at times feel I was a candidate for the NFL concussion protocol from bumping my head. I tried using my cycling helmet but it interfered with my headlamp. Another similarity to tower work is that I had to make N trips back and forth in the attic for stuff I forgot. This is, however, much more bearable that climbing up and down a tower to get what I forgot.

Figure 1 shows a view toward the south end of the attic. The two pieces of PVC form the element separators for the 15-meter Moxon (top wire) and the 17-meter Moxon (bottom wire).

Figure 1 – Moxon Element Separators, 15m (top) & 17m (bottom)
Figure 1 – Moxon Element Separators, 15m (top) & 17m (bottom)

Figure 2 shows the reflector elements for each antenna as secured to the joists, looking north through the attic. The white standoff fasteners are coax cable tie-downs that I found at the hardware store. Standard house wiring fasteners would have worked but they leave little room for pulling wires if I needed to make adjustments. (My first attempt was to use duct tape to hold the elements up. However, the heat soon made them droop.)

Figure 2 – Moxon Reflector Elements, 15 m (top) & 17m (bottom)
Figure 2 – Moxon Reflector Elements, 15 m (top) & 17m (bottom)

Figure 3 shows one corner of the director of each antenna looking east. The duct work to the left is part of the ventilation system while the open duct vents directly from the garage below. The yellow fence standoff on the upper antenna is the bend point for one end of the 15-meter director. Not visible to the left is a similar bend point for the 17-meter director.

Stealth Antenna - Looking East-from the Reflectors
Figure 3 – Looking East-from the Reflectors

Figure 4 shows the temporary feed points for each antenna.

Stealth Antenna – Feedpoint for 15m (top) & 17m (bottom)
Figure 4 – Feedpoint for 15m (top) & 17m (bottom)

The figures above show the project to date. I installed the 17-meter antenna first and measured its SWR performance with my analyzer. I found that it resonated beautifully at 16.7 MHz with a 1.1:1 SWR while bulging to 3.9:1 at 18.1 MHz. I shortened each element by a foot and ran measurements again, this time the resonant point moved up to 17.3 MHz (1.3:1 SWR) and the SWR at 18.1 MHz dropped to 2.7:1. I folded the elements back another four inches on each end and measured the response. I observed the SWR bottoming out at 1.5:1 at 18.1 MHz where I wanted to be. As a point of interest, I modeled a Moxon designed for 16.7 MHz and noticed the elements were about two feet longer than a Moxon designed for 18.1 MHz, close to the twenty inches I had to shorten the elements. Apparently, there is some interaction with the wiring that runs along the attic floor near the edges.

Armed with the satisfaction I was on the right track, I installed the 15-meter Moxon above the 17-meter antenna. I hooked up the analyzer and fired it up only to find to that its “resonant” point was a dismal 3.0:1 SWR at 22.9 MHz, rising to 3.9:1 at 21.1 MHz. This meant my antenna was too short. I went back to EZNEC, opened the standard dipole model and plugged in 22.9 MHz and found that its length was very close to the overall driven element for a Moxon designed for 21.1 MHz. I lengthened each element by five inches as a starting point to see what would happen. The result was no change in SWR at 22.9 MHz while dropping slightly to 3.6:1at 21.1 MHz. Hmm, looks like I need to get a little smarter about this.

Stay tuned for Part 2 to find out. (Don’t you hate that?)

Ed, K2TE

CW and QRP, Featured, General, Newsletter

WASK (Worked All Silent Keys)

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I have been contributing articles to the Nashua Area Radio Club bulletin for almost 30 years, having started a contest column on a suggestion during a board meeting back in the late 80s. I evolved from simply reporting on upcoming contests to my impressions on operating (DXpeditions, pile-up strategies, etc.); new modes (RTTY, PSK, JT-65); and the trials and tribulations of maintaining a station (antenna repair, rotor repair, amplifier repair, rig upgrades, application debugging, etc.). Long ago I adopted a tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating style to (1) remind myself that it is only a hobby; (2) that I’m not the genius I always thought I was after high school; and (3) know that Murphy is always there. The intent has been to help you relate to ham radio no matter where you are in the game, from a new novice to a seasoned old-timer with 50+ years on the air.

The month of August usually means it is time to get ready for the upcoming fall and winter season of major contests and the return of DX for me. However, here in Florida, it means waiting until sometime in September when it is just hot to tackle antenna projects. While pondering what to write about for this month, I decided to take a detour from my usual lighthearted musings and reflect on a few Silent Keys who have significantly influenced my ham life. Many of you are new to the club and may not know these individuals.

Mike Bernock, N1IW. I met Mike about 20 years ago while researching a project at work. I needed some information on one of the tactical radios used by the Air Force and was told to go see Mike. Mike and I chatted for a while about the capabilities of the radios and drifted to our personal experiences with radios, at which point he smiled and told me his call. He had not been licensed too long but was really enjoying the hobby. He also had a cool job getting to delve into the technology of the military radios. (Why I ended up with a career in radar and data format technology instead of radio applications I’ll never know.)

Not long after our meeting, Mike and I met again as part of a team at K0TV for one of the big contests. Mike was firmly hooked on contesting at this point and reveled in beating out other “big gun” stations when “new meat” showed up during a contest. It didn’t take Mike long to put up a tower and build a station at his QTH. (Being a bachelor, he was spared the usual justification battle when it came to his ham radio toys.)

Mike also excelled at finding a better way of doing things. When he had problems with the truss supports on a 40-meter beam he had bought, he redesigned the fasteners to eliminate sharp bends in the support cables that caused the cables to break and the elements to droop. He notified the manufacturer of the fix but was told that would add about $20 to the cost of the beam and his idea was declined. His inventiveness lived on, however, when it came to removing a beam from a tower for maintenance. When I needed to pull my beams off for some work, it was suggested that I used a special device that Mike built to lower a beam on a tram line. His device secured the beam so that the elements would not “porpoise” while being lowered. The simple jig was dubbed the Bernock Antenna Removal/Replacement Fixture – BARRF.

Mike was also involved in the build up to hosting the World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) that the Yankee Clipper Contest Club volunteered to set up. He was one of the coordinators for site management to make sure things would go smoothly for the contestants. Sadly, Mike would not live to see all his work pay off. Toward the end of 2013, Mike became ill and was diagnosed with cancer. I spoke to him in late in February 2014 as he was awaiting bone marrow harvesting. Less than 48 hours later, he became a Silent Key. As a tribute to Mike during the ARRL SSB DX contest a couple weeks later, members of YCCC exchanged a greeting of “Irish Whiskey” – Mike’s phonetics – when working other members on the DX end during the contest.

Jerry Muller, K0TV. I knew Jerry for perhaps 20 years if not more. He burst onto the public scene back in the 90s as he was building his contest station. Jerry had purchased a large house on a hilltop with six acres of land – a contester’s dream. He set about erecting three towers, arranged so that he could feed them on 160 meters for gain in several directions. Unfortunately, a neighbor in the development below him took offense to the unsightly towers and vowed to fight his plans.

She picked the wrong guy for a fight. Those of us who knew Jerry can describe him as irascible, irreverent, undaunted and similar adjectives that are not printable. Jerry was an avid VHF/UHF contester as well as an EME enthusiast. This meant that he understood the technical requirements of a line-of-sight path and antenna height go hand in glove. With the aid of Mike, K1TWF, and PRB-1, Jerry successfully argued his case in court. (Years later, while working on one of his towers, I remarked that a large pine tree was close to one of his guy wires. He hollered up asking if I could see the house of his tormentor. When I said no, he said that is why the tree is there.)

In the ensuing years, I operated the major contests from Jerry’s QTH. I enjoyed knocking off the DX with ease, especially with his 80-meter 4-square that we put up in a steady November rain. Jerry’s shack which occupied most of the basement rooms of his house would do a hoarder proud. It is a tribute that he knew exactly where everything was. The downside is that it meant he had to be on call during a contest weekend whenever we needed something.

Although he was a senior software engineer by profession, Jerry had a strong feel for the hardware side having designed and built interfaces for his VHF/UHF work. I got to learn the annoying side of his efforts while installing one of many VHF/UHF beams on one of his towers. To this day, a piece of me, literally, is still on the top of that tower. On the lighter side, Jerry designed a simple jig for aligning the WRTC towers and anchors that proved to be a big time saver. As one of the site installation team leads, I was grateful for the “Jerry-rigged” apparatus.

Jerry was noticeably absent from a memorial dinner for Mike, N1IW. When I met him at the post-WRTC celebration dinner, he did not look well. It was then that I learned he had been diagnosed with pancreatitis. Jerry was diabetic and, true to his nature, often flouted his doctor’s advice. For the next year, Jerry and his team at Mass General battled the disease in preparation for major surgery. I saw Jerry in July 2015 shortly before we moved. He had gone from weighing 270 pounds to 165, less than what I weigh. His mind – and mouth – however, were still sharp as ever but the tumor was as stubborn as he was, refusing to shrink. Perhaps fittingly, Jerry became a Silent Key on October 25, 2015, during his beloved CQ WW SSB DX contest.

Rex Lint, K1HI. I met Rex not long after moving to NH and joining NARC. First impressions are that Rex was an easy-going guy with a great sense of humor. He was already known as an avid contester in a club that did not focus on contesting. This made Rex the de facto favorite to operate 20 meters during Field Day where the most contacts could be made. Rex knew how to make operating relaxing and fun. He often Elmered new operators on how to work stations in a contest, usually making a humorous remark during a run to lighten the tension. During one Field Day when the club operated battery, Rex decided to stir up some QSOs while operating 20 SSB. He cranked his power up to 100 watts, used his call, and asked the stations to “LISTEN FOR THE QRP STATION”, at which point he would drop his power to 5 watts and work the stations with the club’s call.

Ever one looking for the contest advantage, Rex pressed to add more aluminum during Field Day. When the club ramped up Field Day activities at a field in Hollis, Rex convinced the club to get to 100 feet on one tower and stack beams for 20 and 40 meters. He was rewarded with adding DX stations off the back of the beams. (The project ended up to be the most exhausting climbing I have ever done. I also found how fast I could climb down as a thunderstorm approached.)

Rex taught me how to climb towers and trust my belt. My first time climbing with Rex was to take down a tower in Hudson. I had never climbed more than ten feet above the roof line of a tower mounted to the side of my house when I lived in NJ. Here I was, strapped in at 70 feet, with Rex telling me how he got over his fear of climbing. He would climb up to where he felt scared and nauseous, climb down, throw up, and go back up a little further until he got over it. Thanks, Rex.

My most memorable moment with Rex was during one of the major SSB DX contests. Rex had invited a number of club members over to operate as his station and learn the rhythm of running stations or practice search and pounce. During the latter half of the contest, Bill, WB1BRE (also a president emeritus of NARC) showed up with his then-state-of-art packet suitcase. Bill had a packet station that consisted of an IC-02AT 2-meter handheld, a TNC, and a Tandy T-100 computer (yep, T-100). Rex rigged up a wire to connect the HT to a nearby packet node that allowed us to link into something called a packet spotting network. It didn’t take long before we were furiously jotting down calls and frequencies to pass to the operator to find the DX. I was hooked; within a week I had my own IC-02AT interfaced with my Heathkit H-89 computer and a 1/4-wave ground plane hanging from my shack ceiling. (I think most of this equipment is older than the new club members.)

I had a chance to return to NH in late January of this year and wanted to stop and see Rex for an eyeball. I was shocked to learn that he was in the throes of battling cancer. I managed to stop by and chat with him for a while and learned that a suspicious nodule on one of his lungs had suddenly mushroomed and metastasized to both lungs in a matter of a few months. He still had his sense of humor but the quips were noticeably fewer. Rex had been a retired smoker for 20 years but the damage had been done.

I made a return trip up north in July and inquired about Rex. I hesitantly paid a visit to the hospice where he was staying to see him. He was very weak and knew I was there but talking was very difficult for him. I told him I kept my promise to “see me if I’m still here” to quote his earlier goodbye to me. Rex became a Silent Key on July 26, 2016.

I titled this article WASK for Worked All Silent Keys. I knew these three gentlemen well but this article is meant to be a tribute to all those Silent Keys who have enjoyed the fun and fascination of ham radio. Every one of them has contributed to the hobby whether it be advancing the state of the art or getting a kid excited to try it. They are no longer with us but their spirit lives on to energize the ionosphere to allow the rest of us to keep on Hamming.

Ed, K2TE

Featured, Field Day, General, Newsletter, On The Air

Field Day Rebirth

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Field Day 2016 found me once again participating with NARC in the bucolic setting of Hollis, NH. I thought that last year was to be my last Field Day with the club as I was in the process of pulling up stakes and heading for Florida. However, I had the opportunity to head north the weekend before Field Day to drop my grand kids and their mom off for the summer. Once I realized the proximity to Field Day on the calendar, it didn’t take much lobbying from Fred, AB1OC to convince me to hang around for Field Day.

Prior to leaving for NH, Fred mentioned that the club would be operating from the Hollis-Brookline High School ball fields at the back of the school. The last time the club operated from Hollis was in 2012 when we were still putting up 70-foot towers and dipoles. Since that time, the club has downsized as far as ambition by switching to 40-foot towers using the falling derrick method to raise a single triband antenna and dipoles without anyone climbing. For those new to the club, the falling derrick approach came about from the 2014 World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) event that showcased New England as the Yankee Clipper Contest Club hosted 50-plus two-person teams of the best contest operators in the world. Several club members participated in setting up some 65 towers for the mid-July event.

For 2016, plans called for setting up the two towers similar to what was done last year. This time, however, the 40 SSB station was going to be beefed up with a 3-element Inverted Vee beam array. The club had tried such an array back in the 1990’s on 80 CW. It worked OK considering the elements were suspended from a drooping rope from a tree to one of the towers, hardly in line to benefit from a director and reflector. Fred opted to set up three, 50-foot telescoping masts with pulleys to hoist the elements up. I must admit that I figured setting up the array was going to be the long pole – err, poles – in the NARC tent. With twelve sets of guy ropes per mast I envisioned a rat’s nest just begging to be tangled. My pessimism proved to be unfounded as the masts went up without much of an effort from Murphy to mess things up. Kudos to all the folks who pitched in to pull it off smoothly. The array dominated the Field Day setup like a far-off DXpedition.

Also new for Field Day was the use of the new ICOM 7300 transceivers. I learned that many in the club have purchased what is an amazing rig with a very easy user interface (especially for me) and great phase noise performance at an uncharacteristically cheap price for ICOM. The low phase noise level translates to a lower level of interference from nearby stations. I had the chance to familiarize myself with the 7300 leading up to Field Day using the N1MM+ logging program so that I could avoid the panic at T-0. I operated 40 CW with an inverted Vee that was less than 100 feet from the end of the driven element of the 40 SSB array. I did not experience any noticeable interference.

Field Day 2016 had a number of welcome surprises for me after nearly 30 years of my involvement with NARC. To put in simply: a lot of new faces. The club has been growing by leaps and bounds since I left. (Hmm, that doesn’t make me look good.) I wore my NARC call badge in case anyone wondered who I was. I was happy to meet all the new “2 X 3” hams in the club and I hope I will be able to match faces to calls as time goes on. Other highlights were making contacts on satellite after a hiatus of several years, and a cool demonstration of amateur TV with the Pepperell club.

Field Day 2016 was a homecoming for me since I also had the chance to meet old friends from many past NARC Field Days. While NARC has operated at other sites over the years, Hollis has a rich history in the club. Back in the 80’s NARC operated from what was then an open field adjacent to Beltronics off the town center. I was new to NH back then and I was amazed at the level of participation to build four towers and set up 12 or more stations. The logistics of such an operation benefited from (1) a storage barn less than a mile away on Ridge Road; and (2) a large pool of 30-40 year-old Hams to put it all together. Using the call of our host Jim, N1NH, NARC was regularly in the top 10 finishers for Field Day.

The club grew steadily back then. When the field at Beltronics succumbed to rows of storage sheds, I looked around for a suitable site that would not require a large caravan of pickup trucks to haul our equipment. The solution was right under our noses: the field beyond the orchard behind our storage barn. This proved to be the idyllic setting for a Field Day operation that everyone liked. It did not take long for the club to ratchet up Field Day participation to 20 stations or more. NARC was off and running big-time, culminating in winning it all four years in a row during the 1990’s. One of the club members secured the call N1FD for the club to showcase our accomplishments.

With Field Day 2016, I see a rebirth of the enthusiasm I enjoyed in the past. The future of NARC Field Days will be driven by the new crop of hams in the club. It will most likely NOT be “your grandfather’s Field Day”. The goal is not to see if the club can match the glory years of yesteryear but to try new things. Alas, CW is fading in popularity in the face of the digital modes that have cropped up featuring 100% copy with near-QRP power levels. Maybe more stations running PSK or some other digital mode is worth trying. Rigs like the ICOM 7300 are a step in the right direction when it comes to mitigating inter-station interference. However, more can be done to quash interference when using the triplexers so that hassle-free copy is possible with simultaneous stations using the same beam. And it doesn’t have to be just better filters. Maybe some neat lock-out or synchronization schemes can be tried to make competing modes play nicely. Field Day should always be a venue to try new ideas, whether it be interference mitigation or some odd-ball antenna design. All you newbies in the club are far better with a computer than I will ever be. Time to use all those powerful tools and tackle these age-old problems.

Ed, K2TE

Hashtags: #ARRLFD #N1FD

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