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Hi Luke,
Some things to consider RE 6m. First, most activity on 6m these days is made using the digital FT8 mode which probably will not be possible while driving. Second, most 6m stations use a horizontally polarized antenna, and repeaters are mostly vertically polarized. All of this means that you’ll probably need a second, horizontally polarized antenna like a halo if you want to do 6m mobile.
You might want to try 6m at home first and see what’s available on this band before you invest the time and $ to do it mobile.
Are you planning to do FM for repeaters and simplex or SSB for weak signal say on 6m?
This arrangement will certainly work but you might want to also consider a lip-mount NMO on the top edge of your door.
[caption id="attachment_97731" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Diamond NMO Lip Mount[/caption]I have this arrangement on my F-150 and it’s much easier to route the coax cable from the antenna to the radio. You can route the antenna coax it inside the door sealing gasket until you get to the hinge area then route the coax to your radio from there. The antenna is also mounted higher on the vehicle which will improve radiation performance. Here are some more pictures of the VHF/UHF radio installation in our F-150.
There are lots of good choices for NMO standard whips for this sort of mount as well.
Hello Everyone,
Videos for all of our Ham Bootcamp Fall 2020 sessions are now available on our Ham Bootcamp page. We’ve also included a video from our contact with 9H5BZ on Gozo Island in Malta. We hope that you enjoy them!
Hello Duane,
Station performance depends greatly upon your surroundings, quality of soil, and antenna installation. For example, high hills in the direction of the DX you want to work can make a significant difference. Take a look at some DX stations on QRZ.com in say Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. If you go tho the details tab for these stations, you’ll often see the heading for working each one. This will give you a good idea of what directions signals from these stations will arrive from at your QTH.
The best thing to do is to just set up WSJT-X at your station. Try calling CQ on the 20m band first and then look at PSKreporter to see who heard you. You’ll want to do this a few different times of the day to get a feel for how propagation changes.
We’ll be posting the WSJT-X Bootcamp session on our Bootcamp Page shortly. Also, take a look at the WSJT-X Tech Night that we did for a more in-depth discussion of WSJT-X and PSKreporter. You can find the video (and much more) on our Tech Night page.
I hope that this helps you!
Hello Everyone,
The board that we’ll be designing at Tech Night tonight is part of a much larger EME (Moonbounce) Station Project that we are doing. I’m planning to give a brief overview of our EME Station Project starting at around 6:30 pm ET before Tech Night begins.
I’ve you’ve ever wondered what might go into building a capable 2m EME station including putting up a Tower and some large antennas, join our Tech Night Zoom early.
Hi Tim,
I’m glad that the previous post helped you. We’ll be covering some wire antenna topics and radio programming at Bootcamp next Saturday so you should get some more useful information there.
Next time you post in our forums note the checkbox that says “Notify me of follow-up replies via email”. If you check this before you submit your post, you will get an email when someone replies.
Hello Tim,
I am glad to hear that you are putting together your station! Here are some initial thoughts about your questions.
1) How to get my Icom 7300 –> MFJ998 —> AL-811H —> Dipole Antenna tuning complete (without damage) is not intuitive to me….
>> The best approach is to begin with your antenna and feedline and work back. It would help to know more about what sort of dipole you want to put up. Take some time with an analyzer to adjust your dipole to be resonant on the band that it is intended to work on. I like a basic 20m vertical dipole to start or perhaps a quality off-center fed dipole from Buckmaster if you want a multi-band antenna. Install a good ground system and choose a low-loss, high-quality coax feedline, and work from there. If you do this, you should not need an external tuner (or a tuner at all).
2) I’ve a Baofeng UV-5R.. and I’m having trouble getting it to work simplex as well as how to get into local repeaters, tones, offsets, xmit/rx freq.. etc.
>> I’d suggest that you purchase programming software and a cable from RT System for your radio. This makes all manner of programming including setting up simplex channels, satellites, Foxes, etc easy to do. If you decide to go with RT Systems, I have a program for the UV-5R that you can start with.
I hope that this helps you!
Hi Tom,
Why don’t you give Balun Designs a call or send them an email and explain what you need. If they don’t have an on the shelf product, they will probably make a custom one for you. Lets us know how this works out when you can via a post here.
Hi Tom,
You might consider using an external balun to match your ladder line feeder to a coax cable. Place this unit outside just before bringing the feedline into your house. Then use a short section of high-quality coax like LMR-400 to connect that balun outside to your tuner. Balun Designs would be a good source for an external tuner balun of this type.
