endure
GCM

Of course we aren't...That's outstanding progress in such little time! Well done! None of us are jealous or anything...

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Of course we aren't...That's outstanding progress in such little time! Well done! None of us are jealous or anything...
FT8?Yay! Holy grail. Australia.
Specifically Vermont, Victoria.
FT8?
Had something of an "Island evening" tonight. Worked the Azores, Madeira, Newfoundland and Cyprus on FT8. Also Costa Rica, Hungary and erm, Florida
Now have my "worked all continents" badge. I got the radio exactly a week ago.
Excellent results, given how little you have done with antennas at your QTH. This highlights how if something seems improbable, give it a try anyway. Unless you encountered marine telephony on LF it's unlikely you have done much with 160m. Yes the wavelength makes ideal antennas rather long but for FT8, all you have to do is make it resonant and give it a try. This will bring new knowledge and experience of propagation below 2 MHz.Had something of an "Island evening" tonight. Worked the Azores, Madeira, Newfoundland and Cyprus on FT8. Also Costa Rica, Hungary and erm, Florida
Now have my "worked all continents" badge. I got the radio exactly a week ago.
Mick Watling would be proud of "his boy". Mick was an ex-RAF instructor at 8 Sigs, and then the Royal School of Signals in Blandford. When I became an instructor, Mick was my mentor. He took me under his wing on my T3, T1, and then as his "peer". I'll never be his peer.
Worked all continents in a week. I think Mick might just approve of that![]()
Next week, building your own Stratocaster guitar.Give the rest of us a chance! Good effort though, you've obviously chosen the best hobby for you
Next week, building your own Stratocaster guitar.
You could try loading up the wire guitar "strings" for antenna experiments.Definitely not me. I have no musical ability at all. I understand the notation system, but absolutely clueless on how to make an instrument sound like what’s on the paper. I really don’t understand Guitars very well at all. I get that the strings are different lengths, and a bit like antennas (well, a lot like antennas), resonate at specific frequencies, and by shortening the length with the fret board, you get a higher octave. But the chords, where you clamp the strings at different points on the fret board, are like Chinese to me.
Mechanically, I probably could indeed build an electric guitar. If I really put my mind to it, I could probably also build an amplifier for it, and possibly some effects pedals. But I would have absolutely no idea if I‘d done a good job or not, because I couldn’t play it at all. Even a piano, which to my mind is similar, but just horizontally arrayed strings, key-operated, I struggle to get “Three blind mice” out of it. Lord alone knows how violinists acquire that skill!
You could try loading up the wire guitar "strings" for antenna experiments.
Yes, a weight is a good idea, as long as there's nobody underneath it. It's a tried and tested method of applying tension. As long as the wire doesn't stretch too much.Yes, but as i don’t have any guitar string wire, and no plans to buy any, it might be a while
It’s pissing down with rain, so the “antenna field” is a sea of mud, and the ferking rope’s stretched again. Next experiment will be weighting the end of the rope to tension it. The house end is fixed, and the tree end has a pulley that the rope goes through, then a rope tensioner tying off against a steel ring lower down the tree. It seems that when I pull it tight, and get a lovely taut line, either the rope’s stretching, or the tensioner’s letting the rope slip. I doubt it’s the latter, or it would be on the floor.
Plan B is therefore to dispense with the tensioner, and hang a heavy cast iron weight I just happen to have handy off the rope below the pulley. That should keep it in tension all the time, within the range of the height of the pulley to the ground (~20ft). If it’s not enough, I have three or four of the weights, and they’re probably about 30lb each. The hardware I bought has a 400lb breaking strain, so hopefully this will be an improvement.
Got to dry out a bit first though.
Yes, a weight is a good idea, as long as there's nobody underneath it. It's a tried and tested method of applying tension. As long as the wire doesn't stretch too much.
Hard drawn copper will stretch until it fails under load.It never occurred to me that it could be the wire that it stretching - of course it could, copper is ductile, and the insulation is flexible PVC, which will easily stretch. Hmm. Maybe the antenna’s resonant at a slightly lower freq![]()
Hard drawn copper will stretch until it fails under load.
You can do a number of things. I seem to recall that the ARRL antenna handbook used to describe how to support copper wire with polypropylene cord or rope. Paracord could do the job. The idea being that the cord takes all the tension and safely cradles the insulated copper wire. Lay in more supports eg roach poles or use a different wire.
Copper coated steel may be an option. The Clansman wire were shrouded in kevlar which resists stretching. You can still get kevlar wire from various sources. A lighter weight antenna wire may be less prone to sagging under weight.
Can you find the loading specification for the wire under tension?It’s 14ga stranded, so hopefully a bit more stretch-resistant. I suppose the answer, at least in the near future is to use the minimum weight that will tension it. Hopefully just one weight will do it. I’ve just dug them out, they’re cast iron blocks about the size of a 2lb bag of sugar. Having re-looked at them, they’re more like 15lb each. They came out of an old TV stand, to stop a large CRT TV from toppling over as the stand was rolled around the office. Some surface rust, so I just spray painted them, otherwise they’ll be a rusty mess in no time.
Can you find the loading specification for the wire under tension?
Bit of a random one reference signals in a military context, at what point in the chain does things like propagation, counter/sigint, frequency selection etc.. get thought about?
I get given the frequency we will be operating on, type it into my sh*tty bowman
and proceed to winge about it until endex. I've not thought about it until I got into amateur radio a couple of years ago but it must be a headache planning for hundreds of radios in a battlegroup/brigade even without the non-ideal operating conditions, enemy action and so on