Category: Yleinen

UHF/VHF antenna problems (Finnish)

This post is in exceptionally in Finnish this time. Ohesa kuvia aiemmin kirjoittamani UHF/VHF antennin toimintaongelmiin liittyen. Havaitsin, että antennin runkoliitin oli löysällä ja pyöri kiristettäessä antennin johtoa. Purin antennin varmistaakseni, että liitokset sisällä olivat ehjiä tästä pyörimisestä huolimatta. Ehjiä olivat. Tässä yhteydessä huomasin (vasta) myös, että antennissa EI ollutkaan spekseissä mainittua N-liitintä vaan UHF-liitin! Tämä oli syynä antennin toimimattomuuteen. UHF-runkoliitin kun toimii aika heikosti kun syöttöjohdossa on N-liitin 🙂 Onneksi ei pääteasteet palaneet.

Tässä kuvasarjaa antennin purkamisesta ja liittimistä. Erikoista tässä on se, että N-liitin käy kuitenkin kuvassa näkyvään UHF-runkoliittimeen. UHF-liittimestä näyttää puuttuvan myös sisäeristeet (vrt. SWR -mittarissa olevat UHF-liittimet).

HamShack almost ready

Couple of weeks ago I finally got my VHF/UHF antenna (in the picture)
also set up in my hamshack. To get it up and running, I bought some
antenna mast and mast fixing supplies from the local antenna shop and
hooked up my Lafayette MV-2000 tri-band antenna. I originally feeded it
with RG-58 coaxial, but yesterday I changed that to Echoflex-10 cable to
avoid signal loss. However the antenna still seems to be a bit off as
the signal is not getting as good as I would like. I need 50w power to
get to local repeaters and to me it seems a bit too much, as I can
operate them with 5w from the house. Hamshack is located lower than the
house, but antenna is about the same height with the house, or even a
bit higher…so something is not right with the antenna
still..Investigations will continue as I have also have bought an SWR
meter to measure the standing wave ratio from the HF to UHF bands. Hope
that helps. One fellow ham also has an antenna analyzer so if nothing
else helps.. 🙂

I finally managed to have some time to also clean up the shack too. It
really have been so much to do there, that everything was a mess. Now it
looks a bit more like a place for a human being (or HAM) so here is the
picture of the actual radio table too. 🙂 In addition to VHF/UHF
antenna work I’m also still working to get my digital modes up and
running..And yes.. I have managed to make some QSO too. All the way to
USA and around EU and it is GREAT!! 🙂

Up inda air!

Jeeee! Finally got my HamShack up and running. Got my 42 meters long Windom antenna up in the tree with the slingshot I told you in the last blog about. The antenna installation was not very easy how ever… It was very windy day and I was operating only by my self. The yard is covered with huge amount of snow, which does not actually help the installation, but I managed. As you can see from the picture (not very well..) the antenna is quite up in the tree and works well.

During the weekend I managed also to squeeze some time to actually work the HF. I managed to get some QSO’s all the way to USA and EU. Ofcourse I had a pleasure to work some OH stations too 🙂 So it seems that I finally have managed to get my station into some real radio action. I have also ordered a DigiMaster Pro Plus -interface for digital mode working. I’m looking very much on that and will let you know as soon as that setup is also up and running.

Shack-Update 4.3.2011 – HF is coming

Long time no see! I have been extremely busy lately and therefore this blog has been silent for a while. Sorry about that and special thanks to Jaakko about asking me to write again soon 🙂 Btw. I have been thinking should I keep on writing this blog in English or should I turn to Finnish? What do you think? Do I have any english speaking readers at the moment…hands up…anyone? 🙂

Well.. I finally made my mind about HF rig. I pondered long time between Kenwood TS-480SAT and Yaesu FT-450AT. Both are great rigs, portable and good. The thing with Kenwood was remoterig usage. But finally I thought that I prefer Yaesu and work remotely with computer assistance. So I bought an used Yaesu. It is actually like new, as it has been used only as a secondary rig. The guy I bought it from has maybe the GREATEST Hamshack I have ever seen. Boy did he have a great place there. He just had a newly built house and ofcourse all HAM related details were considered already when building. Antenna leads, grounding, switches and all…just great. And the place was up high in the hill + he had a nice +20 meters mast for several beams in the yard… WOW! Should have taken a bunch of pictures, but I was only staring the Yaesu FT-450AT on the table.. 🙂

 My friend OH6VM was then kind enough to lend me a power for the rig, as the power I’m looking for my shack is out of stock from the ham shop. Only thing I was missing was antenna. I ordered them and they arrived yesterday. I was supposed to have a W-8010 trap dipole, but it was also out of stock, so I bought the “good ol” Wimo Windom, the 42 meters long beast of that off center fed dipole. Meanwhile I also  made an antenna launcer. I actually made 2 prototypes from which the latter was the best (its in the picture). With the first one we tried to shoot OH8JGQ antenna into the tree, but did not succeed. We used the old army “sling shot style” with success…not too high, but in the tree anyway. 🙂 We must later use this new sling there too.  So today I’m about to shoot my own antennas in top of the trees in our yard. Lets see how it goes.

Loads of things have been happening. Hope to write you soon again. Maybe I will shoot some video about my shack and introduce it as it is ready. I strongly encourage my Finnish readers to look my video/podcast program called HessunKahvila as it also discusses these matters A LOT 🙂 It’s only available in Finnish, so sorry to all my international friends.

 

First Echolink QSO

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Just had my first Echolink QSO yesterday. Worked with my iPad via internet to OH6AG-R repeater in Jakobstad Finland. Had a QSO with OH6NT who was operating 145.625MHz with regular 2m HT radio. This was very interesting experiment and worked fine, so TNX for the QSO to 6NT.

Echolink sure is is interesting and I would definately try it out later. Maybe I should try to work some local repeaters in USA via that for example. 🙂

Registration process was quite fast and straight forward with Echolink. Just register and then send a scanned version or photo of your radio amateur license to review board via e-mail and thats about it. I strongly encourage all hams to try this form of communication too. Hope to hear you there too. Btw I also have an echolink client installed for my Android phone (the same I’m writing this txt with). It makes nice and even more mobile rig 🙂

http://echolink.org/

RadioXArcala

Wow! This is some really good stuff. Way to go Arcala Extremes! Just surfed to The great site of Radio Arcala while surfing some info about remotrig.com Really interesting and very important stuff about future amateur radio and the preservation of our precious hobby, the best scientific hobby of all time.

Enjoy the video, join the Facebook group etc. I will continue surfing some info of HF rigs etc. Have a great sunday. It’s very fine and sunny sunday here in the north.

http://www.radioarcala.com/

http://www.remoterig.com/

First QSL

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Wow! Just got my first HAM QSL ever! I had my first direct QSO on 2 meters with my friend OH8JGQ, who was walking to the office in the freezing -32 celsius weather, talking to his trusty ol’ Icom IC-W2E rig…while I was already in the office. To my big surprice he brought me this very first QSL of mine for that QSO as it was direct and not repeater based. I think I need to figure out my QSL cards now and quickly provide one to him too 🙂

Welcome!

Welcome to the OH6FXL radio amateur site. My name is Hessu and this is my blog about my radio amateur hobby. In addition to this blog, You can find all kind of information about me and my station from these pages. This site may contain some finnish language material from time to time, but I try to keep this international as I’m very interested in DX’ing on HF bands. Currently I only have a tiny Yaesu VX-8D radio for 2 meters and 70 centimeters (picture of my setup), but I’m looking forward on having a HF setup in my shack in the near future.

So please feel free to comment my blog and browse through this site. You can also leave a comment in finnish 🙂 Hopefully you will find this site informative. I hope also to hear you on amateur bands soon. 73’s from the freezing cold Finland (it is -27 degrees celsius on the time of this writing). Take care!

And yes…this page is currently under construction 🙂