Personal

Eric Behr, NIU Math, DeKalb, IL 60115
kc9dux at arrl.net
county: DeKalb, grid square: EN51ow, ITU zone: 8
rig: Icom IC-736, 100W or less, LLTR antenna system

Ham radio links and information

Assorted links
QSOs, geographically

My radios, chronologically: IC-T90A HT, IC-2100H VHF base station, IC-2350H VHF/UHF mobile (bought a second one in 2005), and my IC-736 HF rig. You can tell that I'm something of an Icom person right now. I also briefly had a Yaesu mobile for use as a home 2m station, but sold it in 2004. In August 2006 I bought one more, an IC-718.

Dear Diary

I got my technician's license in April 2003 (granted 4/28/2003), callsign KC9DUX at the Wheaton, IL WCRA exam session. The VEs talked me into taking the General written test, but I hadn't even looked at that material before, and I missed by 2 points.

After trying a Radio Shack HTX-420 (a bit crude and overpriced) I decided on the ICOM IC-T90A. I'm very happy with it, although the 6m band isn't too useful. The Kenwood TH-F6A looks better, but I didn't want to spend so much.

5/3/2003 Short chat with Bill KC9CEF, from Shabbona over the KARC repeater - so I'm no longer a total newbie ;-)

Hamfest in Sandwich, 5/4/2003. Not much, cold weather, everyone was taking off around noon. Picked up a BNC to SMA cable for $1 and a decent SWR meter for $7.

5/10/2003 A few chats near Geneva, mainly on the Aurora FRRL repeaters. Later bad weather, listened to the local SkyWatch net.

6/28/2003 ARRL Field Day. Went over to help. Ended up logging CW contacts, chatted, met several KARC members. Tried getting the ARRL "secret" message, but heard zip (later ran a recording through a sound editor, and heard the W1AW call very faintly, but it was drowning in noise, no chance to get the message). Took a few photos.

6/29/2003 Rest of the Field Day. Logged voice contacts this time, which was actually useful (with CW I felt like a deaf man, and more in the way than helping). Finally at the very end got to work the radio, a Yaesu FT-840, got 2 contacts (and one of them claimed a dup, although we had him before on a different band). I don't think the antenna was well tuned, there were several very clean CQs with nobody else responding, and they never heard us. Helped clean up.

7/1/2003 Very good 2 m, lots of action on KB9I, talked to KB9ODX, Eric, IN for a while.

7/9/2003 Joined KARC at their monthly meeting. Also checked in on a few of their nets.

Thinking about what to get into next. Code is going fairly slowly. I had all letters & digits in my head in two days, but that isn't the right way. I want to be able to "hear" it rather than try to understand it. And I don't have much to listen to (the ancient Panasonic radio died recently). So I've been thinking of getting a good HF rig for use as a receiver now. Did a lot of reading; new stuff of course is the safest, so IC-718 is a good candidate. Many people praise it, but some say it sounds bad, etc. Plus it's still quite a bit of money for me. Among older models the IC-735 seems to have a particularly good all-around opinion. Some say that the 738 and 736 are the best bet (AT, built in PS in the 736). Older still - the 740 and 751A are highly rated.

What a beginner usually doesn't know is that this business is filled with compromises. For example, my T90A is a lot of fun for scanning emergency or air bands, but it probably is a worse HT than a $120 older model - I do get quite a lot of intermodulation, esp. recently with the WX radio being heard right next to the 2m KARC repeater. I don't regret getting it, but for some things it's less than perfect. There is no "do it all" radio.

I decided that for day-to-day stuff a reliable mobile is a must. I do most of my listening in the car anyway, and hooking up the HT and unhooking it is a pain. Besides, some time or other I might want to do some APRS, or packet, while talking on the repeater, so I'm no longer kidding myself that one radio will be enough.

As much as I like Icom, their current mobiles aren't very exciting. Among the simple ones the Yaesu FT-2800 looks best and is dirt cheap. Cross-band repeat would be great for someone involved in SkyWarn etc., but I'm not going to get into that too much. Of the dual-banders the Kenwood 707A looks OK, not too expensive. I also found out that the older IC-281H apparently repeats on 2m what it gets on 70cm (only Rx on 70cm), and can be found for about $150 in good shape.

So I'll probably get a mobile soon with a good antenna, and wait with HF a bit. I'll do what I can with Morse, and next year I'll try to hang around K9VIS at the Field Day to see if I can help him copy CW...

7/16/2003 Made a little direct-fed 70 cm yagi out of welding rods, haven't tried it yet. Only heard the FRRL 440 repeater come in like a ton of bricks.

7/20/2003 Hamfest in Sugar Grove (Waubonsee College). Not bad, a few good-looking rigs - mainly Kenwood and Icom, some MFJ QRP boxes - at reasonable prices, a few usual vendor stands with connectors etc. But unlike Sandwich there were just a couple of stands with a relatively small selection of antennas. Near the end I got tempted and got the FT-2800 from the Amateur Radio Toy Store stand for a Gigaparts price. Support your local dealer! Most vendors were there by 9, everything was already winding down around 11:30.

The 2800 is built like a tank, heavy, receives well. The interface seems clunky after the Icom, and in general it isn't a "jewel-like" toy that one can have dreams about. But it is all I need. I was also looking at the Icom V8000, but I really don't want 75W, plus the fan turns me off (some people complained that it was noisy, or malfunctioning etc.) So I'll stick with this mobile for a while.

7/23/2003 Well, not exactly. On a spur of the moment I went to the Toy Store in Wheaton. The more I listened to the radio, the more I felt it wasn't going to make me happy. The sound was too "bassy", partly because of the large speaker, partly because of bad choice of frequency response, partly probably because of my hearing. There were clear, nearby repeater conversations which I simply couldn't follow without cranking the volume high. I don't know why the manufacturers won't include a tone control, even a 3-way simple switch with a few caps/resistors on it. At the store I started a sheepish conversation with the proprietor about the problems I was having. He usually charges a 15% restocking fee, but he graciously agreed to take the radio back because I haven't messed up anything in the package other than the power cord, everything else was pristine. I didn't have the box with me, so I said I'd come back next day. Bought a small Maldol lip mount and a regular Comet RG-58 cable assembly to put on the edge of my car door. Looked at the Diamond K400, but that is really heavy-duty, and I don't need something like that (although it's certainly better made than the small Maldol or Comet lip mounts).

7/24/2003 Had a pleasant chat with KB9YYX on my way back to Wheaton; the HT with the homebrewed quarter wave on a window mount was getting to the FRRL repeater without a problem all the way from DeKalb. I swapped the FT-2800M for an IC-2100H paying a difference of $20 (had I picked the 2100 to start with, I could have saved that or more by going with mail order...)

Here is my beef with Yaesu. I already mentioned the audio quality; this may be my problem, and certainly nothing that a well-selected external speaker couldn't cure, but I don't want to clutter my car with accessories! There is also the lack of tactile feedback in the dial. It feels mushy, you never know whether you turned it one or two notches. This is particularly bad combined with the encoder sometimes skipping a step (when you turn the dial by a notch but the alpha tag character goes from A to C) or not doing anything when you turn it by a notch. This is probably a matter of tuning the software.

I also found the programming process (and the "user interface" in general) to be clunky and non-intuitive. I didn't spend hours reading the whole manual, but even after reading some of it there were strange surprises. Again, this is personal opinion.

The unit would also turn off (and reset the scan etc.) every time I started the engine. The Icom seems to have no trouble with the momentary voltage drop, it stays on.

Finally, the "features" such as the Internet WIRES button. I don't think I'd ever touch it. There's IRLP already, and someone should tell Yaesu that even that isn't quite as hot anymore.

Anyway, I am playing with the Icom now, and - aside from a few minor features - I think it is superior in every respect, from the intelligently designed GUI to the physical aspects such as the "just right" feel of all controls. I also like its microphone better, and the audio is less muddy although still not perfect. The only thing I would really like is the ability to assign memories to banks so I could scan only things of interest at the moment (the FT-2800 doesn't have banks either). I'm sure many people will be happy with the Yaesu, it certainly is well-built and the heatsink that size is not likely to ever overheat, while the Icom will probably blow its finals some day. But I just keep thinking about Windows versus MacOS.

7/26/2003 In Chicago, listening in on the WB9AET repeater (main one on the Civic Opera House roof). Short QSO with N9TGR. Still enjoying the IC-2100 very much, although I mainly used the HT this time.

7/27/2003 Made a mobile quarter-wave per instructions in the ARRL book. Same as what I already had for the window mount but a tad longer so I can trim it if needed, and on a UHF connector so I don't have to use a BNC adapter on the new mount.

8/2/2003 Trip to Chicago. Chatted with Dick AH6EZ, Tim N9TWK (from North Av. beach running 300 mW via the WAFAR repeater), and KC9COR who was in Plano tweaking his new beam.

8/8/2003 A bit of luck on eBay. By accident noticed a newly listed IC-736 with buy-it-now for $450, quite a bit less than they usually go for. I wrote the seller with some questions, then looked at it a couple of hours later to find out that it was bought... I spent an hour kicking myself - at that price I won't find another one for quite a while, and given that it has the P/S built in, it's more like $300. But then the seller wrote back saying that he had to relist it (buyer was in Europe and the seller only ships to the US), so I ended up getting it after all. We'll see.

8/10/2003 Setting up the tower for the Steam Power Show. 10 m vertical on top, a triband HF dipole hanging from the new arm that K9TIP made recently.

8/15/2003 Worked 20 and 40 m on a Kenwood TS-840 at the Show under W9S call, at first with DDA then alone; got quite a few QSOs. Fun.

8/22/2003 Got the IC-736, a beautiful rig, very good shape, everything works. Could only try 6 m, with a long piece of wire hanging out the window and minimum power; XYL listened on the HT and said it was perfectly clear and strong. Listened to many QSOs on SSB, long-range air traffic control, commercial AM, etc. Great toy.

9/14/2003 Made a direct coax-fed 2 m 3-element beam from 1/2" PVC pipe and copper welding rods. Receives great, hit a few far-away repeaters with full quieting, but SWR is too high, will need to work on it.

9/16/2003 Went to the KARC VE session on the spur of a moment, passed elements 3 and 4. Not ready for code yet, but this will give me an incentive to concentrate more on it. Got 32 out of 35 on general, didn't ask how the extra was.

9/21/2003 ICU asked me to help out at the Big Rock Plowing Match. Went there with TIP, GNX and later RFR showed up. Fun, did a bunch of QSOs. Tried my 736, but it was misbehaving -- looked like really bad antenna match. Puts out power, but not enough on phone. Possibly the mike is busted, or some such. Will need to borrow a dummy load and test it.

Bought 350 ft. of LMR 400 on eBay, good deal. Use these dimensions to prepare this type of coax for the PL-259 UHF connector:


Better yet, download this actual size picture in PDF format and print it out (make sure to un-check the "shrink oversized pages" in Acrobat Reader's print dialog; check that 1 inch scale actually measures 1 inch on the printout.

Make sure to clean/sand the surface near the holes and the inner edges of the holes before soldering. I do that either with an X-acto knife or a thin bamboo skewer with a small piece of #200 sandpaper wrapped around the end. I usually stick some resin into each hole that I'm about to solder, to help the solder flow. Use at least a 100 W iron. Let enough solder go through the hole onto the shield and heat it until it really flows well, but do not overheat the cable! Learning when to stop is the whole secret to making good connectors. After removing the iron make sure you wait a longish time (30 sec or so) for the solder to cool down before you move anything.

10/8/2003 Nominating Committee said they are putting me up for a treasurer. Voted in at the monthly meeting. Hope I won't botch it. KC9DDA elected president, N9RFR stays as VP (great!), K9VIS is a somewhat reluctant secretary (also good - some old guard to guide us).

10/22/2003 Got an extra battery for the T90A (from www.batteriesamerica.com, only $40+, ordered on Monday, it showed up on Tuesday morning).

10/26/2003 Sycamore Pumpkinfest Parade, nice to watch. We were all over the town, Barry was net control, telling DDA (near the reviewing stand) what's coming up. Kind of cold, and standing in one place for 3 hours isn't too much fun, but it wasn't bad. And it was useful - several people asked questions about the lineup or where to find bands; one school band ended up in a wrong place, and the guys in that area found it pretty quickly; and so on.

Got a small dummy load and an MFJ tuner/meter from Barry. The IC-736 shows little power on 6 m (the tuner probably skews the reading because it's for up to 30 MHz only), but on lower bands it blows as much power into the load as I dared try (15 W, even 25 for a split second, and the RF power knob is only a third of the way). So I guess the rig is OK. I don't know why it wasn't working right at the Plowing Match. Will have to check the mike.

11/1/2003 The speaker-mike from RS has low audio. Took it apart, noticed that it uses a 2.2k resistor across the electret instead of the Icom recommended 33k. Didn't have a tiny 33k so put in a 15k, and it got quite a bit better.

11/2/2003 Lunch with JBL, ICU, DDA. Took over the treasurer stuff. Went to Bob's, helped move the generator to the shed.

11/7/2003 Felt comfortable enough with the CW files I've been listening to, so I went to a VE session in Downers Grove and took the test. Easier than expected. Now I'm officially an extra (granted 11/12/2003), although "watered down" because of 5 WPM code. I also thought that an officer of the club had better be more than a tech. Even though I wouldn't say that about anybody else, personally I didn't feel too good about being a treasurer while holding the lowest license class...

On my way back chatted with Gary and Lenny on W9CEQ, and then - appropriately, he got me into all this! - with VIS, who was the first one to congratulate me.

12/16/2003 Chats on the air and some club-related things are now routine, so I'm not writing everything down anymore. Just new contacts, e.g. Bill KB9LLK from Freeport who called me on the repeater. Sent him the club's URL by email.

12/29/2003 More club paperwork, money audit, getting inventory lists in sync. Tough job...

Made a choke balun from about 22 ft. of LMR-400, inside a plastic bucket. See photo 1, photo 2, photo 3 and photo 4.

12/28/2003 The antenna finally went up. About 145 ft. of 16 gauge insulated wire (Farm & Fleet), in a delta (later kind-of-square) loop configuration, up in the trees, held up by 1/4 in. nylon ropes (Jewel, on sale) about 20-25 feet above ground. Got a couple of feet of heavy duty plastic chain at Farm & Fleet for a buck, cut every other link open, used those as insulators.

At first tried a slingshot with fishing weights. Finally used a baseball with heavy fishing line wrapped around and taped with electrical tape. Much better. Trouble is that some trees have a lot of small branches all over, and it's hard to route the wire so it will clear them and stretch up as it should. It's still sagging a lot, parts of it are probably only 15 ft. high.

Timid first attempts at HF contacts. Montana, Georgia, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania. But local club guys tuned in on 80 m to see how I'm doing, and most couldn't copy - the antenna must be a real cloud warmer. Plus low audio from the Icom mike. Built an amplified one per ARRL Handbook, better but still not quite there.

1/4/2004 Kid's Day. Didn't want to interfere with kids calling kids, but called when a CQ wasn't quickly answered. Jason WF4H in TN, Camille AA5BT in TX, Forrest WA2GBF in PA, Eric K1RU in CT, Michael NY6DX in NY, even my "neighbor" Justin (with Bill KN9N as control) in Sycamore, IL.

KC9DDA lent me his MFJ tuner. I got the wire to play nice on 40, 80, and even 160. 12 m is tough on the built-in tuner, as are parts of 17 m, but other than that the ATU is doing a good job on 30 m and higher.

The mike is doing OK after cranking up the gain and using the compressor. By the way, the preamp fits nicely in this attractive box. The electret is just a mike that Sun used to ship with every SPARC box - I have loads of those.

Here's how my "shack" in the corner of the basement looks right now.

2/9/2004 School Club Roundup. Ran W9NIU for several hours over 2 days, sometimes logging for AA9VT. We should do pretty well, with a score just under 34,000. Worse than last year but the bands were lousy.

2/17/2004 Got an MFJ-948 tuner on eBay, I'll finally be able to return KC9DDA's to him. The antenna is still working fine, I cranked up the gain of the mike amp a bit, making contacts without trouble, 5/9+ much of the time. Mainly East Coast, TX, FL, Carribean; even The Netherlands and West Coast of Canada. Very little local.

Also got my ARRL VE accreditation. Waiting for the one from W5YI. [got it in late February 2004]

2/20/2004 Made a quarter wave groundplane from welding rods: one attached to a BNC connector's center; four 6-32 screws holding short pieces of solid conductor wire at the corners of the BNC socket, with automotive spade/lug connectors used to attach four rods as radials. Everything is in a 1.5 in PVC tube, with two caps; four slits are cut at one end so the main element and the four "whisker" wires can rest comfortably in them. [see below for more]

3/7/2004 Lots of contacts during the DX phone contest, several new countries (Russia, Croatia, Poland, Norway, Galapagos Islands, etc). One antenna corner slipped down in very heavy winds, had to pull it back up.

3/17/2004 Made a Slim Jim 2m antenna from 1/4" copper pipe. Supposed to have low take off angle, but tested from a distance and people say it's worse compared to the twinlead J-pole. Here's a little unfinished writeup about it. I may have to tweak the feed point which isn't easy with a pipe. I'd like to use it as a base VHF antenna up in the tree.   [added in 2005] I gave the Slim Jim to KB9CAG, who needed something better than his rubber duck to hit the repeater with low power. He seems happy with it.

5/2/2004 We survived the Sandwich Hamfest. Did a bit better than in 2003, despite fewer table orders. There were many tailgaters, more gate tickets sold than expected. The only problem was a thief (who got caught thanks to an alert club member).

Picked up a decent linear 12V 8A P/S for $3 (cranked it up to 13.5V, works OK but sometimes drops the voltage too much under small load), and a working older TNC for $1. KC9DDA spotted a new in box FT-1500 for $100 while we were walking around, got that too.

5/5/2004 Rigged a TNC cable and hooked everything up (the serial port to my iMac via a Belkin 105 USB converter), got a bunch of Space Station BBS transmissions. The TNC is straight packet only, so no APRS etc., but what do you want for one dollar...

6/26/2004 Field Day. Some snags, but overall went fine and was a lot of fun. The club beat its point record by about 30%.

6/30/2004 Put together three computer power supplies in series (5V each), with a big full wave bridge to drop the voltage a bit. They are working just fine but are making a racket because each has two fans. People say they can't hear them (but I can!) They generate hash on 20 meters.

7/25/2004 Sold the Yaesu FT-1500M on eBay. Very nice radio but I can't get used to the user interface, and just like the FT-2800 it somehow felt a little rough at the corners compared to the Icoms. Oh, well.

7/30/2004 Made a double bazooka cut for 6 meters. An analyzer shows it's perfect on the low side of 6. Will report further after it's up in the tree and hooked up.

8/1/2004 Replaced a speakermike at Radio Shack - the old one had an intermittent open near the plug. Note: the RS speakermike with an Icom-style double plug may be OK with RS rigs, but has very low audio with Icoms. Replace the 1k or so resistor with a 15k or even 33k one, else most of the modulation gets shorted to the ground, and the electret capsule doesn't get enough voltage.

8/10/2004 Received the IC-2350H dualbander I bought on eBay. Good deal. The only thing missing is alpha tags, but nothing's perfect. The 1/4 wave whip isn't worth much on 440, so I'll probably make something along the lines of this mobile antenna. [added 10/2004] Here is the finished product. I'm very proud of the fact that the pipe used for it has a very appropriate birthplace. [added 1/2005] Got the UT-101 tone board for the 2350 at the Wheaton Toy Store for $30 or so.

8/13/2004 Sycamore Steam Power show, ran W9S for a few hours, fun.

9/13/2004 Rigged a line-level box for the IC-2100H. Here is a short writeup about that.

2/7/2005 Running the club net Mon. 9 pm in February. The usual NC Howard WA9TXW in Florida until May.

2/28/2005 Have been struggling with poor audio reports (no lows, pinched) with the IC-736. Some OM on Google suggested the BFO is off, and an Icom troubleshooting page recommends increasing the PA idle current. Borrowed a frequency counter from K9GPC, went through all the adjustments in the service manual that I could do with my tools. The idle current set to 100 -> 400 -> 950 mA (instead of the 100 -> 300 -> 500 in the service manual), reference frequency a bit off, BFO also but not much, PBT oscillator adjusted, AM carrier was way too low, PLL voltages a bit off. All in all guys say that the audio is better now. But from what I've read Icoms just have that sound. I'll try feeding audio through the accessory jack in the back after I make a low-gain preamp.

4/8/2005 Audio reports definitely better now, even though I haven't done any more tweaking. I wonder how much of the criticism had to do with individuals' ears, band conditions, and being a few dozen Hz off... And how much of it was just in my head, focusing on the complaints. Still, I have to play with it some more. Making a really good mike matched to a radio isn't rocket science.

1/16/2006 Wrote up a few details on IC-2350 cross-band repeat and DTMF control.

6/25/2006 Field Day - got to run a TenTec Jupiter, very nice. The rig and picture both courtesy of K9GPC. We did pretty well this year, except not as many bonus points as before. But points don't matter much.

7/12/2006 Bought an Icom IC-718 on eBay. The one bad thing about the 736 is that it isn't really portable: fairly heavy and large, plus it runs only on 110 V. And I want to be able to just go somewhere to a park, hook up to the car battery, string a dipole between trees, and start talking. I had looked at the 718 briefly before, but it's "entry level" slot scared me away. But at the second glance, and having read the reviews and heard local opinions, it sounds like a neat little and capable rig. The one I bought has an SSB filter, the DSP unit, and the voice synthesiser (not that I'm likely to need the latter for anything, but it should make it easier to sell if I don't like it). We'll see.

7/18/2006 The current contact VE wants me to take over the sessions when he moves out of the area, and I said OK. It shouldn't be too much work, but it's a fair amount of responsibility. Fortunately there are at least 6 VEs in the area who are usually willing to help, so we shouldn't be shorthanded. One thing I need to do is advertise our sessions better. We haven't had too many takers lately.

7/19/2006 The 718 showed up. Very nice, got good reports. Some things are not as convenient compared to the 736 (e.g. only the main VFO displayed in split mode, no scratch pad memories), but the rig is nice and small, the fan is almost silent (I was worried it was broken until I felt the airflow), and some of the DSP features are surprising for an entry level rig. The auto-notch miraculously works on most tuner-uppers and the like! Anyway, I like it a lot, but I will probably use it as I expected, as a backup/portable radio, so the 736 is safe for now.

8/12/2006 Sycamore Steam Show special event. Fun, but bands really stank. Mucho QSB. Here I am operating W9S, trying to pull someone out of the mud (photo courtesy of Bob W9ICU).

12/15/2006 The FCC removed Element 1 as a requirement from all licenses. I don't want to get into religious wars, but I'm not too happy about it. There is less and less of a challenge in getting the ham license, and it will ultimately reduce its value. People tend to not appreciate what they don't have to work too hard for. CW may be an anachronism for some, but I feel there ought to be some alternative "hurdle" to jump over for HF operators (at least the Extras).

12/16/2006 The first IC-2350h (which I use in the car) went nuts; it spontaneously powered itself off, now it has to be unplugged for a while to do anything. When it's connected to the battery it turns on immediately, but is locked up. It did something similar a long time ago, but then leaving it unplugged for a few hours helped. I put its logic board in the other radio, and it did the same thing - so it's the CPU. I don't have a good solution yet, but while I'm at it here are a few hints about taking it apart.

After taking the LCD module off of the logic board I found a couple of hardware bugs lodged under some components; they were apparently shorting traces on the PCB and preventing the CPU crystal from oscillating reliably. The radio is working fine again.

1/25/2007 There is some interest in getting packet going again. We had a D-Star presentation at the club meeting, it was good, but the gear is still too expensive. So I dusted off the old PK-88 TNC bought at a hamfest 3 years ago for $5. So far only tried receive since I don't have a mic cable. It works just fine with ZTerm and MacTNC, and a Keyspan USB-serial adapter. Had tough time finding legible pinouts for the connector on the Web, so here is my version for your enjoyment. Will try tonight with the IC-2100h.

4/25/2007 Listened in on a local school contact with the ISS. We could even hear the Station for a little bit on my HT with a rubber duck in the department office. People thought it was "neat". I left my laptop set to record it at home, off of the IC-2100 with a twinlead J-pole in a PVC pipe hanging on the wall. Pretty scratchy in the beginning, then gets a lot better. Here it is (about 3.8 MB 5 minute MP3 file).

7/9/2007 This isn't a "blog", so I don't have to update it every day ;-) Still, I feel bad about not adding anything in months.

So here goes. On 7/7/2007 I joined a bunch of volunteers to help search for a missing person. The search was supposed to cover parts of a 350 acre park/forest preserve. That's a LOT of ground to cover!

Local ARES and EMA-associated hams organized supplemental communications, with the net control station using a nearby repeater. There were several glitches, but overall it went OK. Here are some remarks that might be of interest to hams who are involved in such things.

We had to wait quite a bit at the beginning. I woke up at 4:45, got on the road at 6, arrived at 7, didn't really have any reason to be there until 8:45. When you are told to arrive at 7, you may want to double-check if that is really necessary.

The wait, combined with horrible weather (95+ degrees F, little breeze) and terrain (it's wild nature out there!) made this the most gruelling physical experience I remember. You can take it, as long as you know your limits and prepare - clothing, water, etc. But don't volunteer for things like that if you aren't fit. And even if you are fit, have plenty of water. The worst ending of a search is a search for some missing searchers.

There were some experienced and trained search teams, but we (very inexperienced ourselves!) were put in charge - as in "team leaders" - of a bunch of totally inexperienced volunteers, some of whom came wearing sandals, shorts, short sleeves, etc. You never know when you'll be made "a leader"... Think fast. Tell these people about the basics you know: stay with the group, don't upset nature/evidence, contact the team leader when you find something, also by all means contact him when you are ready to take off on your own. It is very hard to keep track of 20 people while walking through a grassy land with 8 foot tall vegetation. And some areas may be downright dangerous for the searchers. We were told that there were no poisonous creatures in the park, but I don't know if anyone bothered to check that with the poisonous creature liaison... watch your step.

The communications aspect was a mixed bag. There was a coordinator among the volunteer hams who seemed to know what to do. Net control was OK, but often distracted by local noise, not always responding, or trying hard to hear transmissions with bad signal. It also seemed that the "command" had no fast and clear channel to the agencies we served, in this case the 9 or so different public safety departments involved in the case.

Personally, I wish I had a better antenna. If you use an HT, drop the rubber duck that came with it in the dumpster. Buy or make a 1/4 wave whip for the frequency you will be using the most. I also had a 2 meter sleeve dipole on a stick with me. It would have been much better under the circumstances, but I don't know how I'd get through some of the vegetation carrying it.

Those who organize such events should pay more attention to making it easy to reach net control with an average antenna on low power. The fact of life is that people usually use rubber ducks and the single power pack that came with their radio.

I think it is also very important to have one or even two more channels of communication. The net control station was often tied up for many minutes because signals weren't strong enough, or the conversation was needlessly long. When there is need to pass a message quickly, there should be a secondary channel available, e.g. a simplex frequency that someone would constantly monitor and relay trafffic to net control when it becomes available.

In addition, you will want to communicate with some of the (unlicensed) searchers or another team leader. Many hams sneer on this, but in such case a few FRS radios can be a great asset. Sure, we could use another simplex ham frequency, but switching the radio back and forth isn't easy under such circumstances. And you may miss important net control announcements that way.

Make sure to agree on various details ahead of time. Frequency of a secondary simplex channel, FRS channel and tone, pattern in which you will be searching, units of GPS reports (degrees and decimals? degrees, minutes and seconds? etc.) Get everyone on the same page before the action starts - or else there will be confusion.

Regarding battery packs: many HTs lose power fast as the battery drops its voltage. That makes you go from full scale on 0.5 W to untelligible on what you think is 5 W. You can make a very good power source from a piece of PVC pipe if you use ingenuity. Suppose your HT likes 12 to 16V: just make a holder for ten D or C cells, which you can fill with fresh alkalines before the event. D cells are about $1 apiece, and have the capacity roughly 5-10 times your HT battery. It might be a neat project, and a $10 well spent before a lengthy public service event.

The most important thing I always take with me from such events (and this was by far not the first one) is that the biggest problem lies with the inefficiency of the communications. How often have you heard

"hmm, well, I'll get back to you - oh, by the way, you are a bit scratchy, but that's OK - we'll carry on; and, oh, let's see, maybe I have something here for you - no, never mind, that was just my GPS running low on batteries, which I just bought on sale, but I guess you get what you pay for - I suppose I'll pass it back to net control, and I will make sure I'll let you know if I see something unusual or strange here but for now I'll be clear, this is KC9DUX, let me know if you need anything else; ahm OK, bye."

I'm just as guilty of that as you are. One way to cure the "chatter" syndrome is to listen to some real-life FAA air controller traffic, e.g. at http://liveatc.net/. Compare how we say things with how they say things, and try to get a little closer to how they communicate.

Projects

A few links to power supply projects

http://www.rason.org/Projects/powsupply/powsupply.htm
http://www.seits.org/features/pwrsup.htm [dead...]
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Bill_Bowden/page12.htm#317pass.gif

Adjustable ground plane antenna

I built a little ground plane antenna, similar to one found on WA6RW's site. It's made from a Radio Shack BNC connector, a brass disk from a hardware store, a couple of 3/8" copper washers, five telescoping antennas ($ 0.50 each from American Science Surplus), and a few small brass machine screws and nuts. Here's how it looks: base from the bottom, top, the whole thing folded. I haven't done any SWR tests yet. It does dramatically improve reception over the rubber duckie, esp. on 70 cm (when folded to about 6 inches). The elements are a tad short for 2 m, so it isn't perfect, but still much better than the duckie. It's hanging from the ceiling inside my room (aluminum siding) and easily gets repeaters in Aurora, Elgin and Crystal Lake. [added 2/2004: it's now in the attic, and still doing great.]

Programming the ICOM T90A

I'm trying to figure out computer programming of the T90A. It does have this ability (with optional cable and software), but in the spirit of DIY I'd like to avoid buying extra stuff. Here is what I found out so far. [Added 1/9/2004] I just discovered a boatload of information on BlakkeKatte's page. [Added 1/11/2008] An IC-T90A memory map courtesy of Michael Gantz.

Combining some plans available out there, I built my own level converter ("kind-of RS-232" to/from TTL). It seems to work, i.e. it passes data on between the computer and the handheld. E.g. after telling the ICOM to clone, I can see that data in TeraTerm (PC) and ZTerm (Mac). But it's still a mystery to me how one puts this radio into programming mode. It's either a secret key combination (like the one for cloning), or a special ICOM CI-V command. No matter what I tried, the transceiver doesn't react to it, and nobody replied to my Usenet query with anything useful.

So far I've been underwhelmed by the public domain software used for controlling rigs. The authors are doing a great public service, so I shouldn't complain, but I haven't found any software that would fit the bill. I might take the plunge and try to roll my own somehow, except I only have a crappy Belkin F5U109 USB to serial adapter, and it doesn't work with OS X (shame on Belkin for not providing drivers!)

Twin-lead J-pole for 2 m

There are at least 10 slightly different variants of it; e.g. do a Google search on "300 ohm j-pole". Here are a few comments. First, the velocity factor in the radiator part of the long element is different, about 0.95, than in the feed part (the short section on the bottom), about 0.83 - depending on the kind of twinlead you use. So the short section is not just half as long as the halfwave section. I.e. the distance from the bottom to the "notch" on one side isn't simply 1/3 of the length of the other side, but more like 0.3. I won't give any dimensions here; I used the standard formula of "wavelength (in) = 11808 x VF / frequency (MHz)" to figure out the halfwave radiator length and the quarter wave feed length with the different VFs.

Once the resonant lengths were more or less OK for my favorite frequency, I did bother to determine the feed point using modeller's pins soldered to the coax. Around 1.25 in from the bottom the impedance varies very fast depending on where you stick them in. Moving them as little as 1/8" made SWR jump from 1:3 to 1:1.5. It took a few rounds to get a good resonance/impedance combination. After trimming the elements the best feed point will change again, so the pins have to be moved again. I made mine a bit short, since that is apparently what needs to be done before sticking the whole thing inside a PVC pipe (per one RACES writeup I saw). I ended up with SWR between 1:1.5 and 1:2 across the 144 band, not perfect but OK.

I used 3 x wavelength for the coax coming out of the pipe, sealed solder points and all exposed wires with hot melt glue, snapped a ferrite sleeve around the end of the coax and made a coil with 4 turns of about 1.5 inch next to the end of the pipe. It works fine; not as good as the groundplane above, and seems lousy on 70 cm, but should be good for hanging from a tree near a picnic table.

[added 3/2/2004] Our club ran several simplex tests to see how we would do without the repeater in an emergency, and the J-pole I made did well, with good clean contacts 20 or so miles away on 5 W of power.

Choke balun

After getting my extra I'm now counting days without any HF activity... So I need to get an antenna up, fast. But no matter what I pick, a choke balun to limit RFI will probably be necessary (and maybe not sufficient).

Various articles on Usenet and web pages hint that a simple coil that people often recommend is not the best option, because the shield of the first turn might be almost touching the shield of the last, negating whatever the balun is trying to accomplish. So a single-layer coil on a former of some sort may be better. Since large PVC pipe is heavy and not dirt-cheap, plus would leave the cable exposed to elements, I thought that it might be better to wind it inside some container.

At first I hoped to squeeze the required 20 or so feet in a plastic cylinder in which the 100-packs of CD-Rs are sold. RG-58/U or similar would fit in there, but that much thin coax would have nontrivial losses. So I decided this should be done right, with LMR-400 (I still have 300 ft. of it riding with me in the trunk).

KitchenMaid makes a resealable plastic paint can which would probably work, but I hate to spend even $4 on such stuff if an alternative can be found. And I found one, a plastic bucket which once held 4 pounds of lard... It has perfect dimensions, a cover, even a handle by which it can be hoisted up. It is a bit flimsy, so the whole affair might disintegrate after a few months of sunlight and cold and snow; we'll see.

I drilled a 5/8" hole in the bottom to mount an SO-239. It will be bearing the weight of the coax when suspended in the air, so I'm not sure if the normal toothed washer is large enough to spread that load, but I had no way of getting a bigger one. Again, we'll see.

The first tricky part is to solder the wimpy center post of the SO-239 to the thick conductor of the coax (of the RG-213 variety), and the shield to the tab on the socket, all this poking a high wattage iron inside the plastic bucket. I got a piece of brass tubing from a hobby shop, cut off about 1/2" with a Dremel, and used it as a ferrule joining the coax and the socket's center post. It might be a good idea to slide it over the socket's connector first, fill it halfway with solder. Then stick tinned coax wire into the molten solder, keep the heat for a few seconds, then let it cool keeping it absolutely still lest a cold joint will form.

The second tricky part is to stuff all that thick and stiff cable into the bucket. Make sure to press down hard on each layer of the coax with one hand, using the fingers to turn the whole container, as you are feeding the cable into it with the other hand. The bucket I had wouldn't have held the entire length of cable had I left any spaces between the coils.

As mentioned above, see photo 1, photo 2, photo 3 and photo 4.

[added 2005] Life expectancy of a lard bucket is about 2 years. It pretty much disintegrated after 2 winters up in the tree. Still, I had fun talking to a neighbor who was convinced that it was a "squirrel trap".

Multiband HF antenna

I spent hours searching for an antenna of my dreams. I have limited yard space, I don't want much RF inside my kids' bedroom, I'm afraid of lightning, I don't want to drill too many holes in my house, I don't want to offend my neighbors (even those I don't like much), and I am not about to get a new QTH just to enjoy ham radio.

So what's a ham to do? Well, I looked at the TTFD with some interest because of its compactness, but discovered that the only manufacturer of non-inductive resistors (Ohmite) doesn't want to sell any of them to me or to neighborhood dealers. There is a manufacturer, a catalog, items exactly like those you want and cheap, and their HQ 25 miles away; they just don't want to sell the stuff. Maybe it's top secret, or violates FDA rules and you need a prescription. Whatever.

A multiband fan dipole would be decent, but given my layout it would radiate straight into the house, and be somewhat hard to put up because a tall tree which is a good candidate for feedline support has many little and not-so-little branches which would all be in the way. The main problem is hanging this thing up high.

I've decided on a horizontal loop for the time being. Some people say it's a cloud-warmer, others say it's a magic thing. Oh, well, I'll never know until I try it. Here is a nice article that summarizes the pros and cons of full wave loops.

The big question still is - "how to hang it from the tree". I tried slingshot, and it wasn't a great success. Baseball is next, followed by bow and arrow if needed.

Insulators? no problem. I went to Farm and Fleet, and bought 2 feet of heavy plastic chain for $1.20. After cutting every other link with pliers, I now have 7 nice rounded oval objects which should be good for the job. I also have 7 cut ones - which, if you ask me, feel just as tough as the others, and will probably work just as well. So think twice before buying the plastic dogbones for a dollar a pair.

I put the loop up in late December 2003. The toughest part was raising the corners (in the trees) so the wire would clear the lower branches. In some places I couldn't do it, so the wire has a really weird shape, both in the horizontal plane and in the vertical. I don't have a good solution to this, without putting up four tall posts and forgetting about the trees...

[added 3/9/2004] The choke attached to the loop has been up for a few months now, and I'm really happy with it. On most bands the tuner built into the 736 isn't making it though, so an external tuner is necessary after all. Oh, well, nothing is perfect. I've had a few hundred QSOs, even with some fairly exotic places, so for now I'm not planning to change anything. No sign of RFI in the shack.

Portable groundplane 1/4 wave for 2m

There are several websites describing a classic design in which a BNC or UHF connector serves as a centerpiece of a 1/4 wave 2m portable antenna. I made one with telescoping elements (see above), and it works well, but I wasn't happy with its ruggedness (or lack thereof).

So I decided to build another one, with field operation in mind. A BNC panel mount connector is the main element, with the radiator made of a welding rod, and soldered to the center BNC post (I wrapped the post and the end of the welding rod with about 10 turns of copper magnet wire which forms a "ferrule" of sorts and makes the solder joint more rigid). The solder joint and the rest of the BNC connector is covered from above with a 1/2 in PVC cap, with its inside filled with a liberal glob of hot melt glue which will hopefully protect the whole thing from the elements.

The BNC connector has four holes on it, and I attached short pieces of gauge 12 electrical wire to each of them with 6-32 screws. The pieces of wire (about 1.5 in long) have automotive spade connectors soldered to them. This way the whole assembly fits nicely in a short length of a 1.5 in PVC pipe, with the four wires going into slots at one end (these require some patience with a Dremel, or a good table saw). You can see the bottom of the center element here. The groundplane radials (also welding rods) have matching spade connectors at their ends, and snap onto the four short wires in seconds. Of course they easily fit inside the tube when the whole thing is disassembled. Here is the antenna ready for action. A length of coax runs down through the PVC pipe. The pipe can be clamped to any convenient support, and the ground plane rods can be adjusted in the field (by simply bending the short connecting wires) for the best SWR and desired take-off angle.

Small aside about the Radio Shack PRO83 scanner

It was on sale for $80 in June 2005, and I bought it. Only 200 memories, no fancy features (e.g. trunking), but for the money, what would you ask. Audio on the weak side but OK, ergonomics fine. After a while I decided I don't really need another gadget to carry around and I returned it.

But in case anyone is interested, I can attest that you don't need the RS cable and software to program it. It uses one-way communication, and a LOAD83 Windows console program which can be found on the PRO83 Yahoo group works fine by sending suitably formatted text files to the scanner. As for the cable, I used the following with success (not mine, from the 'Net):

Take an NPN transistor such as the 2N2222 or 2N3904. Connect the base through a 10K resistor to the serial female DB9 pin 3 (TXD from computer). The emitter goes to common ground, i.e. pin 5 of the DB9 plug and the sleeve of a mono 1/8" plug that goes into the scanner. The collector connects to the tip of the said scanner plug. That's it - two components, plus the plugs, under $1 total. Worked reliably for me. But naturally use this at your own risk. Serial ports aren't all born equal. Don't sue me if you fry the PC or the scanner. [added 10/10/2007: the cable works fine for uploading data to a Pro-97 scanner that I just bought.]

Battery monitor

This isn't working out quite as I hoped, but it does kind-of work. A cheap, simple battery charge indicator built around the Microchip 12F675 PIC. The idea was to sense the voltage with the PIC's A/D every few seconds, but have minimal current draw - i.e. to `turn off' the branch that measures the voltage most of the time while the PIC is sleeping, instead of having a voltage divider that is constantly wasting a miliamp or so. This turned out to be a bit challenging. I got close with an enhancement smode N-FET switching the measuring circuit in and out, but it isn't perfect. For now, just a picture. More details if/when I find the time... [4/2006]