Simple Ham Radio Antennas

An enjoyable musical slideshow featuring various portable amateur radio stations from VK5SW. Although winter holds much of the mainland United States in its grip, spring and summer are on their way. Perhaps this video will give you some ideas on how to set up your station and antennas in the field. Doing portable operations with your amateur radio "go kit" is a good way to practice emergency communications or to prepare for the upcoming ARRL Field Day during the last full weekend of June. Enjoy the show. Music Credit: "Geronimo (2004 Digital Remix)" by The Shadows (Google Play, iTunes, and Amazon MP3). For the latest Amateur Radio news and events, please check out the blog sidebar. These news feeds are updated daily. You can follow our blog community with a free e-mail subscription or by tapping into the blog RSS feed. Aloha es 73 de Russ (KH6JRM).

. Here's another great operating idea from "Tinker John" (W5CYF). This time, John uses a slightly modified 2 inch clamp for an easy and handy antenna mount for the "Hamstick" type of antenna. John uses a counterpoise wire on the clamp to help bring SWR under control. Tuning of "Hamstick" antennas can be difficult if you don't adjust the "stinger" quite right. With the proper adjustments and the use of a counterpoise wire, this antenna will serve your campsite very well. This is a great weekend project. Good luck! For the latest Amateur Radio news and events, please check out the blog sidebars. These news feeds are updated daily. You can follow our blog community with a free e-mail subscription or by tapping into the blog RSS feed. Thanks for joining us today! Aloha es 73 de Russ (KH6JRM).

Nice video from KP4COD on the operation of the Swan 260/270 Amateur Radio Transceiver. During my first years as an amateur radio operator, I owned a few old tube and hybrid rigs, because that was all I could afford at the time. Among my early rigs was a well-used Swan 260 Cygnet transceiver I bought from my mentor, Dean Manley (KH6B). I carried that old rig to field days, portable operations, and even into my garage room ham shack. After I let the old girl warm up for 30 minutes or so, it was fairly steady with very little drift. Combined with a simple 40 meter inverted vee, some ladder line, a 4:1 balun, and an old Drake MN-4 antenna transmatch, I worked the world. I always got good audio reports, both CW and SSB. I usually ran the rig at 50 watts or less in order to save the final tube, which was one of those TV horizontal oscillator tubes that couldn't take a lot of abuse. I later gave the rig to a newly licensed ham who had as much fun with this old classic as I did. KP

Rain Gutter Antennas : Rain Gutter Antennas (http://www.eham.net/articles/33775). from Greg Danes, KJ4DGE on February 22, 2015 View comments about this article! Rain Gutter Antennas Pic courtesy of N6CC website By Grey Wolf I got this idea about writing about my antenna because I had one once in the condo that worked very well down to about 40 meters. First YOU have to use a tuner! Mine was a MFJ “travel tuner”. Very simple and the system worked for me. I ran a open length of coax cable to the aluminum gutter and to a screw at the base, no ground was used as this caused noise on the feed line. It was really resonant at 20 meters and higher. I made my first European contacts on 15 or 17 meters using the gutter antenna. The whole length was close to 125 feet in an inverted “U-shaped” configuration. Since I could not turn the condo around with a rotator it worked a nice North-South path. It also worked greyline East-West fairly well also making contacts in NM, NV, WA and CA.

. This informative and somewhat complex explanation of the Smith Chart from UCLA faculty member Philip Hon explains all you need to know about this useful antenna design tool. Hon illustrates his graphic with an example of a matching network using a single open stub. This video will join my amateur radio reference library. For the latest Amateur Radio news and events, please check out the blog sidebars. These news feeds are updated frequently. You can follow our blog community with a free e-mail subscription or by tapping into the blog RSS feed. Thanks for joining us today! If the video fails to load properly, you can use this youtube address: http://youtu.be/neHB0_C1zYE. Aloha es 73 de Russ (KH6JRM).

Excellent video tutorial from Randy (K7AGE) on how to build a simple, yet effective antenna for the 6 meter Amateur Radio Band. I have a similar antenna mounted on my garage roof. Although there isn't much 6 meter activity on Hawaii Island, some DX comes through when the sun gets active. Now that most lower television channels have moved away from the 50 MHz band (mostly the old analog channel 2), the band is a lot better for amateur radio contacts. Randy's instructions are clear and easy to follow. For the latest Amateur Radio news and events, please check out the blog sidebars. These news feeds are updated daily. You can follow our blog community with a free email subscription or by tapping into the blog RSS feed. You can find more Amateur Radio happenings at my news site--http://kh6jrm.net. Thanks for joining us today! If you have trouble loading the video, please enter the title link in your browser and try again--http://youtu.be/4K5Vj6wtpE0.  Aloha de Russ (KH6JRM

Excellent video from Kevin Reeve (N7RXE) on how to set up a MESH node for Amateur Radio using the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. Kevin says there have been a few changes since the video was produced. In late 2013, a new version of the firmware for HSMM-MESH was released. The name was also changed to Broadband-Hamnet, and there are a few changes from what is described in this video. You can get the changes here: http://hsmm-mesh.org/images/stories/hsmmmesh-step-by-step.pdf. Otherwise, the video is easy to follow and will get you and your MESH Node operating in a minimum of time. For the latest Amateur Radio news and events, please check out the blog sidebars. These news feeds are updated daily. You can also follow our blog community with a free email subscription or by tapping into the blog RSS feed. Thanks for joining us today! Aloha es 73 de Russ (KH6JRM).