VK TechNet No 28

 

VK3UA Mark

VK3DFL Jim

VK3HJV Paul

Just general chat about conditions, some dx worked, and antenna work needing done.

VK TechNet No 27

 Participants:

VK3UA - Mark

VK3DFL - Jim

VK3ZPG - Steve

VK3DJC - Dave

Steve was testing a Yaesu FT-101E he has been working on. The tx frequency was still slightly out of align with the rx freq, so a bit more to do. 

Dave worked China on 15m and Oman on 10m this week. Some good DX.

Jim's been working on the shack cabling. "it's a bit messy" . . 

VK Tech Net No "no idea"

 Well, it's October tomorrow. 

I see I haven't list a Tech Net since March. I guess I am not so much a blogger, as a radio buff. I spend most of my time playing radio, not blogging.

While there has pretty much been a Net every week, I think there may have been a couple missed, so there have been roughly 24 weeks - 2 or 3 missed ones, so lets call it 21 Nets since March. Add the 5 already blogged and round it out at 26 VK Tech Nets to date.

That's not bad considering I didn't think it would last more than a month or two.

There have been the net mainstays of course, most notably Jim - VK3DFL. Jim has only missed 1 VK Tech Net and has run the net for me a number of times that I have been unavailable. A Big Thanks, Jim.

Participants tonight:

VK3UA - Mark

VK3HEW - Peter

VK3HJV - Paul

Had a chat about the Artemis 1 moon mission and the payload from JAXA and also full wave loop antennas. SDR receivers were also mentioned.

VK Tech Net No 5

 This weeks net was about shack and tower  grounding, or earthing.

It was discussed about using house (metal) water pipe as your shack ground. It was general consensus that this is a bad idea. There can actually be leakage voltage on the pipes from the electric hot water system, if that's what you have. VK3DFL, who is a retired plumber, wasn't on the net, but discussing it with him later confirmed that it was definitely a bad idea to use metal water pipes as a ground.

It was agreed that a reasonable system is 2 ground rods, about 1.5 to 2 metres apart, connected by decent earth wire and fed to some sort of metal bus-bar in the shack, that the ground terminal on radios and equipment can be connected to.

A lot of towers are mounted ion concrete blocks and are thus not grounded. A heavy wire can be clamped to a leg of the mast and connected to a ground stake.

Ian, VK3DNQ, explained how his hazer type tower was grounded by 4 rods that are connected to the tower in the concrete base and protruding into the surrounding soil to spread any lightning strike out. 

Recording to come . . . 

 

Participants: 

1. VK3UA (NC) - Mark 
2. VK3DNQ - Ian
   
3. VK3HJV - Paul

Call-in:

1. VK3STV - Stephen (was going to participate but he is an SES volunteer and was called out just after the net started.) 

 

Thank-you to all who participated. 

73

Cambo

 

VK Tech Net No 4

We talked about random wire end fed antennas and matching, as well as open wire feed line.

L-Match's were agreed to be a good tuning option for  random wire end fed antennas and for half wave end fed it appeared to be a fixed wound toroid as the impedance match.

Open wire feed was a mix of commercial and home brew feeder. A few different methods of construction were used for the home brew feed. Spacing was variable depending on application.

Recording to come . . .

Participants: 

1. VK3UA (NC) - Mark 
2. VK3DFL - Jim
   
3. VK3UCD - David
4. VK3DJC - Dave
5. VK3ZPG - Steve
6. VK3KK - Shaun

Call-in:

1. VK3BRZ - Phillip 

 

Thank-you to all who participated. 

73

Cambo