Simon G0FCU @g0fcu@mastodon.radio

I made 111 qso's in the CQWW CW contest at the weekend. The first time I've participated. No idea what score that gets me as cqrlog doesn't do contest scoring and it seems all the contest logging programs are either 1. stuck in the 1980's and think DOS is where it's at, 2. don't have an import feature, 3. have an import feature that doesn't work.

Better get winding

Found the fault in the tx chain of my 13cm transverter. The eBay BPF had failed and was acting as a 20dB attenuator.

After three nights trying to get my 13cm power measurement set up working I managed to provide it the correct voltage (such a small thing but so annoying). Now I can start to diagnose why my 13cm gear didn't output much (any) power on Sunday.

I don't think I mentioned that I am going to build a balanced ATU (designed by K6NG). I have the boards and most of the parts. Just waiting for some toroids coming from Italy which will get held up due to the huge shambles and mistake that is Brexit. My doublet is fed by 450 ohm ladder line and it's a hassle to change bands with the manual atu.

I put my 160m/80m inverted-L back up today. Nasty QRM every 2 kHz on top band that wasn't there last year.

If anyone knows of an automatic balanced atu design (or even to buy) please let me know (I already know about the K3NG one).

Lovely signal from S9OK on 17m at the moment, the pile up is 8 kHz wide.

I'll take the delta loop down as it doesn't offer me anything more than the Cobweb does (like multi-band and a more convenient footprint). I plan to get the Cobweb higher around 12m which significantly improves gain at low angles (red line on diagram). When I bought the parts for the Cobweb I had intended to build a Moxon for 20m but decided it was too big. I'm now thinking that maybe I'll build a Moxon, which will give around double the gain of the Cobweb at 12m high (green line on diagram).

More on the 20m delta loop. I modelled my antennas with the correct heights as I have them. On the picture red=my Cobweb at 4.3m, blue=the delta loop fed at the corner, green=the delta loop fed 1/4f from the apex. My Cobweb and the delta loop fed at the corner are horizontally polarised and quiet on rx. The delta loop fed along one side is vertically polarised and noisy as most man made noise is vertical. Interestingly lower angle gain is similar on all three.

Some people say that a delta loop is a dx magnet when fed to give low angle vertical radiation. Mine isn't, my Cobweb is better. The modelling I've done bears this out (red line is Cobweb). However, there is a video on YT that shows the comparison of the two antennas and the delta loop comes out better but it's not a scientific comparison. I'll try a different feed point for the delta before I take it down. What I really need is a beam!

I built a 20m delta loop today, fed to give vertical, low angle radiation. Currently monitoring FT8 to try to get a comparison with my Cobweb. First impression is that the Cobweb is much quieter on rx.

Nearly worked Columbia tonight. He got my callsign but the QSB meant I couldn't copy his signal report. Went on to have a nice ragchew with K9VKY, Brian near Pittsburgh instead.

Just worked TI200I from Costa Rica and W0FLS in Iowa on an otherwise deserted CW portion of the 20m band. TI200I was a massive signal.

I thought I had broken my AD8318 modules but I wasn't powering them correctly. So I've been able to measure the return loss on my homebrew bi-quad antenna for 2.3 GHz.

Had a couple of nice CW qso's with Greece on 17m and Sicily on 20m earlier this evening.

Worked LA3EQ on 474 kHz FST4-120 mode tonight. Monitoring overnight for any TA signals.

First transmission on 474 kHz tonight and 40 reports, more stations listening than transmitting.

Watching DATV from QO100 this morning, using Longmynd software running on Xubuntu 20.04.

Traded in my 20 year old FT-920 for a new IC-7300 today. No regrets, loving it already.