Kelvin n0mql EN35ld @kelvin0mql@mastodon.radio

I’ve worked this station on several bands. Apparently they’re sick of me.

Nothing like getting a “No, thank you.” right off the bat.

I've only done this once before, but today I did it so hard, it had me outside checking whether it looked like local fauna might've tangled with the feedline, or WTH...

Got back in, tried again, STILL the SWR was high, and not moving as I remotely adjusted the length of the antenna.

Oh. Shoot. WSJT-x says 10 MEGAHERTZ, not 10m.

Well, there you go. Those aren't the same thing.

New vs Old Inverted Vee antenna orientations. This should give me a more symmetrical pattern, & is better oriented to be broadside ENE toward Europe. LOTS of DXCC entities I haven't worked over there yet.

I SUPPOSE I could've said "The pattern in free space is like the mitosis of 1 spherical cell splitting into 2 spheres, about 90% done splitting." But it's not fair to assume someone using a screen reader has ever seen the biology films I've seen... you know? So I went with something more obviously gross, but with likely a more universally understood simile.

Since MMANA free edition wants to optimize gain in one direction, I manually moved the opposing directors in 2cm increments (1cm for each of the closest directors) until I got the best numbers. Only took about 9 iterations until I hit the best spot.

Making the alt text for the Far Field Plot tab was... challenging.

Anyway, I think I have what I want, and I think I'm going to build it.

Move my HF antenna yesterday. Long process, solo. Used to be by SW corner of shed, now at NE corner of house. Were it not for the Maple shown in the pic, I could now get the elements 180-degrees opposed, though they're very nearly that now. They used to be about 135-degrees. One went due West, the other about SE.

The "zones" shown in the Nest camera allow me to see what band the antenna is configured for.

So... QRP, depending on context, means "Can you reduce power?" or "I will reduce power." It has then been adopted as an adjective to describe how a station is operating (typically understood to be 5-10W or less, depending on mode).

Under a watt? They call that QRPp.

Why not QRrP, since you've reduced, and then FURTHER reduced your power? You didn't reduce your POWERpower.

Alright, enough on-screen experimenting. Time for practical antenna work.

Going to move Tune-A-Tenna, mast and both ends, and all guy positions, to allow its legs to be closer to 180-degrees opposed.

Spent a couple hours fiddling with my BowTieYagi idea in MMANA. The optimization routine, however, seems designed to care about unidirectional gain, whereas what I want is bi-directional gain.

Will it tell me how to adjust it for 50 ohms an 1.09 SWR? yes. But it does so by making it deaf to the rear.

I guess it'll have to be manual adjustments, ergo, very slow.

What's on my mind?

Oh, same as usual...
@smitty is always on my mind.

Clearly, we could just use microphones… but who DOES that, these days?

So I live North of "the cities". Bearing to the 2m repeater where I may still have a few old friends is 210, but I can't hit it. I can hear it 90%. So, yagi, right?

Except, I don't want to reject I-35 to the North. I want a lopsided bowtie. So would THIS work?...
--Director--
--Director--
----Driven----
--Director--

A little more gain North, but still some gain South, & ignore E/W.

Finally figured out what to do about mastodon logins... I think.

I made a 2nd one at mastodon.social, which appears to be a large, populous, noisy place.

As I understand it, as I follow things, like things, etc., the system figures out more about what sort of things I'm interested (and disinterested) in seeing in the feed.

Right now it reminds me of Twitter from many years ago. Gotta read fast, or whatever caught your eye is gonna scroll off the bottom of the screen REAL quick.