KD3Y

I've been working on my radio stand the last few days. The problem was I do a lot of nets at night and the buttons on my radio aren't backlit so I have to keep a little penlight on my desk. When I need to make an adjustment I have to use the penlight. Plus I have a small desk. The radio will go underneath and the shelf on top will be for storage space, such as for my headphones. I made it out of oak. I put louvers on the side for ventilation, not that I think I need it, the radio never gets very hot. But it doesn't look so plain-jane with the louvers. I think with 3 or 4 coats of gloss polyurethane it'll look nice. The channels I routed in the underside are for LED's. I plan to make a little shade out of brass with LED's to gently illuminate my radio face and they'll go in the channel across the front (white arrow) . The long channel (yellow arrow) is for the wires for the LED's. I'll run the wires in the channel then fill it with clear epoxy to make the wiring permanent. I plan to put some brass finials and brass rail around the top to match the time zone clock/lamp I made awhile back. TOP AND SIDES TOP ROUTED TOP AND SIDES FITTED ASSEMBLED IN PLACE CHECKING FIT FIRST COAT OF POLYEURETHANE RUBBER ON THE BOTTOM FOR TRACTION AND TO PROTECT DESKTOP JUST NEED TO FIT THE LED's UNDER THE TOP FRONT EDGE AND PUT THE BRASS FINIALS AND RAIL ON

Please allow me to ramble a little on this Memorial Day weekend. Michael Morton was my platoon SGT in Germany. I was there when he married Pietra in Germany, and I was there when his first son was born. Today that son is a U.S. Marine. Michael rests at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 60, Site 10186. After Desert Storm Mike went to OCS and became an officer. He left the Army after many years and then went back to Iraq and worked as a private contractor. He passed away in 2012 after a long fight with cancer, probably as a result of contaminates on the battlefield. Petra said in his last days he was so thin he only weighed about 100 pounds. Mike was one of the best NCO's I ever had. He wasn't your typical butt-hole, jacked-up NCO. He really cared about his soldiers and helped them to grow, both in their personal lives and in their military careers. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quintin Mann was on my team in Iraq. He was a gentle kind of guy, from New York, and always had a smile on his face. He told me one time that he joined the Army because his fiancee worked as a Metro Cop. When Quintin cheated on her, she put her pistol to his head and threatened to kill him. So he joined the Army to get out of town. LOL Quinton and I were clearing bunkers in the Iraq/Kuwait border one day and after the dust settled we decided to do some souvenir hunting (too young and too dumb). We were snooping in an Iraqi sleeping bunker when I saw something cool and started to picked it up to see what it was. It was a US-made antipersonnel mine, fused, with a wire attached to it. Luckily I didn't move it enough to trip the wire. After the "come to Jesus" moment and we started back breathing, we both eased out of that bunker as softly as we could. Another day in Iraq we were waiting for the AF to finish a bombing run so we could clear the bunkers of survivors. Quintin was sitting up against the wheel of a deuce-and-a-half asleep. His Kevlar helmet was sitting beside him on the ground, upside down. As it happened, I found an dead lizard that had been killed in the previous strafing run. Being the prankster that I am, I put the dead lizard in Quintin's kevlar, kicked him and yelled, "Saddle up! We're moving!" Quintin awoke, grabbed his kevlar, jumped up, went to put it on his head and when he did that dead lizard fell out right on top of his head. The screaming and flailing that ensued was worth a million dollars. We were all laughing, Quintin knew I did it. Once he got his wits back and his heart rate dropped back near normal, the fight started until the fellas broke us up. LOL Then there was the time in Saudi Arabia that Quintin went to the latrine (just a plywood outhouse built by the engineers), leaned his rifle against the wall and forgot about it and left. Of course someone found it and turned it in, and they traced the serial number right back to Quintin. For the next week he worn that rifle padlocked around his waist with a huge logging chain 24 hours a day. I swear that chain had links 6 inches long and it had to weight 50 pounds. Then there was the time when the scuds were inbound in Saudi Arabia at the seaport at 2am. The Patriots took them out but debris fell to the ground all around us. The chemical NBC alarms went off. We all assumed it was a biological attack so we got into out chemical gear and gas masks. Quintin put on his gas mask but forgot to take the little plastic cap off that kept the sand out, so he couldn't breathe. After about a minute he began to stagger around, eventually passed out and fell over. He crashed between two cots and the last words I heard him mumble were, "They got me. The basterds got me". Now that Quinton was "dead" we knew we were under chemical attack...until about that time I saw the red plastic cap on the intake tube of his gas mask and removed it. We revived him and you can be sure for the next 8 months we never let him forget that, usually grabbing out chests like Fred Sanford and saying, "They got me. The basterds got me" as we pretended to fall over. Then there was the time in Germany that Quintin and I had to sweep the entire battalion motor pool for a week after we got caught using our ration cards to sell Marlboro cigarettes and Jack Daniels to the German black market guy outside the front gate. It rained one of those days so Top had up mop the rain up out of the motor pool with a mop all day long in the rain. Quinton got out of the military and lived in Florida. He went to school and became a nurse and worked at a hospital in Palm Bay. Quintin died in a vehicle rollover in Melbourne, Florida in 2011. Today he rests at South Florida National Cemetery in Palm Beach County, Section 39, Site 297, leaving a wife and child. (The lizard fight) Quintin and I, Kuwait "When you speak of them, say that they were my Brothers."

I got the CW, but I had to google what it meant. I wasn't a WWII radio operator so it didn't make sense. I don't want to post and ruin the game for others. There's another really cool video "Better Days". The story behind it is here https://onetuberadio.com/2015/02/28/morse-code-secret-message-in-colombian-song/ Moral of the story....if you take hostages don't let them have radios. LOL

Well shucks, Jim. All we need is one of them boat-airplanes and the world is our oyster. 🙂 I'd like to hire us a midget in a white suit to yell "da plane, da plane" whenever we land though.

Hi Jim, I understand. And it's full time maintenance as nets move around to different freqs and change their schedules constantly. You'll almost need a dedicated "net directory manager" just to keep up with it all. Otherwise you'll end up with a mess.

You're welcome Brother. Maybe Jim ought to start a HC directory like that for all bands?

I guess you could make that connection if you argue that an airplane is like a boat because they both get you to the same destination. While I'm a skilled mariner and can navigate the Lookout Shoals at night blindfolded, and am authorized to perform USCG safety inspections on non-commercial vessels and issue the safety inspection decal, I'd probably be lost in a cockpit. 🙂

Not that I'm aware but there's net scrapper, which I use. I allows me to see what nets are active at the moment and whose talking (if they are logging with net logger) www.k3clr.com. I like net scrapper for being able to participate in nets without having to spin the dial and hunt for them. If it's 40 meter nets you're after, I have a few logged on my website with a description and their net times. http://www.kd3y.com/40nets.html. Anthony, KD3Y

Welcome to the group Ken. I'm right up the road from you in Newport. Anthony, KD3Y

Welcome to the group Steve, from Coastal North Carolina. Anthony, KD3Y

Good morning Jim. Time for another one of them educational topics like you put up like last time. I was wondering why the mode affects the SWR so I googled it. Here's what I found posted elsewhere one the Interwebs: Q: SWR: Does modulation type matter? Answer #1: SWR requires power to get a true reading. So SSB on its own with no noise has no real power, its just a quiet unreadable carrier. If you whistle into the SSB unit, you will see a measure. If you use the FM which has full power output due to the modulation. It would do the job, as long as you are on the same freq. Many times on HF rigs people will use CW tone at low power to swr/tune. Or an FM/AM Mode works too if your rig only has that! SSB, FM, AM, CW, etc. All output at same frequency, its just HOW they output their power and such. so SWR can be measured by any and used by any if its the same frequency. Answer #2: Yes, the swr will be the same regardless of the mode you use. Some people whistle into the mic to test swr in ssb. Make me understand, if the above answers are correct, why I have a 3 SWR on CW mode and a 1.2 SWR on SSB mode. Shouldn't my SWR measure the same if I'm using the same meter on the same radio? Anthony, KD3Y

I had a nice day today. Weather has been nice in Coastal Carolina, summer time is coming. So I re-learned a lesson I should've remembered from the past..."Start at the bottom, not at the top." I cranked up the rig this morning to do me a few contacts, and WTH? The SWR was at least three. That's abnormal for my rig. I'm usually in the 1.3 ~ 1.5 range. <panic sets in>. Now in our subtropical climate here on the coast, we get rain about daily in the evenings. We've had some weather over the last week or so with high winds. So first thing pops in my mind is, "Dangit. my dipole has stretched by the wind or water has gotten into my coax." So I trudge out to the pine trees in the backyard, lower the dipole, check all the connections, open the cover, see the connections are all dry and still connected, and run it back up the tree. I go back inside, fire it up, sure enough, still SWR of 3. Not much signal seems to be getting out. So I head back to the pine trees with my MFJ, run the dipole back down, put the meter on it, SWR 1.3. <musta jiggled something. It works now>. Run the dipole back up the tree and go back inside. Still SWR of 3. "OK. Them dang squirrels musta chewed my coax again" So I disconnect my rig at the antenna socket and put the MFJ on it to test the coax and all. 1.3 SWR. So with the radio plugged in the SWR in 3 and from the PL it's awesome. Must be the danged radio. <more panic sets it>. Now I'm sitting there wondering how much a new HF rig is gonna cost me. $$$$ As I'm sitting there at my desk grieving over my situation I happen to look up at my rig and notice...my protegee was over the other day, was impressed by my morse key, and naturally I had to show off a bit so I flipped it over to CW mode and did some dits and dots for him. And I left the mode on CW rather than switching it back to SSB after we were done. <light comes on it head>. I "mash" the SSB button, key the mic, say a few words, and the SWR meter jumps all the way up to 1.3-ish. After about three hours of work in the backyard in the sun I learned what the problem was... An "ID-ten-T" error. The old adage I've realized over my 50 years proved true once again, "If you want to learn, be a teacher". Only this time the student and the teacher was one in the same. So the buttons on my rig are all in the right positions now, my SWR is back down to 1.3-ish, and I'm a tad smarter. Start at the bottom, not at the top. Anthony, KD3Y

I hope this is a weekly thing.

https://hamrs.app/

I ordered some new bling for the club. Probably gonna have to order some more as they're going fast. For the interested, vinyldisorder.com prints some real nice vinyl decals at very reasonable prices. 4" round is ideal for vehicles.

I had to go to Durham V.A. hospital for an appointment today. 2 1/2 hour drive for me. Found out there's a 70 cm ham radio repeater on the roof of the Durham V.A. hospital (WR4AGC). I sat in the waiting room talking to hams all over Durham. How cool is that! I don't mind the hour long waiting room wait now. Apparently the RF doesn't mess with any of the medical equipment. Nobody came running by screaming "code red" when I was talking. LOL

Hey Harvey, Welcome to Ham Community. We're glad to have you with us. I'm sure you'll find a lot of good information here. I know the group here has helped me find the answers to a lot of questions over the last year. Anthony, KD3Y

Carteret County Amateur Radio Society ~ County Hurricane Drill 2023 Hello guys. I don't know how to embed a video on the forum so I'll paste the link to the Rumble video. We had a lot of fun and learned a lot of things yesterday. I was transmitting from the Newport Fire Department with my mast-mounted J-pole and Go Box. Our drill consisted of three emergency nets. The weather was awesome. We couldn't have asked for a better day to have a hurricane 😁. The Carteret County EOC activated at 1600 hrs for the drill, and all the local agencies participated. The FIRST net was for those of us who were posted at various areas of the county and we were sending ARES Field Situation Reports back to our clubs net control via our repeater. Net Control was logging for the County Emergency Operations Center. The SECOND net was for anyone and everyone who wanted to train and participate via repeater during the drill. Those posted in the county, those at their home QTH, those mobile, and generally anyone anywhere were invited to participate. The THIRD net was where we probably learned the most, where we identified some areas that we need to improve in, and was the most important test of the day. This net simulated a repeater-down scenario and all stations transmitted simplex. I did learn that in my location I was on the western border of our simplex range so I turned into a relay for those stations west. The Fire Chief, the Deputy Fire Chief, and the Mayor stopped by my location and hung out with me for about half an hour. Judging by their comments I believe they were impressed by our capabilities. I think we made a good impression on them. After the drill I learned the officials at the County EOC were pleased with our contribution to the EOC during the county-wide drill. Though we had a few hiccups, I believe overall the exercise was a success. Of course we had a few minor issues, one valuable piece of information we learned was that while our mobile command center HF works fine, we need better antennas for the 2-meter/440 bands if we are going to operate simplex. While stations to the east were able to communicate with the ecoms command trailer easily, many of those stations to the west, I had to relay for. But, the value of any training exercise is that we are able to identify deficiencies, fix those that are within our ability, and anticipate and plan around those deficiencies that are out of our control during a real disaster. Our Net Control, Jake, has a million-dollar radio voice. I wish I had his radio voice. I sound like a stuttering hick on the radio. He has one of those voices that is just a pleasure to listen to. Our eComs trailer command post crew did an outstanding job relaying traffic, assisting Net control, and handling WinLink communications. Comments and suggestions welcome. VIDEO: https://rumble.com/v2j7nvw-careter-county-eoc-hurricane-drill-4182023.html Anthony, KD3Y

Welcome to the group Matthew. Glad to have you onboard. Anthony, KD3Y

Monday morning rant.... Working on a project in the garage yesterday. HAVE YOU BOUGHT A PAINTBRUSH LATELY?? The darned things have gone thru the roof. I bought a 2 1/2 inch nylon brush yesterday...FIFTEEN DOLLARS! WTH? I'm talking about a paintbrush for applying polyurethane. Not a gold handled brush, not the brush that Van Goh used to paint Starry Night, just a darned everyday paintbrush. Apparently the options today are the foam brush junk, a chinese brush with bristles as coarse as horsehair for seven bucks, or a decent good brush for the cost of a dinner at Outback Steakhouse. A man can't even buy a decent quality brush at a reasonable price nowadays. Pure darned communism is what it is. Maple & Rosewood squares Anthony, KD3Y

I currently use a 12 volt Marine battery as a "power bank" and I keep it "topped off" while in use with a 15-watt Nature Power solar panel https://naturepowerproducts.com/products/15-watt-semi-flex-solar-panel with a 2-year warranty. I've run my 2 meter radio Go-Box all day with that set up with barely a noticeable drop in the battery. I've found the "Thunderbolt" stuff Harbor Freight (Hardly Freight) sells to be pure chinese junk. The 90-day warranty they offer is generous. The Thunderbolt power controller I bought lasted 9 hours before one of the buttons stuck every time I pressed it and the LCD display started doing all kinds of freaky stuff. I disassembled it and found the plastic buttons still had the mold sprue flashing on them and the little plastic pin they used to press the micro switch on the board was so misaligned it would hardly press the switch and would get jammed beside it when you pressed the button. My backup solar panel is a Coleman solar panel https://www.lowes.com/pd/Coleman-12-44-in-x-19-13-in-x-0-79-in-10-Watt-Portable-Solar-Panel/5000087145 with a 5-year warranty. I decided I needed a "backup" solar panel when I was unloading my mess out of the truck for an event last year and a wrench fell on my solar panel and shattered it into 184,394,913,288,233,456 little pieces. 🤨 A good rule of thumb for solar panels when using a battery bank is more is not necessarily better. Choose a solar panel with about 10% of the output of your battery amperage. For instance my 12 V Marine battery is 75 amps (not cold cranking amps, but amp hours), thus I use a solar panel that puts out about 7.5 watts give or take. If you use a solar panel with too much wattage output, it may charge the battery too fast, causing it to overheat, swell up, and leak, damaging the battery. Coleman offers a 18 watt solar panel, but that would be 3x my battery rated amp hours and would probably fry my battery or shorten it's lifespan considerably. Anthony, KD3Y

Thanks Jim and Andy. That answers a lot of questions. "Turnstyle" antenna. Well that name makes sense. So that's what a "phasing line" is. So does my 1/4 wave phasing line need to be 1/4 wave long (about 34.5 feet) or is that just the name and not the application? I suppose this is a separate topic, but how does a phasing line work? Why not just solder two legs of the dipole to the coax shield and the other two legs to the coax center? What does the loop of phasing line do? Anthony, KD3Y

Right. Two antennas run from one feedpoint, not two dipoles that can be switched from one to the other. Both radiating at the same time when the radio Xmits, one radiating E to W and the other N to S simultaneously as if one single antenna.

Working with wood. All the chessboards I could find were the cheap chinese-grade mass produced junk, and the really nice ones like the expert players use are crazy $$$. I'm not an expert player by any measure, but I set out to build my own. I made the squares from maple and oak for a good contrast. I wanted to make the binding from oak and purple heart laminate but there is no purple heart available locally so I had to settle for a laminated binding of oak and maple dyed Carbaret Red. I built 8 and donated the other 7 to the retirement homes in the area. The chess pieces I ordered from Wholesale Chess. Here's the link to the video, I'm not sure how to embed it or if that option is even available. https://rumble.com/v1kpdt7-004-chessboard-project.html