Finally getting my HF stuff together.

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Lawless

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Back this past spring Howard got me a great deal on a Kenwood TS430 HF radio and Kenwood power supply and it has been sitting there neglected by me ever since.

Tonight, I ordered a MFJ 939 antenna tuner, a 3' LMR400 jumper and a 100' LMR400 (10g stranded center) feedline from DX Engineering. They have free shipping on most stuff right now so that saved me a good amount on the heavy cable. https://www.dxengineering.com/

So, I will be stringing my G5RV back up (until I build something myself) and hopefully will be chatting with Howard in Mint Hill soon.

I will take some pics and such while documenting my successes and failures in this venture. Stay tuned.
 
OK, today I put my G5RV antenna back in the trees using a 2oz egg weight on my Shimano spinning rod LOL. I used para cord and hoisted it up and then secured my ends in an inverted V.

In the "shack" I set up my Kenwood TS430, power supply and tuner. This required a 10g ground wire which I connected to an 8' ground rod driven into the ground. I soldered on some ring terminals to the wire and got it connected. Then I took my new 100' LMR400 feedline (huge coax) and routed it to my antenna and into the shack. Inside the coax goes into the tuner and then a 3' jumper of LMR400 goes from the tuner to the radio. My power supply powers the radio as well as the tuner by providing 12V at the amperage needed to do 100W or so.

Once I checked things again to be sure of the connections, I did the one crucial thing I knew was necessary.....I called Howard :)

Once I had Howard htperry on the phone, we quickly set the radio, tuned the antenna and it all worked, it just worked.

So over the next weeks (months) I will be learning to operate on HF and start communicating really long range. These bands on a simple wire dipole antenna can talk worldwide. Gonna be interesting and really fun to get acclimated to this new area of radio.

Thanks Howard for opening up this world to me. GET YOUR LICENSE PEOPLE!!!


The "shack" is a corner of my barn




8' ground rod and 10g ground wire.




Fat LMR400 cable hooked to my G5RV wire antenna hanging 30' up in the pines LOL
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Looking good. I am hoping to work on my setup some over the holidays. Need to pull a dipole up the tower (thanks again to Allen for a great deal and install) and knock the dust off the HF rig.
 
Wow, yeah update is needed.

When I first got on the air with HF I was really just sort of stringing stuff together to get on the air, with the intention of doing everything better a little along. My G5RV while OK, is just not a super performing antenna despite what some hype would have you think. My basic setup was OK, but I didn't have a watt/SWR meter or any exact ideal of what i wanted in my antenna but I knew I wanted better.....so i began to read and read and read. I did make my first contact to South Dakota on 17M with the setup though.

I decided I wanted an Offset Center Fed Dipole antenna. which by design gives a low SWR on 80, 40, 20, 10 and is easily tunable on most other bands with most antenna tuners. After looking at ready made antennas and hearing from my Elmer htperry about what brands to avoid, I decided to build my own. Howard had built his with a Balun Designs Balun and his works like gangbusters. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I did likewise. I ordered a Balun Designs 4116OCF which is made for this application and being a hybrid, has a built in choke to keep RF off of the feedline and out of the shack. Let me tell you, these are FIRST QUALITY and will handle whatever you can throw at them.

What the balun does, is take the 200 ohm impedance at the antenna and changes it to 50 ohm on the feedline which is what your radio wants to see. This can vary depending on antenna height but is pretty constant from about 25-40 feet from the earth. The choke in this particular one is a nice bonus.

So I bought a 500' spool of 12g blue stranded house wire from Lowes (enough for a few antennas) and got out my 100' tape measure. In the diagram below you can see the lengths involved.

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I had bought some plastic end insulators previously so I measured out my wire and set about to put it all together. You need to give yourself some extra wire to make up your connections and have plenty to twist together and solder and if not using a tuner, leave a 1' and 2' tail on the short and long side respectively for possible trimming and tuning later. In other words, cut your long side at 83' 2.5" + 2' tail + 6" + 6" for making your connections to the balun and end insulators. Remember to only use you 6" at the balun and 6" at the insulator plus leave your tail (1' on the short side and 2' on the long side) or your target lengths as seen above in the diagram will be off.

The way I made my connections is by stripping the wire where I needed too and twisting together and then soldering. This is better than knots which can slip and change the antenna length or worse pull your terminals off and break the antenna. Alternately you could crimp the wire but soldering works well and is never going to slip.
 
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Once I had it all together, I picked the tree limb where I was going to string it, and using my trusty spinning rod I got a weight over the limb I wanted and then I was able to get the balun connected to paracord and hoisted up into the tree. I then did the same to my ends and I got everything tied off and secured. I leave the paracord over the limbs and tie it off near the ground so it is easy to let down if i need to change something. This antenna is at about 25' above the earth, flat top not sloping or inverted V and my thoughts were that it would work well for DX as well as closer contacts through some NVIS. While not a dedicated NVIS antenna (which I plan to build) it should work ok being fairly low.

Remember, this is a 135' long antenna, some planning is needed to get it where it will work well and not be torn down by limbs swinging in the wind.

I sealed my coax to balun connection with dielectric grease and 3M rubber tape (from DX Engineering) and a top wrap of 3m Super 33 electric tape. I got the 400Max coax from DXE routed to the shack and connected to my tuner. I fired everything up and immediately I knew I had made the right choice to go with this antenna. My SWR was low almost everywhere. I could here tons of stations on about every band and within minutes I was chatting with a guy in Oregon on 20M who said my signal was excellent. It is so much better than my old antenna as to be laughable.

I made 2 more contacts, Kansas and Montana, and went in for supper and a shower.

I came back out after a while, switched to 80M and made some pretty close contacts in Kentucky, Georgia and South Carolina (NVIS aspect in action) and a guy in Clayton, right up the road about 10 miles said he heard me loud and clear via email. I am not sure if it was NVIS or ground wave for him but I made a new ham buddy from the email.

I also bought a MFJ power/SWR meter and got it set up so I could tell just what was going on power and reflected power wise. I am doing a smidge over 100W and with the new antenna my SWR is never above 1.3:1 on 20, 40 or 80 so far.

I want to whole heartedly recommend DX Engineering for your Ham supplies and Balun Designs for your balun. Top quality and excellent customer service.
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My next little project is going to be a nice rack for my radio and stuff.
 
I know this is OT in this thread but it's the second time I've seen you mention the Clayton email contact. How did the guy get your email address, do you throw that out there with your call sign?
 
Cape Fear;n55779 said:
I know this is OT in this thread but it's the second time I've seen you mention the Clayton email contact. How did the guy get your email address, do you throw that out there with your call sign?

If you have someone's call sign (from hearing them on-air) you can look them up at QRZ.com and most of us have an email (some ph# too) on our record for contacts.
 
htperry;n55807 said:
If you have someone's call sign (from hearing them on-air) you can look them up at QRZ.com and most of us have an email (some ph# too) on our record for contacts.

Oh ok thanks. So do you give that info to the VE when they submit your exam results to the FCC?
 
Cape Fear;n55813 said:
Oh ok thanks. So do you give that info to the VE when they submit your exam results to the FCC?

No. Your email isn't in the FCC record. Almost everyone claims their record at QRZ.com, puts an email address in their profile. You can build a profile page with pictures and things there for hams that visit your record to see your station and awards. Some hams never build a profile, but most people have interesting pages. Ham radio is social by nature; the original social media. ;)

Honestly, although ham radio is regulated by the FCC, our relationship with govco is different than that of gun owners and ATF. Sometimes it is hard for gun owners to accept the way things work in ham radio with the FCC. Our relationship is not adversarial.
 
Cape Fear;n55813 said:
Oh ok thanks. So do you give that info to the VE when they submit your exam results to the FCC?

A lot of Info, yes, more then most people are comfortable with. This reminds me you either need, no ifs ands or buts, to put your SSN on the form or register it with the FCC and get an FRN and you can use that instead: https://www.fcc.gov/help/getting-fcc-registration-number-frn-universal-licensing-system-uls

it has to do with federal debt collect laws or some such nonsense. If you have this aversion, get an FRN now. I keep my credit files frozen do there is little value in my SSN. Once you get your license, you will automatically get an FRN.
 
noway2;n55838 said:
Once you get your license, you will automatically get an FRN.

Yeah I went ahead and got an FRN a couple weeks ago.

Thanks for all the info gents. Sorry for the thread drift Lawless, I'm enjoying reading about your HF exploits so I'll let this one get back on track.
 
htperry said:
Cape Fear;n55779 said:
I know this is OT in this thread but it's the second time I've seen you mention the Clayton email contact. How did the guy get your email address, do you throw that out there with your call sign?

If you have someone's call sign (from hearing them on-air) you can look them up at QRZ.com and most of us have an email (some ph# too) on our record for contacts.
Zackley
 
Cape Fear said:
noway2;n55838 said:
Once you get your license, you will automatically get an FRN.

Yeah I went ahead and got an FRN a couple weeks ago.

Thanks for all the info gents. Sorry for the thread drift Lawless, I'm enjoying reading about your HF exploits so I'll let this one get back on track.
No problem brother, it's all relative
 
I had a nice 45 minute QSO this afternoon with Howard on 3.965 and I am so pleased with the close and DX performance of my OCF antenna. At 25' off the ground it seems to be perfect for everything I want to do. It is obviously doing some NVIS as well as good performance at relatively low angle long distance. The guy in Oergon I chatted with recently said my signal was great as did Howard who is about 135 miles away.

My newer setup with fine rack demonstrating my excellent cabinet building abilities...

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Lawless, you're going to have to stretch those legs a little and do some real DX to other countries and I don't mean Canada. I made plenty of contacts with that rig into Europe on 40m and 20m. I spent many a night rolling up and down the band looking for a contact. One operator I had regular contact with was in France with 100watts and a G5RV. And there's always Roberto in Itally, who hangs around 7.190. Well, he kinda covers a few KC's around that because he blast so much power with a mono-band Yagi Pointed this way.
I know your focus is US, but it's satisfying to know you can reach out if you need to and who knows, it may one day be handy or necessary to get an "outside" view.
 
georgel;n71102 said:
I know your focus is US, but it's satisfying to know you can reach out if you need to and who knows, it may one day be handy or necessary to get an "outside" view.

Exactly...

Pick a freq, call CQ DX. Sometimes the results can be surprising.

Look in the lower portion of 40M for some good DX. Keep in mind the band plan for many counties are different than ours, and you may have to work 'split'. aka QSX. You may also hear the DX station saying up, up... Just tune up the band a little until you hear a pile up. That's the freq he's listening on. Set your transmit VFO to that freq, and your receive VFO to where you hear the station. Join in, be patient.

Another hint. When working a DX pile up and the DX station begins listening for calls, wait a few seconds before giving your call. Most hams will immediately give their call as soon as the DX stations says QRZ. Sounds like a mad hornets nest. Wait 4 to 5 seconds, then say your call.
 
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This reminds me if one of the better reasons to get an upgrade to extra class: a lot of the traffic for whatever reason tends to be in the lower ends of the bands, which are extra class territory.
 
Ok, now you've gone and done it. I've started placing the orders to build my own OCF antenna. I figure it will take a little bit of doing to build it and put it all together so I will start with this part, while I work towards getting my HF radio,
 
noway2;n73667 said:
Ok, now you've gone and done it. I've started placing the orders to build my own OCF antenna. I figure it will take a little bit of doing to build it and put it all together so I will start with this part, while I work towards getting my HF radio,

What did you order?

I STRONGLY recommend the Balun Designs Hybrid 4116OCF balun. It is designed for the application and Howard and I both have had excellent performance (and Howard has had long term durability). One thing I bought to go with my next one are the little brass crimps to allow the insulation to stay on the wire where it meets the balun's strain reliefs. Instead of twisting and soldering where it meets the eye-bolts I would run through the crimp, around the eye-bolt and back through the crimp. Then crimp it with wire pliers and I think it would be more durable long term. This is how factory dipoles are made and the insulation will protect the copper from the rain.


TSBEu.jpg
 
I ordered the 4116OCF too. I'm pretty much folliwing the directions you posted and linked to in this thread. What did you use for wire? I read that the calculations were for stranded wire like THHN, not solid copper like Romex.

Did is you put in a grounding rod and ground the shield near where it enters your shack? What about a lightning arrestor? I think Howard mentioned using one by polyphase at one time. Why did you run a straight dipole instead of an inverted V? I read that the center should be about 35' and the ends about 10' to keep that 120 degree angle.

Im finding the antenna is going to cost about $200 or a bit more like $250 by the time I get wire, coax, and pieces parts, but it will be something I made and hopefully better then an off the shelf one. I will need to get an SWR meter too, but the radio I am leaning towards will have a built in tuner thst should be adequate across the 6 to 80 meter bands.
 
noway2;n74016 said:
I ordered the 4116OCF too. I'm pretty much folliwing the directions you posted and linked to in this thread. What did you use for wire? I read that the calculations were for stranded wire like THHN, not solid copper like Romex.

Did is you put in a grounding rod and ground the shield near where it enters your shack? What about a lightning arrestor? I think Howard mentioned using one by polyphase at one time. Why did you run a straight dipole instead of an inverted V? I read that the center should be about 35' and the ends about 10' to keep that 120 degree angle.

Im finding the antenna is going to cost about $200 or a bit more like $250 by the time I get wire, coax, and pieces parts, but it will be something I made and hopefully better then an off the shelf one. I will need to get an SWR meter too, but the radio I am leaning towards will have a built in tuner thst should be adequate across the 6 to 80 meter bands.

I used 12G stranded THHN in blue (disappears against the sky like magic) I used the calculations from this thread to a T.

Grounding...could take up pages. I am still working on that system. A Polyphaser is the only way to go, on a solid copper flat bar, grounded to a ground rod. This whole mess should be inside a plastic phone box. Where the hard part begins is that to avoid step voltage in a near lightning strike, the ground rod should be bonded to your service ground rod at the panel box with #6 copper wire. Without this, lightning voltage can still choose to run through your equipment to find ground through the phenomena known as step voltage.

I ran it flat top because I wanted to do better at "local" communication so the antenna is only 25' high. It works well all over the country and close contacts too.

These antennas are resonant on 80, 40, 20, 10 and easily tunable on the rest.
 
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Good points, especially on the bonding of the grounds. Yes, if you have a surge on the one that is tied to the radio ground rod, without bonding, that circuit will rise in potential relative to the rest of the house or structure wiring and then current can (will) flow between them which you want to avoid. By bonding the two together, everything rises together and your radio circuit and structure are kept at the same potential. If you think about it, your utility power is a derived secondary (isolated or floating) and it is bonded to the "ground" as a reference via the center tap of the transformer secondary winding in a standard single phase 240V system. There is nothing magical about ground as a reference, but it is a decent conductor and you're likely going to be in contact with it, making it a suitable safety return path to the derived source that all transformer supplied current will return to. In that regard it becomes a reference point from which all voltages in your system can be measured and hence why you want to bond the grounds together.

So it sounds like you used bus bar for your ground from the arrestor to your ground bar instead of heavy gauge braided cable? Either should be able to handle the I2T and be low inductance, to shunt away the surge.
 
noway2;n74085 said:
So it sounds like you used bus bar for your ground from the arrestor to your ground bar instead of heavy gauge braided cable? Either should be able to handle the I2T and be low inductance, to shunt away the surge.

No, #4 wire is the plan, the 1/8" x 2" flat bar is to mount the Polyphaser in (stud mount) and the ground rod is connected to the flat bar. I found the solid copper flat bar on ebay, no one has it locally except some copper plated stuff. Since I don't have it bonded yet, none of it is assembled, I just disconnect the coax every time I am done using the station.
 
Lawless;n74090 said:
Since I don't have it bonded yet, none of it is assembled, I just disconnect the coax every time I am done using the station.

You'll find this is a good idea even after it's assembled! :)

Someone asked earlier about wire gauge for dipoles. The answer is, it doesn't matter (in any practical sense). The biggest concern is mechanical strength, not any electrical performance, so use what you have.

Bare copper or insulated copper, RF won't know the difference, so there's no reason to worry about exposed or insulated wire. There's likely a mathematical preference for bare wire, but again, bare or insulated, shiny or oxidized, it's immaterial from a practical standpoint.
 
Don't forget the design length adjustment for insulated vs. bare wire to account for velocity factor.
 
noway2;n74085 said:
Good points, especially on the bonding of the grounds. Yes, if you have a surge on the one that is tied to the radio ground rod, without bonding, that circuit will rise in potential relative to the rest of the house or structure wiring and then current can (will) flow between them which you want to avoid. By bonding the two together, everything rises together and your radio circuit and structure are kept at the same potential.

Would you feel comfortable leaving out the bond to the house ground if the radio equipment is all running on an isolated power supply, e.g. a battery?
 
DurhamDad;n74344 said:
Would you feel comfortable leaving out the bond to the house ground if the radio equipment is all running on an isolated power supply, e.g. a battery?

Yep, at that point there is no connection at all to the service ground so the potential delta is 0

No need to bond then.
 
Lawless I am getting ready to make my antenna and have been doing some reading prior to cutting wire. I noticed the link in your OCF antenna post and it looks like you got your dimensions from http://ai4ji.com/Projects/ocfdipole.htm I also noticed that Ballun Designs has links to a slightly different one and supplements it with an excel sheet http://www.balundesigns.com/content/OCF Dipole V2.pdf

I was wondering why you chose the lengths you did and whether you considered the other design or not? Overall, they're probably similar enough that they would work fine, but I am curious since it is best to cut the wire once
 
noway2 when I built mine Balun Designs had the below graphic on their web site, but no link to ai4ji.com. Using the dimensions on the graphic was perfect for my OCF using the 4114ocf balun and 10 gauge THHN wire. The feed point is at about 35 feet and the ends come down in an inverted V to about 10 feet, with the separation angle being about 120 degrees. I have found this to be a stellar performer on 80/40/20 and pretty good up, but I prefer my Butternut HF9V at frequencies above 14 Mhz.






Last Saturday using the same dimensions, I assembled an OCF for my friend Brian using the 4116ocf and 14 gauge THHN. The feed point on his is about 30" and hangs over the roofline with the ends about 10 feet from the ground in an inverted V fashion. I've made several of these for others with consistent performance and satisfaction by the user.

He's said several times this week how happy he is with the performance based on his experience with a G5RV and multi-band end-fed from the same mounting location. My build technique is a bit different in that I crimp the loops and doesn't affect the performance.







BTW, the final wrap had no yet been done on the coax seal in the above picture. There is a "courtesy wrap" of half inch 3M under the coax seal and over the coax seal it is a sheath of 2" PVC tape and the end tie wrapped to prevent the tape flagging. The courtesy wrap is for easy of removal for the next guy.
 

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I forgot, to mention ..... My Balun Designs 4114ocf doesn't contain an internal feed line choke like the 4116ocf. I have a 12 foot RG8x coax jumper that hangs vertically from the balun coax connector to a high impedance feed line choke, then to the tuner via 9913 coax. This gives me vertical power radiation on transmit, with no effect on receive. Originally I didn't have the 12 foot radiator and did notice an improvement when I used to talk regularly on 75m to the same stations nightly. I'm comfortable in my happiness with the addition.
 
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noway2;n92775 said:
Lawless I am getting ready to make my antenna and have been doing some reading prior to cutting wire. I noticed the link in your OCF antenna post and it looks like you got your dimensions from http://ai4ji.com/Projects/ocfdipole.htm I also noticed that Ballun Designs has links to a slightly different one and supplements it with an excel sheet http://www.balundesigns.com/content/...ipole%20V2.pdf

I was wondering why you chose the lengths you did and whether you considered the other design or not? Overall, they're probably similar enough that they would work fine, but I am curious since it is best to cut the wire once

Howard answered everything and I used the dimensions in the above graphic because it is supposed to resonate better in the voice portion of the band.

Also, mine is flat top at about 25' while Howard and Brian are doing inverted V. In our trials among us three, there seems to be no differences in the transmit or receive.

I love mine and wouldn't change a thing.
 
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htperry;n92859 said:
I forgot, to mention ..... My Balun Designs 4114ocf doesn't contain an internal feed line choke like the 4116ocf. I have a 12 foot RG8x coax jumper that hangs vertically from the balun coax connector to a high impedance feed line choke, then to the tuner via 9913 coax. This gives me vertical power radiation on transmit, with no effect on receive. Originally I didn't have the 12 foot radiator and did notice an improvement when I used to talk regularly on 75m to the same stations nightly. I'm comfortable in my happiness with the addition.

So, you basically turned your OCF into a variation of the Carolina Windom?
 
georgel;n93130 said:
So, you basically turned your OCF into a variation of the Carolina Windom?

Yes. a variation using the concept. There's nothing original about what I did. No need to reinvent the wheel. Not much innovation left in antennas, so do what works and get you on the air with what works best for you.

But the Carolina Windom isn't truly a "Windom" to begin with. The name Windom is commonly used when referencing the OCF quite a bit.
 

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Cool. As you know I'm running a Radio Works Carolina Windom. Well, at least I would be if I could get the thing hung back up. I've been struggling with getting a line over the right branches. I miss my tall pines with the nice clear trunks. I was going to build that same New Carolina Windom until I worked a deal with Joe on the RadioWorks. No, I don't think there's 10db of gain, but thought it worked well. I might get the big loop up before I get the Carolina Windom up, the way it's looking. So little time right now. [IMG2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","src":"http:\/\/www.radioworks.com\/ccw80gr.jpg"}[/IMG2]
 
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Just build a 80M OCF, you will thank me (and Howard and Brian)
 
The Carolina Windom IS an 80m OCF, with the addition of the vertical radiator and isolator. So, it's an enhanced OCF. Check the antenna link I posted in the other thread and you'll see the discussion of the Carolina Windom under the OCF section. I already have it. It's what I was using before I moved. I'm still dealing with getting it hung. I may just get the160m loop going instead, for the effort. I've got the real estate and I believe it will be an even better antenna. Just need to order the balun. Howard already said he had the ladder line I could use.
 
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