Getting into Amateur Radio, my main interest is antenna voodoo. I've been doing a lot of online searching, to the point that everything is becoming a blur.
In an effort to get my feet wet and maybe learn a thing or two along the way, I've built a ground plane antenna for 2m and another for 70cm with tig filler rod and SO-239 chassis mounts. I haven't done any testing at a significant enough height to judge them yet.
I have yet to procure an hf transceiver so an SDR is all I have to play around with at the moment. I made a 10m (math stuff for 28.4mHz) horizontal dipole with an air wound choke balun out of coax. The math/measurements check out but the only thing I hear on 10m seems to be ft8 and some cw in the lower part of the band. I get near perfect CB reception with it though.
The inverted V with banana to bnc that I built for 28.4 picks up 27.025 incredibly well. Its 25' up on a fiberglass pole at about 65°. At least I've had Motormouth Maul out of California to entertain me.😏
I also put together a 4:1 and a 1:1 balun/unun. The both ohm out right on the money with the right resistor test stack.
Am I wasting my time by doing this without an antenna analyzer and an hf rig and just the SDR?
So, beyond all that, have ya got any links, recipes or favorite flavors?
In an effort to get my feet wet and maybe learn a thing or two along the way, I've built a ground plane antenna for 2m and another for 70cm with tig filler rod and SO-239 chassis mounts. I haven't done any testing at a significant enough height to judge them yet.
I have yet to procure an hf transceiver so an SDR is all I have to play around with at the moment. I made a 10m (math stuff for 28.4mHz) horizontal dipole with an air wound choke balun out of coax. The math/measurements check out but the only thing I hear on 10m seems to be ft8 and some cw in the lower part of the band. I get near perfect CB reception with it though.
The inverted V with banana to bnc that I built for 28.4 picks up 27.025 incredibly well. Its 25' up on a fiberglass pole at about 65°. At least I've had Motormouth Maul out of California to entertain me.😏
I also put together a 4:1 and a 1:1 balun/unun. The both ohm out right on the money with the right resistor test stack.
Am I wasting my time by doing this without an antenna analyzer and an hf rig and just the SDR?
So, beyond all that, have ya got any links, recipes or favorite flavors?