N3QO » ameritron

The chores before the storm…

jeff — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:29:25 +0000

With the upcoming snow storm that’s predicted to hit the Northeast US in the next few hours I decided to move my Ameritron RCS-8V antenna switch to it’s permanent home so it doesn’t get buried under the supposed 18″ of snow. I used my new RG8/U cable to connect it into the shack. I swept the 110 foot coax run with .3 db loss at 1.9mhz and 1.1db at 29.7.

..the festivities continue..

jeff — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:46:13 +0000

The morning of the last NAQP (North American QSO Party) I put up an 80 meter inverted vee using an Alpha Delta Delta C center insulator hoisted 50 feet up a tree in my backyard. Seeing as how successful my results were on 80 meter, I added a 40 meter vee about 8 feet below it. The balun of choice was from Hy-Power Antenna company. KU3X, Barry the owner happens to be a fellow club member of DLARC and offered a bunch of information on antenna design.

Since I now have 3 antennas in the backyard and only 1 cable running to the house, running outside in the rain or snow to flip antennas got old quick. Hence my recent purchase from a ham on QTH.com. I was lucky enough to acquire a used Ameritron RCS-8V, 5 antenna remote switch for a very discounted price. I ended up using 100 feet of CAT5 cable as a temporary run between the control box and relay box outside. When my permanent cable arrives next week, the plan is to bury it and a run of RG8U coax out to the relay box. Ultimately a 40 meter delta loop will also makes it way to this switch as well as a 40/80/160 meter off-center dipole around 60-70 feet.

For now I can switch between to 2 vee’s and vertical from the laziness of my own chair.

My beef with Ameritron and MFJ.

jeff — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:16:09 +0000

In the process of rewiring the shack to facilitate additional radios I had found my new MFJ wattmeter had a loose rattle inside. Come to find one of the plastic prongs holding the actually meter broke off. How!? I’ve been nothing but careful with it and have never pushed or touched the actual meter face.

And then…. I added a new Ameritron wet dummy load (the paint can type), and found that the parts used to hold the 50 ohm resistor in place was shorting the center pin to shield. Wow, great. after a little engineering and removing the “cage” from the resistor enclosure, the dummy short was finally a dummy load.

Is this the kind of stuff I’m going to have to worry about when I got to buy my 811h and MFJ auto tuner?