From blowing snow to freezing rain....time for antenna work to begin...

Over this Christmas break, when the weather seemed to be at it's worst seemed to be the best time for me to get out there and do some antenna erecting and adjusting. For most hams the summer is the best of times..... not for this Tom foolery,  for me the summers are the worst. Now that you think either I have had to much to drink over the Christmas season or I had a bad fall.......my antennas are in the attic of my home. I set up a 20 meter dipole last summer when it was about 80 or more outside. Well in the attic it was way over 120 degrees so the cooler weather along with either snow or freezing rain does not matter to me.....BRING IT ON!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from my family to you and your families

An intresting product..........

On the weekend my tech savvy wife brought this interesting piece of techno whiz bong to my attention.....have a look and see what you think.

RAC winter contest.....

The RAC winter contest is a nice short 24 hour all mode contest you can operate all modes or just SSB, CW, FM or AM  if you want. No matter what your niche in ham radio is there is a corner in this contest you can participate in from 160 meters all the way to 2 meters. In past years this contest was very close to Christmas and with family commitments it was very hard to give some time to the contest. This year it was held one week before Christmas...still a busy time of year for me but late Saturday afternoon I was able to contribute as a point giver in the contest. I stayed with 20 meters only using my attic dipole and 10 watts. I made a grand total of 30 contacts I logged all the contacts using N1MM contest program

One way to get signals to jump out...........

LP-PAN

Preamp kit

Some time ago I added a pan adapter to my station it has been and still is a very useful tool. It's a great advantage to have an overview of a particular band. It's a fast way to see if a band is open or closed, how busy the band is and where the signals are. This saves a lot of time tuning up and down looking for signals, you just click from one to the next. It's a great advantage during contests. There are lots of  pan adapters on the market today I happen to choose the LP PAN from Telepost by Larry N8LP. The LP-PAN can be purchased as a kit or fully assembled. I chose the kit, it goes together very well. Larry is always very prompt with his emails back to you if there are any questions.  Larry also is always looking for ways to improve his products, recently he introduced the LP-PAN add on preamp kit. This kit will help at improving the noise floor of the pan-adapter display allowing weaker signals to be seen that were not seen before.  The instructions were very easy to understand and again if in doubt Larry is just an email away. Once the kit is together and installed just some minor setup is required. As for how it works....the kits does what Larry says it will do. After installing the kit and viewing it in the PowerSDR software there are signals that show up that otherwise would had been lost in the noise floor. Below there are pictures of the build, the finished product and a view of the PowerSDR software display before and after the kit was installed.

Finished Preamp

New hole drilled and kit installed

Kit installed in Pan adapter

It's due time for a change.......

The old setup

For some time now I have not been pleased with the layout of my radio desk. The position of the radios were a little to high so during contests it became uncomfortable to tune the radio at the height they were at. Also the two monitors required me to look up slightly I found within a very short period of time it became very uncomfortable on my neck. I did not want to replace the desk it's very sturdy and has lots of room also it's on wheels and when I have to get around to the back it's very easy. . Unfortunately I just spent a considerable amount of time tidying up the cables at the back of the desk.  There seemed to be cable and coax going  every which way. So I purchased some Velcro ties and neaten things up  It looked great....... but looking back  there was a big advantage in having all the cable loose. When adding or moving a piece of equipment it was a real easy. Now with the cable ties its a  pain to open up the cable ties to add or remove cables. So it was out with the cable ties and back to the spaghetti mess.......

Back to the good old bad hair day

I digressed....back to the radio desk remodeling. I purchased two swivel monitor mounts allowing me to position the monitors at a comfortable viewing position. I wanted also to lower the  radios from the upper self to the desk top. To allow for this the self had to be moved up 2 inches or so. ( easier said than done) That was sure an undertaking.... one of Ingvar Kamprad's Ikea desks with easy adjustable shelving would had been a blessing.....oh well dreams are free!!! As I said not wanting to purchase a new desk besides there are very few desks that suited my situation. As I started the desk remodeling it very quickly came to light that the moving of a simple self up 2 inches or so was going to be a major under taking and much if not all of the desk had to be taken apart.

To late to turn back now

To have the radios at desk level it was well worth the revamping of the desk. Once the self was in it took some moving and moving and moving of equipment to make sure everything was in the spot that I wanted it. After the desk was done there was the hooking of all the radios and paraphernalia  back up again. For some reason when I re hooked everything up I could not get a good SWR on my dipole or vertical antenna. I checked the cabling again and again all was good. Then for some reason unknown to me the SWR settle back to normal.. In hindsight  I find the problems that fix themselves find a way to come back an haunt you. Well here are some pictures of the finished product. 

Both monitors at a comfortable viewing position

Monitors up and out of the way

Monitors just a little higher