2m/70cm dual band yagi tests

During the last couple of weeks I have had a chance to evaluate the new 144/432Mhz dual band yagi through the Tuesday Evening contests.
First 2m...the yagi has 5 elements and is tuned well with a vswr of almost 1:1. During the contest I was amazed at the stations that I heard and worked with my Yaesu FT817 with just 5w output power. The rotator is working fine and I was able to test the direction and also side lobes of the antenna. It seems quite sharp, about what I would expect for a 5 element yagi, my old antenna was an 8 element J Beam and was slightly sharper. The main thing was that everything I heard that night on 2m, I worked with just 5w! Conditions were flat, but I worked Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, London, Bristol and the East Coast.

This week on 70cm again the yagi seemed to perform well. This yagi has 8 elements on 432Mhz. I found this a little tricky to get the beam settings right at times, it does seem to have some side lobes and with 8 elements it is not very sharp. My old antenna was an 18 element parabeam, this was obviously much sharper with a higher gain factor. Again, I was quite amazed at how I could hear and also work the stations on 432Mhz with just 5w. G8OHM, M0GHZ, G3PYE/P just some of the stations worked from all over England.

I am really pleased with this antenna, it was easy to put together and set up and does not take up too much room. The configuration of the elements look quite strange, usually a normal yagi has the longest as the reflector and each element gets progressively shorter. With the dual band yagi, this is not the case, all to do with the tuning I guess. The yagi is a bit of a compromise really, but it puts me back on the map again as a station especially when conditions open up to the continent on 2m and 70cm. I also realised how my location makes a difference, I am on the top of a hill about 114 metres asl with a good take off to the South.

Bolton Technical College - the end!

The end of an era!

I have a lot of memories here in this building, right from doing my 11 plus test here up to teaching IT there up to a few years ago. I have mixed feelings about the demise of this huge building, inside it was a maze of corridors, very claustophobic and quite depressing. I spent five years on my day-release training when I was an apprentice from 16 years old to 21 years old. Most of the time was spent in the basement rooms where the electronics labs were kept. It was awful really, you couldn't see out of the windows and in the basement were numerous workshops for bricklaying, plumbing and construction skills. Each year I would have to take my exams in the 'Great Hall'. When I finished at college in 1975 I vowed never to go back there again. I can remember some of my tutors then...Mr Smith, Mr Tudor, Mr Duncan. I remember once going up onto the roof of the college to suss out putting an antenna up to run a radio station

I took my Radio Amateur Exam 40 years ago this year here at the college!

After 15 years away from the college I found myself having to complete my GCSE English at college and did my exam in the 'Great Hall'. After I got my degree I did my teacher training PGCE. My second placement in my PGCE was here at Bolton College teaching classes in electronics, Video Recorders and CD Players. My six week placement was very enjoyable, this time I was in the same electronics labs that I did when I was an apprentice, but I was in charge!

Later, I decided to do some IT teaching at the college on Saturday mornings and also during evening classes. I taught RSA CLAIT to adults which I enjoyed a lot. The only problem was the college itself...my room was on the third floor and the staffroom was on the first floor. To get into my room I needed a key which had to be obtained and signed out in the staffroom. Trouble was in the evening that the staffroom was also locked! You can imagine the situation each week when I had to first find the staffroom key so that I could get the room key...nightmare!!

To make things worse...at 9.00pm when the class had finished I had to do the same again to return the key...and if you were not out of the building by 9.15pm you had a good chance of being locked in the building! Oh....and the key....it was on a huge block of mild steel that weighed a ton so that nobody would nick it!!

My Dad also went to Bolton College learning about textiles and weaving, like me later, he did a day release course and night school.

Well...let's face it...that building was not fot for purpose, the new college building is amazing...a step into the 21st century!

17th December 2011... now its gone!!

Saw some good bands here in the Great Hall back in the 70's I remember a band called 'Strife' who were excellent with hi-tech strobe lights.
Later, there was the monthly computer fairs in the Excel Centre, a bit crap really, nothing like the one at Bowlers at Trafford Park.

RIP Bolton Technical College!

75 Years of television!

"At 3pm on 2 November 1936 the BBC began the world's first regular hi-definition television service, from Alexandra Palace in North London. As part of this, two different systems were being tested on alternate weeks for six months: John Logie Baird's 240 line mechanical system, and the EMI-Marconi 405 line electronic system. The latter was to prove the winning system."

True analogue natives will know that this is a landmark of analogue technology. I wonder if people 75 years ago who saw the first BBC transmissions had any incline into what was to come in the future. What on earth did people do before television? When I am teaching children at school I am amazed at their concept of technology. In their minds television has always been there, they cannot even imagine a world without television!

Sceptics thought television was a gimmic and said that it would never catch on. After all, nobody could possibly afford to buy a television!

'Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of it.'

I remember my first television in 1958 when I was 4 years old and lived in Draycot Street, I watched things like 'Four Feather Falls', 'Popeye' and 'Torchy the battery boy' in those days ITV had just arrived. The first BBC transmissions from Alexander Palace was 'High Definition' black and white. What a difference to our present digital 'High Definition.'

Now my English teacher at secondary school had another name for television, he would call it 'The Devil's Lantern' or 'Goggle Box' ... he wasn't far wrong, our lives are are controlled by television. Children have forgotten how to 'play' and when they do, it usually centres on something that they have seen on television. Having said that, how can you take away those television moments like the Moon Landing in 1969 or England winning the World Cup in 1966 in 'hight definition black and white'....priceless!

Television is a fantastic communication medium, I have spent most of my life working with televisions. In 1973 I even transmitted my own television transmissions under my own licenced callsign G6AIW/T along with Neil G6AIG/T.

My original 'Hi Definition' test card that I used.
In 1967 I went to visit the Winter Hill transmitting station during an open day, something I will always remember. Later I spent many Sundays at the ITV transmitter with my Uncle who worked there. I got to know how it all worked and looked in awe at the analogue equipment and water cooled transmitters.

G5RV Antenna

The next part of my antenna erecting project was to look at an antenna for HF, particularly for 10 metres with the sunspot maximum. Now my history of HF antennas has been very limited. The present antenna is a very short long wire which doubles back on itself fed with a long piece of coax. Last week I did a lot of research on dipoles and baluns, I also did some measuring in the back garden to see what length of antenna I could get away with. When I did the measurements I realised that I could just fit a half-size G5RV antenna. The half-size G5RV is a dipole with two 26.5 feet top and fed with 16 feet of 300 ohm ribbon cable. This then connects with a so-239 socket to any length of 50 ohm coax. I decided to try it out and take down the old antenna!

I sent for the G5RV kit from e-bay which arrived almost the next day! First a trip to Modern Radio to get some RG58u coax and some pl-259 plugs then out came the ladders!

So, after putting up the new antenna the question going around in my head was 'Will it work on all bands?' This antenna is only designed to use from 40m - 10m bands, maybe it will be useless on 80m and 160m. I also read about other people having problems tuning this antenna.

When I finally wired it up and connected it to the Yaesu FT-817 through the MFJ-945E tuner I was totally blown away!!

I could hear things that I could only dream of with the old longwire!

The dipole centre with the ribbon cable attached.

The ATU (Aerial Tuning Unit) did it's stuff perfectly giving me an almost 1:1 SWR on all the bands including 160m and 80m. On some bands it didn't even need the ATU, it was aready resonant, particularly the 40m band. I am very pleased with it...now I want to try to work some stuff on 10 metres.

28Mhz Opening!

This week has been amazing on 10m!

The band has been open during the day and I have heard stations from North and South America sounding like locals. lots of Italian and Russian stations and today I heard Brazil, Malta and Greece at incredible signal strengths.

I have decided that now is the time to change my HF antenna. If I can hear these stations with a (short) longwire and a lot of noise, I wondered what I may hear with a dipole or G5RV antenna.

After a lot of thinking and research, I have decided to replace the very poor longwire with a half-size G5RV antenna, so now I have ordered one from ebay. I am on holiday this week, so I will put up the new aerial and try it on 10 metres. Trouble is that because it is a half size G5RV, it may not work well on 80m and 160m, but maybe my tuner or Z-match with compensate for that.

I am still amazed at the discone antenna. It seems to work well to receive stations on 10m as a vertical without all the noise and this morning it did the same on 160m when I listened to the 1963 net. Transmitting is not good though, very high SWR!

It is difficult to imagine how the sunspots affect the 10m band. For 10 years the band is dead with very few stations, but now it is jam packed with stations from all over the world. What a wonderful phenomena!

Power to the people!

Am I just thick and not very intelligent or am I missing something?

Electricity comes from a generator at a power station, whether it be standard, nuclear or green?

It comes down the National Grid to our substations and then through the wires into our houses...right?

Gas comes from the North Sea or via pipelines from Europe?

It is then piped to our houses from the same source...right?

So why on earth do we have 'Power Suppliers' like E-on, PowerGen, Scottish Power and other hangers on! How is it possible to 'buy' your power from a supplier when it all comes from the same place and down the same wires and pipes. This must be the biggest con ever!!

Surely, if we just had one supplier regulated by OFGEN and a simple pricing tariff we would all save money!

Instead of constantly competing with each other, why don't they all get together and use some 'muscle' to bring the wholesale prices down instead of lining their own pockets. Now Mr C. wants us to keep changing our suppliers to get a better deal, why the hell should we have to do that!

Does anyone REALLY understand how this industry works...because I don't!!

Simple solution...buy a wind generator!

Beam me up Scotty!

A great weekend for erecting some aerials!

At last I managed to get all the antennas together. I now seem to have more than expected, I ordered a 4m, 2 element beam from Moonraker and got a new 4 element 2 metre antenna! Not quite what I wanted, but they said I could have it at half price if I wanted while they sorted out the correct item. That was good because it would be ideal for portable use on Winter Hill.
So...the correct item came minus some parts! A couple of days later the items missing came through the post and the problem was solved!
I assembled the array in the garden and tuned the 4m HB9CV before putting the array up.

The first part of the project was completed a couple of weeks ago, the rotator and mounting brackets ready for the array to be fitted. This weekend I put together the array and made sure everything was greased with dolops of vaseline! Great stuff Vaseline, if you ever want to take the antennas down, you will find that the bolts are rusted. Vaseline cures that problem.

Now I have been up and down the ladder like a fiddlers elbow, but carrying the completed array up the ladder and fixing it into the rotator is scary! I called on my mate Andy to carry the array up the ladders and fix them to clamps.

It is quite a neat array, considering it is for 4m, 2m, and 70cm, a 6m antenna is too large, so I may go for the halo and mount it underneath the rotator.

Tonight I tested it...wow I can hear the Wrotham Beacon in Kent for the first time in over 10 years! I can also hear the Buxton Beacon coming in at 5-9+ on 4m!

Great fun with the rotator...works perfectly...can't believe I got it on ebay for £19!

I am sooo pleased that I still know how to put up antennas after all this time, putting the array together seemed like second nature, I have done it so many times.