NEAR-Fest. Back by Popular Demand, The W1ZE PVC Frame 6-Meter Moxon. The Lincoln County repeater. K1LX/R is alive on a new hill.

Transcription

1 The Lincoln County repeater K1LX/R is alive on a new hill After a long absence, thanks to the efforts of Ernie Richards, K1NI, Dave Hawke, KQ1L and Randy Lewis, K1XI, the Lincoln County Amateur Radio Club's K1LX repeater is now back on the air. They found the original location on Huntoon Hill not to be the best possible site for various reasons, so they set up on nearby Blinn Hill in Dresden. As before, the repeater frequency is MHz with a PL tone of Hz. The LCARC hopes to get their ARES Net running again sometime in December. Give it a try and see how it works for you. NEAR-Fest New England Amateur Radio Festival Don t forget, Friday & Saturday, October 14 th & 15 th at the Deerfield, NH Fairgrounds is the fall edition of NEAR-Fest. Come have fun with your fellow Hams from all over New England and the northeast. Getting to NEAR-Fest by automobile is extremely simple. The Deerfield Fairground is located at 34 Stage Road, Deerfield NH Stage Road is also NH State Highway 43. Back by Popular Demand, The W1ZE PVC Frame 6-Meter Moxon By Bruce Randall, W1ZE Driven Element Max Several years ago I had an article in this newsletter that described a simple inexpensive six-meter beam antenna that performed equally as well to a two element Yagi. I thought it was about time to put it back in the newsletter so that some of you that want to build a small six-meter Moxon beam antenna could go about building one for yourself. As you can see in the above diagram the Moxon is a two element beam antenna that is smaller than a full size two element Yagi. Being smaller than a two element Yagi the Moxon makes a good portable antenna on the higher HF bands plus sixmeters. The Internet was loaded with information about the Moxon so I went about building a six-meter model from available hardware store materials. 1

2 I found a web site that had an Moxon antenna dimension calculator at: [ So by just entering the frequency and wire size it gives me all the wire length and dimensions. Being a guy that likes to build antennas from PVC pipe I thought the Moxon would be a good candidate. After some calculation on the old graph paper I headed off to the local hardware emporium to gather up the stuff to build my six-meter Moxon antenna frame. I purchased two 10-foot lengths of ¾ inch schedule 40 PVC pipe, two ¾ inch PVC pipe Tees and a ¾ inch PVC pipe cross connection. While in the local hardware store (Rogers in Bath) I spied a display rack with bicycle flag whips used to keep an eye on your kids in a crowd. The whip was made with ¼-inch fiberglass rod stock. I thought that would make a pair of stiffening rods to keep the PVC pipe element from bending in when the wire elements were tightened up. That proved to work out well. About an hour in the workshop I had the frame assembled (see above diagram) and had cut the needed No.12 stranded wire in accordance with the Moxon calculation program. For the feed-point of the driven element I uses a couple stainless steel 6-32 screws, washers and nuts and applied crimp-on connectors to the end of the wire and attached them to the feed point. 2

3 I then secured the wire elements to the frame and used electrical tape to hold the wire in place until I got through with the tuning process. When finished I used black tie-wraps to secure the wire to the frane. The No.12 wire I used was insulated so when I applied the antenna analyzer to it, the antenna resonated at 48 MHz rather than 50.1 MHz. It hit me quick. The calculation program was for bare No.12 AWG wire and with the insulated wire taped to the PVC pipe the Velocity Factor had changed. I shortened up the elements little by little until I achieved a 1.15:1 SWR at 50.1 MHz. The antenna appeared to be fairly broad banded so it would play without a tuner from 50 to 50.6 MHz with an SWR of less than 2:1. The element end insulator needed to be 2¾ inches apart so I thought of using some scrap PVC pipe but came up with an idea I thought would work and it did. I made the end tie-insulator out of some heavy Weed-Whacker monofilament line and two crimp type wire splicing sleeves (blue) Day. With the Moxon at about 15 -feet off the ground and a 20-foot length of coax hooked up to my transceiver I tuned-up on and YIPEE I had an SWR of less that 1.2:1 and I could hear stations thundering in. Good time to have the band open because I worked several southern and mid western state hams with the antenna only 15-feet off the ground. Front to back was what you would expect for a two element Yagi, about 15db change on the S-meter, front to side was even better while tuned to the WA1OJB beacon in Bowdoin about 8 miles away from my QTH in Phippsburg, (ground wave). If you want a small effective but cheap six-meter beam, try a Moxon. I think you will be pleased with the results. 73,Bruce Big Ham Radio towers & antenna farm appears in Harpswell I made the antenna so it would have a 15-inch section of PVC pipe that would slide into a pushup mast or into a TV rotor motor mount. At the feed point I used s short section of RG-58U coax with a few ferrite beads slid over it to act as a 1:1 current balum. If you do not have ferrite chokes, you could build an RF choke by making a four or five turn coil in the coax feed line about six inches in diameter at the antenna feed point. Then came the acid test just before Field 3 MARA member Richard Dick Bean, uses K1HC/1 for contacts made from his vacation home in Harpswell, Maine (grid square FN53). Dick is in the process of erecting two large selfsupporting towers at 160 feet above sea level above a tidal marsh. His 120-foot tower will have 32 five element Directive Systems end-mounted Yagis, 16 at 60 degrees and another 16 at 240 de-

4 grees. That tower will also support a 25 element Directive Systems 432 MHZ Yagi, a 146/440 MHZ Diamond X50 vertical, a six meter loop, and a 160 meter inverted V. The second tower is 70-foot tall and will have a M2 log periodic and a seven element Directive Systems six meter Yagi. The 19-acre site will have other antennas springing up as time permits. MARA Members attend BOXBORO Reported by George Szadis, K1GDI Photo of serious ham operator with crank up tower attached to his RV at Boxboro I was able to attend the Boxboro Hamfest on Saturday September 10th. Good crowd, sufficient flea market tables and pretty complete vendor indoor display. Certainly worth the trip. Enigma machine display and lecture was the highlight for me. More modern hf rigs for sale than usual. The 32 element Directive Systems two-meter Yagis installed on the 120-foot tower, but not yet connected to the ten power dividers. Transmission lines are coming soon. Quite a few tables packed up early Saturday afternoon and not sure if the returned Sunday morning. Not good if that was the case. Still waiting to hear if I won the grand prize.. 73, George K1GDI 4

5 Last year DR Steve Kercel, AA4AK wanted to get some wire up in the air at his QTH in Brunswick that would exhibit some gain on the fourty meter band. With paper and pencil and a antenna modeling program he started in on plans to fabricate and install a 7 MHz Double Extended Zepp antenna and an associated balanced matching tuner. The following photo shows the tuner before placed inside a weatherproof container made from a 50-Cal. Ammo box. The above graphics show what he came up with and got up in the air, assisted by Harry McNelley, N1TTT. There is a story about the trials and tribulations of getting this 177 foot long wire up in the air but that is a story for them to tell. Before it went up in the air Steve spent many an hour assembling the parts and building the balances tuner that feeds the antenna. The following is the tuner diagram. Steve obtained/fabricated some real open-wire 600-ohm transmission line to feed the antenna and fabricated a center feedpoit using ceramic strain insulators. 5

6 Hi_Steve, Sorry I had to leave the session at 11 for another meeting today, but I did hear your talk in total. It was very well done. After it was up in the air and adjustments made with the tuner Steve s experience with his new Double Extended Zepp has pleased him no end. He is working 40-Meter DX with ease and made the following observations: Two friends, neither of whom knew that I knew you, came up to me afterward and asked if I had heard it they both felt that it was the best talk they heard at the convention and really liked the way you knitted it all together from VOCAP through design, top-level construction, to positive results. LOTS OF WORK for one [very important] Q! --73, Larry W1DYJ Well done Steve. People you may know Photo By Marjorie KX1I Steve is very pleased with his 40 Meter EDZ and should give W1ZE and his rotary 40M SteppIR dipole at 55-feet a run for his money. Steve did a presentation of the EDZ at the ARRL s New England Convention in Foxboro in September where the above power point slides were used. After the convention the following comments were made about Steve s presentation: Leisure time at the 2016 Windsor Hamfest Bobby Donohue W1JX, Tom Donohue W1QU, Bruce Randall W1ZE, Dan Lindsley N5AGG & Harry Mcnelley N1TTT Hi All, Although I won't be able to attend this meeting, as I will be in Massachusetts that weekend, I just want to say that I attended Steve's presentation at Boxboro and thought it was absolutely excellent. Here is what two friends said: 6

7 Midcoast ARES/CERT members attend Lincoln County EMA Event Reported by the MARAs photo journalist Marjorie Turner, KX1I The Ham attendees were: Norm Bosse (W1MKD), Harry McNelley (N1TTT), John Goran (K1JJS) Ed Wynn (N1WY), Marjorie Turner (KX1I) and Dick Michael (AB1YX). Inside the courthouse the Lincoln County ARES Hams set up and demonstrated their communications ability with various digital modes using the FLdigi programmed into their computer. Kudos to all. On Saturday September 17 th a group of hams from Midcoast ARES/CERT and MARA attended the Lincoln County EMA event held at and in front of the Lincoln County Courthouse where the County EMA set up their portable command post to demonstrate to the public it s capabilities. 7