A Growing Concern
I finally put up an End Fed Half Wave (EFHW) wire. I wanted a "standard" 80 meter wire as a comparison antenna for various other projects and the time and place was right. Besides, I had a new EFHW transformer to test out. It all started when working on the common mode isolation for an [...]
For an entire solar cycle, about 11 years, I've been playing with the radio as AF7NX, the call sign given to me by the FCC in 2015. I've always been curious about what is on the air, different modes, strange looking signals and how to decode them. Much of my early exploration of HF was [...]
The NanoVNA came on the scene 2019. It is taking the place of more traditional antenna analyzers for many hams. There are a couple of reasons for this. It is significantly less expensive than most dedicated antenna analyzers, and it is a more capable instrument. However, its small size, the calibration requirements, and arcane menus [...]
Maybe you never knew it went away. Fortunately, Amy Goldman tells the story nicely in The Compleat Squash, or I would have been totally mystified by a crookneck's unexpected return to my garden. As squash seed savers know, there are basically three species of common table squash made up of hundreds of varieties. Since different [...]
Getting 70,000 people on and off the playa is always a challenge for Burning Man. Add in some inclement weather on the busy travel days and everything backs up. This year Burning Man themed "Tomorrow Today" had to contend with unstable weather as a cooler wet front came in on top of the previous week's [...]
Mono-band vertical antenna arrays can obtain impressive directionality when built properly. These "four square" designs usually use four ground plane vertical antennas spaced 1/4 wavelength apart in a square array and fed with a carefully built phasing system. What I'm going to describe is a much simpler pull-up or mast-supported wire vertical array that gets [...]
Hams have commonly used tall trees to support their wire antennas. In the Pacific Northwest we grow very tall trees. On my one acre lot there are over a dozen of the giants. In keeping with the ham spirit of cobbling together something that works from what you have on hand, I've had great success [...]
In this article I discuss getting the three element hex beam to work well. Please see Designing a Three-Element Hex Beam and Building the Three-Element Hex Beam for those phases of this project. The hex beam is basically a compact Yagi. Like the Yagi, the parasitic elements of the hex beam develop RF currents that [...]
Update 07/06/2025: This is not old news yet. See the update at the end of the article. Beekeepers and donors that care about bees are being targeted by what sure looks like a big scam. As a hobbyist beekeeper I only know peripherally what is happening in the world of commercial beekeeping. But when my [...]
For the first time in several years there were tickets for sale until the last minute for Burning Man 2024. The mud fest last year seemed to discourage a few people. But this year was exceptionally nice, at least up until Sunday afternoon by which time we were long gone. From past experience, we've noticed [...]
Squash Practice 