A Convenience Store Based Antenna Ham radio operators world-wide would love an antenna that is cheap, easily built out of locally available parts – and outperforms both standard dipole antennas and other commonly-built wires. Well, here it is…. After almost a year of modeling our ideas for a “Super Antenna” the design was locked. It … Read More
Around the ranch Sunday: Fall weather arrives. And that’s when prepping and ham radio projects come into view!
SATR simply means: “Sunday Around the Ranch” where we cover a hugely and bigly of stuff going on in our lives. I have almost a dozen items on the list this morning including the art of buying things, LookingOutsidethOftheBox has before and after pix of his “cardboard bar” which is nearing completion. Plus the gobs … Read More
While we’re waiting for the market to crater tomorrow… [May load slow due to length and a zillion graphics] This may be a bit on the “longish” today, so if you need to pee or get coffee…better do that first. We’ll wait for you…. Four topics this morning: Best first ham radio stations, how to … Read More
I have made an AMAZING discovery. But, unless you’re an electronics engineer, with an emphasis on RF design, this would be gibberish without first attending “Antenna School.” So let’s do that.(..beats watching riots.) If you’re new to ham radio, I will lay this out as directly as possible – in order – because the name … Read More
Ure is a gen-u-ine QRQ Extra Class Ham Radio geek. QRQ means high speed Morse Code and some of us believe it enables a “direct digital” part of the brain. Extra Class because there’s no higher certification offered. And geek? You don’t need help on that part… What is a Super-Antenna A Super-Antenna is something … Read More
This being a holiday weekend, a young man’s heart turns to what? Ham Radio Antennas, of course!!! Antennas 101: Short Course In the event of an actual emergency, there are really only two antennas that work, provide reasonable gain and don’t require fancy ground systems to radiate pretty well. HF Bands: On the 80-10 … Read More
In the Saturday report we got into the basics of restoring an old transmitter. Like restoring an old car, what could be so hard, right? Well…Let’s sit back and take a look at the radio chassis after taking off the front panel: This is after taking the sheet metal off from around the “tuning knob” … Read More
My late friend and colleague, Don Stoner (W6TNS, sk) had a marvelous saying about ham radio. “Ham Radio is the King of Hobbies….” There was a good deal of truth to that. Few realize, for example, that King Hussein of Jordan was a very active ham and if you snoop around YouTube, you can find … Read More
For this to make a lot of sense, you will want to revisit the original September 30, 2018 article Project Big Ears here. The goal of the project, to refresh, is to build a high-performance Beverage Antenna using commonly available parts. That first article was mostly the theory of what the project was about. Today, … Read More
OK, serious preppers: Time to pay attention because George’s Radio School is now in session. At this point, a number of ham radio operators will look at the antenna to the right and proclaim they know all about it and then skip on to the next article. In point of fact, however, real DX (dx … Read More
OK, you wake up tomorrow morning and the SHTF has actually happened. People have gone crazy and there’s been a surprise EMP blast. Phones are down, your power is “iffy:” and you don’t know what will happen next… You whip out your EMP Emergency kit – and what’s in it? Good-quality shortwave radio. A couple … Read More