Annual Homebrew Night showed lots of imagination

“To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk” -attributed to Tom Edison

Not much junk at this year’s Homebrew Night, but lots of imagination with a wide range of items, approaches and levels. Well done, all.

It is still April as I write this, so for a bit of foolery, check out thedipole.com

As the say “Like a Dipole, there are two sides to every story. We ignore those sides and dig deeper for unwanted lobes and parasitic reactions.” 

An interesting take on antennas, gear and operating in general

For a more conventional, but no less interesting take on antennas, gear and operating in general, check out hamradiooutsidethebox.ca

One thing that struck me as particularly profound there was a statement that using antenna tuners is like wearing contact lenses. Your eyesight might still be bad but they still let you see. Have you ever heard a better description of the pros and cons of tuners versus matched antennas? 

Still on URLs, I have been waiting for AMSAT Canada to appear, but it now seems that instead of a “placeholder page”, amsat.ca now directs you to alfaradio.ca, an Edmonton antenna rotator dealer. At one point they were amsat-ca.org, but that seems to have evaporated too. Oh well.

Expanding the range of the internal autotuner in the IC7300

While looking for what happened to them, I stumbled into qsl.net/va3iul, where I found an interesting page about expanding the range of the internal autotuner in the IC7300. It’s not for everyone (I don’t even own one of the things), but an interesting approach, which might be applicable to other rigs as well. It makes the tuner accept a higher SWR during the tuning process, pushing the inductors, capacitors and relays nearer their limits, while still leaving the protection for the finals at the previous level. The author says the idea could be pushed farther, but then the maximum power would have to be reduced. caveat emptor.

In addition to the site’s dozens of links to calculators for nearly everything, I found what I consider another very important suggestion:

“Nothing lasts forever, especially on the Internet. If you like it, don’t bookmark, download it.”

With the cost of data storage what it is, and the happenings south of us these days, that advice seems even more relevant today. Get it while you can, and keep it close to you.

Meanwhile…

Things have been rolling along at RAC Headquarters VE3RHQ

Things have been rolling along at VE3RHQ. We found out we were number 8 in the world in the Commonwealth Contest. Great, until you notice that it means #8 out of 14 headquarters stations. Then again, the goal for us is maximum fun, not maximum score. We will be on again on World Amateur Radio Day on April 18, and maybe later that weekend for the Ontario and Quebec QSO parties. Stop in and say Hi, either in person or on the air. 

We are making progress on getting the rest of the antenna work done while still waiting for weather and schedules to mesh. The fiberglass and aluminum cross boom for the circularly polarized VHF and UHF Yagis will be ready to put up soon. This was a bit of a worry, since getting one from south of the border was causing me some concern.  

The last of the snow disappeared from the yard this week, and the leaves aren’t out on the trees yet, so I guess this is antenna week around here. Not much to be done this time, but there’s always something.

73
keep springing
mk
VE3FFK

Last Updated on 2025-06-16 by Joannadanna