I don’t know many hams nor do I chat with the same hams on a recurring basis, and my wife is only tangentially interested in radio inasmuch as it makes me happy, so I thought I’d be the life of the party and post about the best day on the air I’ve had yet. My aim is to share my enthusiasm with the world.
I’ve been a ham for about a year. I’m young (experience-wise) and still learning. Until this weekend I’ve been using a portable whip on my balcony combined with my President Lincoln for 10 meter contacts. My antenna mounting situation was awfully complicated, so I often left the antenna mounted several days at a time such as on the weekends. This finally bit me when the fine women who were feeding the squirrels next door moved out. The squirrels went ballistic and destroyed my antenna along with wreaking havoc on the rest of the neighborhood. They chewed through the loading coil and the coax! Preposterous. I cannot imagine what they thought to gain from doing so. Nevertheless, it put me out of commission for a while.
I think the math behind magnetic loop antennas is really cool, and I don’t have much space, so I decided to try the Chameleon F-loop as my next antenna, the base model. Wow, did I have so much fun today! Tuning was tricky because of that high Q and narrow bandwidth, but I didn’t realize how active the airwaves could be when you can hear clearly. My reception was so much better because my noise floor seems to be lower with the mag loop compared to the whip. I also enjoyed the directionality of the loop, giving me a new property to play with to get the best reception.
Thanks for reading!
Today I was able to reach New Zealand from the US East Coast for the first time. I don’t generally talk about specific subjects on the air. Mostly, I exchange basic contact information and signal reports. Merely establishing radio communication over such long distances without reliance on the Internet or other infrastructure is fun. It’s amazing to think that with a little radio knowledge you can communicate across the globe. It also pushes me to learn more about radio and electrical engineering.
That really is an impressive accomplishment. Yeah learning more EE seams like a great reason. Aviation radios have all sorts of clever tricks to get a longer antenna. Some WWII era planes would trail their antennas behind the aircraft.