by Randall Thompson, K5ZD Originally printed in the YCCC Scuttlebutt #119, October, 1995 I built my first Beverage this past year. It was so easy I can’t believe I lived without one. Here’s how to do it: Go to Home Depot (or other large hardware store) and buy a 500 ft roll #16 THHN or…
Category: Homebrew
The Lattin 5 band Antenna
The antenna was named for W4JRW who invented it and holds a patent on the basic principle and uses quarter wave stubs, which act as insulators at the frequency for which they are cut. For example, the 6’11” stub (quarter wave times the velocity factor 0.8 of the feed line used) blocks RF for 28…
7 element Yagi for 20 Meters band
They say if it didn’t blow down it was not big enough, this one was big enough and it did blow, not off but up and over the top of the tower like an umbrella one very windy day in January 1974. I was at work and the XYL called and said the “thing” blew…
Long Loopstick Antenna
Wound on a 3 foot length of PVC pipe, the long loopstick antenna was an experiment to try to improve AM radio reception without using a long wire or ground. It works fairly well and greatly improved reception of a weak station 130 miles away. A longer rod antenna will probably work better if space…
Small Loop Antennas
Low profile operating — SMALL LOOP ANTENNAS Magnetic loops are very effective small antennas. these 3 to 3 1/2+ foot antennas perform close to and in some cases (low mounting heights for one) better than even a small beam. The reason is that a magnetic field is much more concentrated than an electrical one, for…
MFJ-940 modification
The MFJ-940 VERSA TUNER II is a useful little antenna tuner for the HF-bands. However it suffers from a minor design error, which can be easily rectified.As other antenna tuners may show the same kind of “weakness”, the modification described here can be used to improve other types. The connection between the components in the…
Six Meter Wavelength Band Antennas
The advent of new, affordable MF/HF/VHF radios in the last few months from virtually all the major manufacturers, has spurred a migration by more and more Hams to the Six Meter band. I’m often asked, “What antennas are best for Six Meters?”. Before answering a question like this, I must first ask the Ham what…
Stacked Yagi Antennas
This article was obtained from VE3GK experiences, constructing and designing full size, single band stacked yagi antenna arrays, special rotating, electric powered, telescoping towers and rotators. All the test results are from first hand experiments. VE3GK kept a record of these experiments and construction details and offer them for your interest. HISTORY I started out…
Ameritron AL-80A restoration project
W7TDC article on restoration of the AL-80A RF amplifier. The Ameritron AL-80A uses a single 3-500Z triode to produce over 1KW of power with only 65 watts of drive. I purchased it in the beggining of July 2003. It had several problems when I got it. The tube was bad, a VHF parastitic had occurred,…
AM Antennas
An AM loop antenna is one of the true marvels of electronics. Requiring no power, it takes advantage of the resonant properties of aninductor and a capacitor connected in parallel to receive weak AM stations. The “loop” part of the antenna is the inductor, and thetuning capacitor makes it resonate at a desired frequency.