Just back from holidays and while testing my new ham radio toy, the buddipole antenna, I’ve done an interesting QSO with YO3FXL Mihali about bazooka antennas on 17 meters band. He told me that his roof is plenty of monoband dipoles, generic dipoles, and he is using a bazooka antenna for 17 meters.
According to him, the bazooka antennas outperforms dipoles, and that he is going to dismiss in this summer all his dipoles in favour of the equivalent bazooka type.
I’ve heard and read someting about this antennas, but never gone in deep with technical specifications. They really looks interesting, for those who looks for cheeap and easy to build antennas.
Here you can find some bazooka antenna plans
IS0/IW5EDI Sardinia Isl.
I will try to be active on HF bands (mainly 20 meters) from 26th June to 7 July.
QTH will be north-East of Sardinia Island (EU-024)
More info will be posted on this blog.
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Update to 3 July:
I’ve setup my triband dipole in the camping and I can currently works on 20 meters band with an acceptable SWR.
Propagation during the day is very poor but get increasing starting from 17.00 GMT, and during all sunset time.
Done interesting contacts into Europe, with some countries difficult to get from my home QTH on 14 mhz.
“Unfortunately” family tasks, don’t let me stay on air as I would… HI.
Will continue my activities till 7th July.
QSL route: via bureau.
Ham Grids
HamGrids will allow you to perform calculations with the popular Maidenhead Grid Square system. This grid system is used worldwide by amateur radio operators for many aspects of ham radio. Currently in version 0.5 Beta, with HamGrids, you can Convert Latitude and Longitude into a Grid Square, Convert a Grid Square into Latitude and Longitude, calculate the distance between two Grid Squares, and calculatea beam heading between grid squares.
Require Windows 95/98/2000 or Windows NT 4.0 or higher, Visual Basic 5.0 Runtime DLL
Download HamGrid
IARU HF Band Plan
Yet another interesting table I’ve recetly found on the net and tha I believe it could be usefull expecially to travellers. The followind table represents, the ham radio band plans for the 3 IARU regions.
Continue reading
ARI News widget
I’ve published this week a new Yahoo! Widget.
It’s a ARI (Associazione Radioamatori Italiani) RSS reader, includes also the ARRL and DXZone feeds.
That’s a new ham radio widget for the Amateur radio Konfabulator community.
Download the widget from the Widget Gallery
or learn what Yahoo! Widgets (aka konfabulator widgets) are…
I’ve coded a couple of widgets more during the last yeat, including an ham radio dx cluster interface… have a look at my works
A magnetic loop antenna for HF
Poor propagation last weekend
At least at my QTH and during the few hours I’ve been on air, have noticed a poor condition on mostly ham radio bands.
I’ve been able to make some interesting contacts with just the dipole, beaming N/S.
LA6KOA, ED8OTA/M, 9N7JO, A41NN, 5R8UO, ZR1ADI and 7X4AN mostly on 20 and 15 meters band.
ARI contest
Last weekend I took part to the Ari international ham radio contest. Unofrtunately time to dedicate to the contest has been very low, just a couple of hours, but I’ve dedicated all my “spare time” to the competition.
Has been fun to be aknowledged so easily by so many stations, even being a qrp station. This has been my first experience with an amateur radio contest, and final impression has been positive.
I’m trying now to organize the electronic logbook (i’m going to use UA1AAF – Ari contest software) to send to the Ari HQ. My score has been very low, but as I’ve taken part to the contest just to enjoy myself withour any other goal.
4 elements Quagi antenna for 50 Mhz
This is an interesting quagi antenna plan.
Total Boom Lenght is 3 m.
Continue reading
Ham Radio report: portable antennas
This was my ham radio portable setup station last week. Two interesting contacts with 5H3AA and 4J5A. Vertical antenna in the center is a prototype of the fishing rod antenna I’m testing in this period, even I’ve already understood that best results are on 40 meters band, but is still too early for a final report.
I’ve just ordered a fiber glass fishing rod, a really hard to find product in the carbon fiber era.