Short Takes! Comments on Short Takes from "Trials and Errors"

Please post any questions or comments about the items brought to your attention in Short Takes in this forum. Please make sure you visit each issue of Short Takes by looking at the index below the article linked here. Thank you, Dave Jensen

 

You win!

I just looked over the entire site and did not see anything labeled as "Short Takes. QRP, yes, even a topic set on Arduino.

Perhaps a link for those of us that would like to understand....

 

Hi KL7KN - It's a bit premature, as the QRZ staff and I are in the middle of trying to establish this forum under the Short Takes umbrella in the column "Trials and Errors -- Ham Life with an Amateur" which is a new proprietary column of ham reviews and so on on the front page of QRZ. New content every week or so. You'll find Short Takes inside that link, but as soon as we have the structure set, this forum will link to the material there. The first Short Takes featured ham accessories from IKEA and Amazon. Dave, W7DGJ

 

Hi. Best wishes for your new activity, Dave. Something you might consider is the capability to right click on a picture and see it larger to be able to see details. Also, perhaps you might be able to give a link to where it is for sale, if possible to the actual listing for the product. 73, Rob

 

Hi Rob. I've been trying to get that capability but for some reason, the forum software we are stuck with will not allow it. I always state where it is sold and will now link those sites. Thanks for the help and positive message Rob.

 

Rob, I think we were able to incorporate your suggestion on the photos and the "click" to enlarge! Looks good, thanks again. Dave

 

Please let me know if you had a hard time finding the "Short Takes" articles . . . . I can't seem to get the same kind of index for them as we have for the main articles, and I don't want to write them if they are not being seen. Thanks, Dave

 

Why don't you write them here, in this subforum?

 

Thanks Henry (Hank?) but we can only have the one sub-forum level for the Short Takes pieces, so the articles go on a “top level” and then any comments/discussion go one level beneath that in this forum. I’m petitioning for an overall T&E index page with all the material in that one location. Thanks for letting me know you’re out there reading!

 

Thanks for your observations on our product's in your "Short Takes" Dave. Much appreciated, 73 KG5RJR

 

You're welcome! If a few more hams get exposed to your product, there will be fewer people looking for the solution you already provide! Dave

 

Hey Dave-

Here's a picture tying a bunch of subjects together-the MTR radios, homemade keys and portable ops. Paddles were made with double-sided pcb and an old gift card with copper tape for contacts. Pallet is cutting board matl cut to fit the case.

Thanks for your articles and reviews!

 

Thank you for the nice comment, and for the great GO BAG photo! Dave

 

Dave:

Got a chuckle when I read your article/review of the TN07 portable flagpole antenna...because I home-brewed something remarkably similar a few years back. You can read my original QRZ post I wrote after building this antenna here: https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/turned-jackite-pole-into-33-vertical-antenna.779702/

As you can read in my post, I used a 31 foot Jackite telescoping fiberglass pole that I got from Amazon (current price listed at $112), and ran the antenna wire up through the inside of the pole, just as the TNo7 antenna does. Of course, mine being a permanent installation, I utilized a remote antenna tuner at the base, and a ground radial field, rather than the Impedance Matching Device as supplied with your sample. There's no mention in the article if the TN07 antenna employs use of a counterpoise/ground wire or wires? (Observation: seems to me that for portable work, a small automatic tuner such as the LDG Z-100 Plus, or similar, placed in a waterproof Tupperware container, would accomplish the same task.)

I have made a few changes to the antenna since I first posted about it; followed a few of the suggestions that were given by others on my post. Chief among that was lengthening the antenna wire that ran up through the pole, having it pop out the very top of the mast, and then trimming the stub piece that protruded to produce better resonance and lower SWR's than my first initial stab at it. Actually invested some time with my AA-35 Zoom analyzer and made multiple trims, instead of just pre-cutting the wire and leaving it at that.

It seems to me that anyone could reproduce the TN07 antenna on their own for about half the cost and the same amount of time involvement to fabricate. The hardest part would be choosing (or building) a comparable Impedance Matching Device; perhaps experimenting with various ratio unun's (4:1, 9:1, 49:1, etc) would accomplish the task. Someone with modeling software could probably figure it out pronto. Otherwise, the Jackite pole will clamp or mount up identically as the TN07 does, using the same hardware or similar; DX Engineering offers a drive-on mast support as well as other clamps that would work.

Anyways, that's probably more than my two cents worth, although with inflation factored in, might be less. I did take your recommendation on Bob Witte's books, and purchased his "Extra Class License Manual", since I've been having troubles concentrating on and retaining the information I've been reading from another source. Hopefully with the addition of Bob's book I can get over the study hump and take my Extra exam soon. 73

Brando W3TKB

 

Thanks Brando, much appreciated comments as always. I knew you had built something similar, which is why I was awaiting your commentary. My column isn't supposed to be about me building stuff and then reviewing it. It's about the products available to hams in the ham market, for Plug 'n Play operation. I know that's not the spirit of ham radio, and my life also includes building a lot of my own stuff. I'll post a very strange antenna I'm building here on this forum when I test it out, and you'll see what I mean.

As I have reviewed other antennas here, everyone always jumps in with "Hey, I could build one of those pretty easy, and for pennies on the dollar!" or some such comment. But, figuring your time is worth at least minimum wage, plus the cost of materials, I'd find that NOT to be the case on some antennas. A good example was my review of the Buckmaster 3000W Multi-Band OCF dipole, which got blasted in the forum because it's expensive. And Josh's review (Ham Radio Crash Course) of another TNØ7 antenna (called the "GoTo Antenna") got nailed as well. But the thing is, I really don't see how you could get this same quality or results for pennies on the dollar. The mast itself is built like a you-know-what (an outdoor toilet), the Impedance Matching Device looks like a grenade it is built so well, but whatever it's doing inside it sure works. Tuning with the IC-7300 is a breeze down to almost flat SWR and just about every frequency. You can also buy it without that device, for considerably less money, and then that antenna is a lot like yours. (Except I don't know the quality of your components or Mast). But I think the engineering of the device is worth the extra money. I'm not going to have the knowledge to immediately build an IMD of that order . . . it would take me a lot of playing around. So, I guess how much you'd value your time is a key component of that question!

Thanks for posting. Your comments are always interesting. 73, Dave