Today is the day! The chimney repair guy is dropping by today to do his magic. The jointing of our chimney is so bad, it just falls out by itself. So it’s not a good idea to put any antenna’s to it in this state.
He thought it would take a day to replace the jointing, so hopefully he’ll be able to finish the job by the end of the day.
I did pick up my new prepared glass fiber pole yesterday at Fred’s, PA3YH. Also attached my brand new Fritzel 1:6 1KW balun to it for the FD-3 wire antenna. On top there will be my Diamond X200N dual bander for 2m/70cm.
Hopefully next weekend the weather is good enough to put up the new mast to the chimney!
Category: Home brew
Aligning the Elecraft K1
Last Saturday I visit my friend Mischa, PA1OKZ. I took my Elecraft K1. I still noticed no one replied my CQ’s when I used it and I also got weird results on Reversed Beacon Network. My idea was that transmit and receive frequency was not the same on the K1 and maybe the filters where not aligned properly.
It’s great fun to open up any case at Mischa’s. He is a very experienced guy when it comes to anything electronic and HF in particular. He also has a very impressive shack with a lot of professional tools such as a spectrum analyzer, transceiver testing unit etc.
When we attached the K1 to all the gear it became clear very quick why things weren’t as they should. Mischa aligned the band modules and low pass filters with much preciseness. Indeed the K1 wasn’t receiving and transmitting on the same frequency. So that was fixed quite quickly too. Now my beloved Elecraft K1 is putting out it’s maximum power of 7 watts on all bands, is aligned for best receiving performance and I might hear a reply on my CQ after all 🙂
Thanks Mischa for the great help (again)!
K6XX CW tuning indicator
After last holiday with my beloved Elecraft K1 I realized I need some kind of zero beat tuning indicator on it. I find it very hard to tell if I tuned zero beat or not by only hearing. Googling around I found the K6XX cw tuning indicator. When I watched the indicator at work I ordered it immediately!
Although I ordered it a week ago, I didn’t hear anything yet. But I’m not in a hurry…