Amidon BalunLast night my good friend Fred, PA3YH was visiting me. We’ve made a 1:1 balun for my new multiband dipole. I did think Fred has a funny name for such a antenna: cat-mustache-antenna.
The design of the antenna is still in my head mainly. But soon I will make a drawing of it and I’ll build the thing. The balun I needed anyway, so that has been made!

multiband open dipoleLast weekend I’ve done some work on my multi band open dipole. Seems that the wires for 40m, 20m and 10m where all too long. That way the antenna was not resonant inside those bands but lower.
So last weekend I went on the roof with a cutting tool. After a few hours tweaking the results where promising. 40 and 10 where resonant inside the band! Made a nice QSO with Rick, G8KSM on 40m. Beautiful signal and Rick told me mine was too. But 20m still wasn’t resonant inside the band. So I went up again.
Then for the third time, the wire for 40m broke. Grrrmbl! Replaced the wire, but then the whole thing went fubar. Nothing was resonant anywhere…
A little frustrated I ripped everything off the roof and placed my good old single open dipole for 20m up. First I gotta figure out a good firm construction for this mulit band dipole. I’ve got some ideas already. Will post an update on this issue soon!

PSKLast weekend I’ve experimented with psk31 for the first time. Made a really simple setup. Connected my girlfriends laptop (the only Windows one in the house) directly to my FT-817 with 2 mini-jack cable (audio in and out) and the data-cable.
Run Ham Radio Deluxe. Could get it to work very well. After a few hours of searching for the right settings, I was able to receive some signals. Just couldn’t get the rig transmitting anything at all.
The next morning I’ve tried the same setup on my Mac. This time with Cocoamodem. Same story, receiving okay, transmitting no go.
Hmmm, looks like I need to do some more googling first.