[AReU] Thursday BARS Meeting

[w4tas]

Hope everyone plans to come to the BARS meeting this Thursday. 
I'm going to have the coffee and donuts ready when you come in 
the door. 

Hope to see you folks there. 

The Brandon Amateur Radio Society 10 meter round table tonight 
was of high quality if not the highest quantity. The round table takes 
place every Tuesday evening on 28.365 MHz USB. We had 5 folks 
"chewing the fat". There was me of course (W4TAS), J. D. (WW4JAY), 
Ted (N4YT), Jake (N3FU) and Mike (W4UOO). The round table lasted 
until 9:45 pm and N4YT did some antenna comparisons with J. D. up 
in Land O Lakes. His beam seemed to perform better that his Gap 
vertical on 10 meters. It could have been that they were too close for 
a vertical to work well. 

For the first 10 minutes Mike (W4UOO) and I discussed our antenna 
systems for the AO40 satellite. Mike thinks that he has solved his 
problem with his uplink antennas now and should have a much 
better signal. I experimented with a new "patch" antenna design. 
I had given up after the last fiasco but this one worked GREAT!!!
It had about the same gain as the 3 turn helix plus it completly 
eliminated the cross modulation that I had with the helix. I believe 
the difference is in the frequency selectivity of the patch vs the 
helix. The helix is really broad banded where as the patch is very 
sharp. There is a tuning adjustment on this patch that will move the 
resonant frequency up and down the band about 200 MHz. 

I will bring the instructions for building the successful patch to 
the meeting. I will have several copies for those that are interested. 

CU there, 

73

Tony