[Lowfer] AH QRT this weekend. High Q coil wound, new tophat in works.

[lowfer@mailman.qth.net]

LOWfers,MEDfers,
   I have built the LEK "simple transmitter" on a Radio Shack "Experimenter 
Board" so it won't be long til I join the others on 185+ KHz.  As for 1694.5 
KHz  "AH" beacon, I built a new low Q inducter on a 5 gallon Home Depot 
bucket using Ralph's (W5JGV's) example on his website.  I'm not as nimble 
fingered as he; it took me as long to wind 45 turns as for him to wind over 
twice as many!  Using a Boonton 260A Q Meter, I found that the close spaced 
turns of insulated 14 guage copper wire on the bucket had a very high Q.   
The 25 turn tap is about 700 uF, the 35 turn tap is about 950 uF and the 45 
turn tap is about 1200 uF.  The good news- the Q is around 250 or better at 
frequencies from 1500 KHz to 400 KHz using the Boonton's variable capacitance 
which ranges from about 30 pF to 450 pF.  In contrast, my previous coil(s) 
using 22 guage insulated wire wound on 1 1/4 inch diameter white PV pipe had 
a Q of around 100.  To resonnate the MEDfer antenna  on 1802 KHz, which I did 
today, I need about 600 uF of inductance which is only 19 3/4 turns of the 
bucket coil.  I needed two of the 1 1/4 inch inductors, 34 inches total-  19" 
and 15" inch coils in series, for the same 600 uF.  Using that 600 uF figure, 
I see my MEDfer antenna has a rectance of about 13 pF.  The MEDfer antenna, 
in its present incarnation, is the bottom section and top section (80M coil 
and whip) of an old Hustler trap vertical.  It's too long right now, 12' 6" 
with the tophat at 9' 6" and the 80M coil and whip above the tophat.   I'm 
going to improve the tophat and grew it down to size before starting the AH 
beacon again.  In the meantime, I hope to run some 160M tests with the over 
30 people who copied my 15 mw 160M beacon two weeks ago.  The 12' 6" antenna 
should be about 20 dB down from my 160M  quarter wave vertical. Preliminary 
tests show the 160M 20 mw signal on the MEDfer antenna is at least 20 db down 
from the quarter wave vertical, just barely copiable at 10 miles and 14 miles 
from here. I will build a little amp for the 2N2222 oscillator to bring the 
power up to around 100 mw and see how many can copy my 1 mw erp 160M signal.  
Then I'll get the MEDfer and LOWfer beacons running, using QRSS.
Doug W0AH near Pikes Peak CO