[Lowfer] "Is this thing on?"

[Jim]

Well, so far I've had no reception reports on DIR. It is getting to the point 
where I have to wonder if I'm even getting out of my back yard.

I've got a T antenna with 30 feet across the top and 30 feet down. That's fed 
into a loading coil and then below that is a tapped coil to help match things 
up. The tapped coil uses a 5 gallon bucket as a form and the xmitter is in a 
separate water-tight enclosure inside it. That is mounted on a post at one 
corner of my dog pen (which is about 50 feet by 100 feet). The pen uses 
welded wire and is grounded at several points (because I use to use an 
electric fence on the inside of it). I'm connected to it for ground and can't 
help but think it's servering at least respectably as a ground plane.

Unfortunately at this point I really don't have a way to accurately determine 
the inductance of the loading coil, the inductance of the matching coil, or 
the feed point impedance of the antenna at the frequency of operation.

For optimizing things, I've used field strength measurements made by 
connecting my o'scope to my PA0RDT active whip antenna (which is about 50 
feet from the xmitter antenna). I have seen a significant increase in field 
strength from where I started, but at this point I don't see a way to easily 
squeeze any more out of it. (I've gone from around 10 mV peak-to-peak on the 
o'scope a few weeks ago when I first started to up over a half volt now. And 
I've gotten to where I drop the operating voltage a bit when I'm tuning to 
make sure I don't badly overload the miniwhip.)

But DIR is pretty much on 24x7 now and I'd appreciate reports, either positive 
or negative, from anyone who tries to give a listen. It's around 172.945 kHz 
(+/- a Hz or two) and being keyed at QRSS-30.

My biggest problem is finding time to mess with things, but right now my order 
of priorities are:

1. Finish building a settable divider that will let me divide my DSS VFO down 
to the watering hole frequency.
2. Build something that will let me at least get a ballpark estimate of 
feedpoint impedance at the actual operating frequency.
3. Build an RF current meter.
4. Rig up a way to measure inductance and capacitance at the actual operating 
frequency. (Actually I'm thinking I may be able to combine this with #2 if I 
think it through.)

I'm hoping I'll have time to finish #1 this weekend. (But I said the same 
thing last week and it didn't happen, so who knows....)

I know I've got a lot of work to do before things are optimized, but I was 
hoping to at least be getting out to some extent by this point.

On the discussion about "grabbers", maybe those of us operating xmitters 
should look at some kind of scheduled rotation to turn off our beacon for a 
night or two and grab some captures to see what's out there. A lot of times 
I'm traveling on business during the week, so I can't tinker with things. But 
just about any weekend I can power down the xmitter and fire up the receiver 
for some captures.

73 de
Jim W4JBM

Receiver - Ten Tec RX320D
Antenna - Butternut Vertical (SW) and mini-whip (LF)
Location - Bowdon Junction, GA  USA (33.6581,-85.1249 EM73)

http://www.hamuniverse.com/w4jbm/

"With a soldering iron in one hand, a schematic in the other, and a puzzled 
look on his face..."

Working the world from the New Dog Iron Ranch!