Great Fan Dipole Diagram

This is a nice fan dipole drawing from YC8PVU. I have built many of these over the years with different band combinations. You can add 160, WARC, & 6m using same concept. Nice to have muitiband antenna that doesn't require an antenna tuner and automatically bandswitches. These work great!



The 30mm (a little over 1") separation at the feed points is good, but I try to keep the distant ends about 6" apart per band. I've found this helps minimize coupling that causes your wire length measurements to be a little off. Cut your wire...s about 5% longer than the typical dipole formula, to give yourself some tuning range. Tune the lowest band wires first, and work your way up to the highest bands. Don't solder the wire wrap at the distant ends (where it comes through the insulator and wraps back around and twists onto itself to secure it) until you're finished. Just twist and pull back up for testing. You'll have to tune the whole antenna system about twice because there is a little interaction between bands, but when you're finished, it's a killer and simple setup. I've even put this in the attic of a friend's house by stabling it to the rafters nearest the roof, and 'zig-zagging' the low band wires (80 m) just to get is all up there. Tuned it up, and he was working DX with 100w like mad. Was a good answer for him, because he couldn't have any outside antennas!

Dave
www.WB4IUY.net

WB4IUY's Ham Shack - Dave Hockaday - My Ham Shack

WB4IUY's Ham Shack on MyHamShack.com. See loads of ham radio stations from around the world, and add pics of your own.

ARRL September VHF QSO Party, 9/10/11-9/12/11

Playing around on the ARRL VHF QSO Party this weekend, primarily on 2m & 6m SSB. It runs from 1800 UTC Saturday and ends 0300 UTC Monday (September 10-12, 2011). Not really making a serious effort, but it's neat to pick up a few new grids and help out with those that are making an effort to pack in a good score. Nice to see activity on 2m SSB! You can see more about it at: http://www.arrl.org/september-vhf-qso-party

It's about 11:30pm local time, Saturday night, and I'm still hearing a few signals on the band.

Updates:

- I just worked W8ZN on 144.195 & 50.220 at abt 11:02pm EST FM05 FM19
- Worked KO4YC on 50.220 & 144.230 , FM05 FM17
- Worked K3TUF on 50.150 & 144.210 FN10 <-> FM05 NC to PA on 2m at 11:50pm EST. Not bad for a dead band!
- Worked K4LY on 50.190 & 144.187 FM05 <-> EM85
- Worked KN4SM on 50.190 & 144.187 FM05 <-> FM16
- Worked W3SO on 144.2128 & 50.163 FM05 NC <-> FN00 PA, not bad!
- Worked W4IY on 50140.0 & 144.950 FM05 <-> FM08


Dave WB4IUY
www.WB4IUY.net

LX-DXpedition on the air until 9/6

A group from the Low Land DXpedition Team are active in Luxembourg from Aug 30th through Sept 6th. I just worked LX/PA3EWP Ron on the LX-DXpedition, on 10.142.93 mhz 30m RTTY. It was an easy work with 50 watts into a non-resonant 40m sloper & tuner. They're on several bands and modes for the next few days, so it'll be fun trying to work them. They're using a new logging system powered by the CQFriends webserver.

Update: DX 10.104.04 LX/PA3EWP CW @ 2:02Z on 9/3/11. Nice sig into NC! Easy w/50w on 40m sloper & tuner

Update 2: DX 18083.04 LX/PA7FM . Worked on 80m Dipole w/tuner. Need to put up WARC antennas!

You can find out more about this DXpedition at www.CQFriends.com . See you on the bands!

Dave WB4IUY
www.WB4IUY.net

The CFARS FREE Hamfest was Saturday, 7/6/11

The CFARS hamfest was Saturday, Aug 6th, in Fayetteville NC. There was no admission charge and no fee for tables. Tailgating is permitted, if you could take the heat. Their website is http://www.CFARSNC.org.

There was a test session on site, walk-in's were accepted, and you needed to be there at 9am (testing at 9:30). If you were selling, you could get in as early as 6:30 am to set up. General admission was from 8am until 12-noon.

The site was in the Reeves Auditorium on the campus of the Methodist University, Hwy 401 North (5400 Ramsey Street, Fayetteville). The test session was in the Science building (look for the building with the tall tower behind Reeves Auditorium).

My oldest son, Chris KF4DBX, and I got up at 4am, pulled out at 4:30am, and headed that way. It was only about 65 miles from my home location. The raind was coming down so hard I could barely see the lines on the hiway, and I was worried about unloading at the site. We stopped along the way for breakfast, and headed onward. By the time we arrived, and weather had cleard and all was well. The swapmeet area was air conditioned, as was the test session site. Chris upgraded his call to General class, we sold a bit of goodies, picked up some goodies, and had a great time. We're ooking forward to next year, already!

There are a few pics on my facebook page HERE .

Dave WB4IUY
www.WB4IUY.net