Chinese Manual Kit ATU Off eBay

I saw this advertised when browsing on eBay and thought for £8.79p you can't go wrong at that price! Or so I thought, an ATU kit complete with box, stickers all the bits, it was a reasonable deal and if you messed up it was only a few pounds. 

It didn't take too long to arrive about 3 weeks from China, well packed and it was all there, the only problem of many to come, was there was no instructions!

Browsing across the internet I guessed there must be something and sure enough when looking at Tinker John's YouTube video W5CYF (who does very good instructions btw) . He had a link to some half Chinese/English  e manual which I duly printed off. Obviously Tinker John had had a go at building the Chinese kit as well and he got it working, but didn't seem too impressed by the instructions, I got the impression he more or less just built the kit via the pictures!

Well, together with the Tinker John video's and the instructional pictures, I tried to follow it all and eventually got there. But to be honest the circuit board was misaligned, the instructions for drilling in to the container were totally off and Winding the large torroid and twisting in the tapping points was an absolute pain (and normally I don't mind winding torroids). Finally, you needed and engineering degree to work out how the variable capacitor knobs were fitted on to their respective capacitors and I'll admit there was a lot of it was re jigging and re drilling!

In the end and to fair I just followed Tinker John's advice and looked at the pictures and the one schematic diagram and somehow got there . 

What surprised me was linking and connecting it all up to my W3DZZ and my antenna analyser and finding it actually worked!!

What surprised me even more, was that it worked reasonably well, enough to for me actually use my K2 and the Rockmites. So for £8.79 and if you're prepared to have a bit of fun and struggle, but if you're dedicated you will get there, I would buy the kit and have a bit of fun, after you can't go wrong for £8.79 or $11.32!

JJJElectronics QRP Transceiver 20/40M

Well, what can I say that's good about it, honestly very little. I paid nearly £85  for a ready built transceiver, calibrated and aligned, but I'm afraid it's probably the worst £85 I've spent on a radio. This probably through impatience and stupidity on my part, I should have waited , but as usual jumped in with both feet!(What I should have done is bought the kit for £35 instead).

A fairly simple face for a simple transceiver

I had to install an on/off switch and a jack for headphones. The initial set up was some female plugin wire setup for both the speaker and power which was quite frankly useless. On powering up the transceiver it drifts like mad and maybe (and I say this loosely) after 20 minutes of warm up it may steady a little. The only time you can hear any Morse on 20M is mid morning, as the rest of the time you are plagued with MW. Similarly in the evenings this happens on 40.

You can see where I added the on/off switch and the ear jack

But I suppose that's what you get when buying a QRP rig off eBay. It's not badly built and the guy knows what he's doing. But the design is appalling and when you see something as good as the QCX QRP rig that is priced at $49 it does make you wonder. The morale of the story is, steer well clear of JJJElectronics on eBay, don't make the mistake I did. 

Still, I have now got loads of spares for my next new QRP rig whatever that will be!

Rockmites and Other QRP Radio

Regulars to this blog will know I do like some QRP and during the lockdown in this country I was back working with the Rockmites. I have three at the moment 40,20 and 30 Meters with a fourth on the way.

 

 

The 20 and the 40 are in the same type of container as above and the 30 below is in a small metal tin.

 

Small Wonders Labs is no more as Dave Benson has retired and so the Rockmite works has been passed on to Rex Harper W1REX with his very successful website www.qrpme.com .

 

 I’m interested to see what has changed and if there are any improvements etc to the build process. I hanker after the build and the challenge of trying to get contacts with 0.5 watts. Sometimes you get lucky and have great QSO’s with these wonderful little radios and other times you’re sitting for hours trying to get a reply, swings and roundabouts!

 

I also have an OHR100 5 watt transceiver, a 5 watt 20/40 mts transceiver by JJJelectronics and of course the Elecraft K2.

 

The OHR 100

 

One final rig I’m waiting for which I am relishing the build is a QCX –plus by QRP Labs this is their follow up from the famous QCX transceiver that sold somewhere in the region of 10,000 kits, so was very successful.

 

The new QCX+

 

Another kit I’d like to have the challenge of a build is the K1 and I suspect in the future, I shall no doubt purchase and build one.

Invertd L W3DZZ 40/80 and Top Band Antenna

The W3DZZ Top band Inverted L is a great antenna if you want to get on top band but never thought it possible because you are limited to a small garden. It doesn’t have to be in a straight line, you can bend to your garden shape and it should still work pretty well.

The lengths are divided up in to 9.9 metres followed by the 7MHz trap and then 6.55 metres to the 3.5MHz trap and then another 8.54 metres. A good earth is needed with a ground rod, but preferably some ground radials would be even better.

As usual the higher the better for the antenna, but it will work at 15 or 20 feet if limited with height.

The traps are the simple coax fed, divided up to 20 turns for the 80 meter and 11 turns for the 40 meter on a 40 mm PVC water pipe former with simple solder connections as shown in the diagram.

Below are my traps which took about an hour to build.

Forty

Eighty

The top band length shown will give a 1:5:1 SWR at around 1.9MHz. If you are limited with height try to put in more ground radials if you can.

The picture below shows it going over original designer’s house, but as I said before you can bend it to how you want. I’m lucky enough to have it as a straight dipole, but last year I had it up as a horizontal L shape round the corner of the garden and it worked well.

Do experiment with this antenna, especially now it's summer and you can get it ready for those dark nights when top band and eighty start coming in to their own. Once set up correctly to your particular situation it will work really well for those lower bands!

Forgive the quality of the camera work, but hopefully you get the idea with the  W3DZZ  about 10 meters up!

This shows where the coax is split to the shack and the earth goes to the ground radials from the DX Commander

DX Commander & Rebuilding W3DZZ Top Bander

I don't know if you have come across this antenna before but information is widely available on the internet. Which is where I first saw it and then came across the youtube site of DX Commander. Cullum is a bit of an odd ball to say the least, but is very entertaining and knowledgeable about his product. So much so that he convinced me and having read the various favourable comments as well, I ordered the DX Commander Classic multi band antenna.

 Basically it's a vertical 10 metre fibre glass pole with a number of elements in parallel attached to it , in turn you connect the elements up to a number of ground plane radials by a series of aluminium plates. Very neat and tidy but simple, but then all the best ideas seem to be simple and it works very well. I have to say I'm pretty impressed and with the price. It's now raised up in my paddock and within a few days of erecting I've had contacts from all over Europe, across the pond and in to the far reaches of Russia. By the time the cycle picks up I'll have no problems getting VK and ZL.

I now have the W3DZZ up for 40 and 80 meters, the Hustler which is a sort of back up antenna which is the 6 bander and now the DX Commander which is setup for 10, 12, 14 and 30 meters. Regular readers will probably remember me mentioning the W3DZZ sister antenna (40, 80 and top band) that I experimented with back last year. Well I am in the process of rebuilding, I am using the two old coaxial traps (80 and (40) which I have reset and cleaned up and am just waiting for the new wiring for the element.

The whole length of the antenna is roughly 25 metres but obviously split up with the traps. I hope to use the ground radials from the DX Commander with the top band antenna and I'll stretch it out across my paddock. I've already setup and prepared some poles for the antenna to hang, so now it's just waiting for the postal service to drop the wiring off!



The picture above shows how it would be set up over a house, but I plan to have it raised up, but in my paddock. The picture below shows my previous attempt and how simple it is when completed. I think where I went wrong last time was that I didn't really plan how I was going to raise and keep up 25 metres of wire and two traps. It was always a bit fragile, it never felt solid, also the tuning could have been better. So this time I'll take my time and do things slowly!

Radio wise I still have the FTDX 5000MP and the FT 1000D as back up and of course the trusty K2 and a number of QRP rigs. Sometimes I get itchy and want to sell and buy, but in honesty the 5000 and the 1000 are superb rigs and really why bother?

Out with the Old and In With the New

It's been a while since my last post but unfortunately as usual work and other projects have got in the way of radio. Suffice to say conditions have not been good and the only stations I have been hearing lately are the Europeans and some Russians but otherwise fairly quiet. The delta loop antenna has been useful as it has a quiet receive but as I have said conditions have been very bad.

I have a new transceiver an FTDX5000MP . I saw it on eBay and the seller was asking a fair amount of money for it, but mentioned at the end of his description that if it was the right radio he would also be interested in a part exchange.

I wrote to him asking if he'd be interested in my FTDX9000MP, as I have decided after having the stroke it is now too big an heavy for what I need. Although a fabulous transceiver which normally I wouldn't part with, I feel now the time is right. It's such a heavy beast and takes up half the radio room! 

The seller, a chap from Wales was interested in the 9000 and asked for pics which I duly sent. In the evening he was round at my house having travelled the 110 miles to get to me in the late afternoon, I think he was keen!

His FTDX5000MP was mint having still got the plastic covers over the screens. After a cup of tea and some chatting we did the swap and within an hour he was on his way home with his 9000 and I was happy with my new 5000, all was done and dusted by supper!

The FTDX5000MP is a very nice rig and the size compared to the 9000 is much better for me. Should the need arise I will look for an amp but at the moment I;'m perfectly happy with the 200W. It also has the Station Monitor SM-5000 which incorporates the speakers which is a nice touch.

I will have a play and then do a full write up, but initial reports are good and this seems like an excellent radio. I will miss the FTDX9000MP but I've had some good time with it and now is the time to move on.

Farewell My Sweet!

The M0PLK Delta Loop Antenna

So at last the weather has turned for the better and I have been assembling the M0PLK Delta Loop which came from Poland. I’m amazed at the quality of various parts that make up the antenna, you don’t get this sort of quality with other local commercial antennas.

To start I had to make up the ladder line, I tried to follow the instructions which I managed to find on the website, but of course it was in Polish which was no  help to me. Instead I followed the pictures and I'm pretty certain all was OK, but for peace of mind I did a google translation at the end of the build just to be sure!

Each upright side of the Delta Loop is made from  aluminium tubular extendable poles and the cross section is 12 gauge wire, which is the same for the ladder line, nice and strong. There are excellent plastic connectors for the ladder line, 7 in total which are fairly easy to assemble.

Connecting the cross wire is again fairly easy, it has a couple of wire clamps with the wire circled over the top of the aluminium tubes and then clamped to fix it in position. The centre piece connects the two wires together with the ladder line. The bottom of each aluminium tube is connected by a single wire. The two aluminium poles are then clamped on a vee shaped piece of aluminium by six larger clamps.

The vee already has the balun attached to the aluminium plate, so it’s just a matter of fixing the ladder line to each side of the balun.



The pole are then extended and you add some jubilee clamps to each pole extension. Hay presto, the antenna is then completed!

I should have it assembled and up on its new 5 metre scaffold pole by the end of the week, subject to my work of course! I'll do another blog to see how it actually behaves when in use.

It will be interesting to compare with the homebrew, but I suspect "compare" will be a bit far fetched, but well see. The home brew has had a replacement fibre glass pole added as the one that was damaged was too far gone to repair.

Good news, I managed to assemble the antenna over Saturday and so far without serious testing it's sounding and looking pretty good. Certainly it knocks spots off the homebrew for receiving and transmitting. I did do a very quick comparison with the Hustler and initial results were pretty good. 

I'll do some more testing in the next few days and write up the results. As I write, the wind is starting to pick up again so I may well drop the antenna down for the rest of today. It's easy enough to do as its clamped to one of my scaffolding poles which is in the old sleeve cemented in the ground which was for the yagi. So it can just be lifted out and layed out on the ground for the moment.

It's certainly a lot tighter all round than the homebrew and the aluminium poles seem to be a lot stiffer than the fibre glass. As I mentioned earlier the quality is much better than you would get in the UK!

Delta Loop Set Back!

Calamity, the home brew Delta Loop Antenna has broken. With the high winds and the mini Blizzard we are suffering this morning, there must have been a strong gust and one of the fibre glass poles broke. 

Looks like it's broken clean in two which is a pity, but I have to admit I new it was pretty flimsy so it's not exactly unexpected. But the wind must have been reasonably strong for it to break a glass fibre pole!

I suspect somewhere I have a spare pole or certainly a section hidden away so I should be able to replace. But obviously I'll have to wait till the weather clears. In the meantime I just have the Hustler antenna to play with so all is not lost.

Talking of playing, I received an email from the guy I was hoping to do a deal for the new K3 but that has unfortunately fallen through. The chap decided he wanted to keep his radio. So With the FTDX 9000 MP currently in storage, I thought I'd have another play with it today and unpacked it. Of course once unpacked and set up I was wondering what an earth I was doing trying to swap it, it is such a beautiful radio, I must have been having a mad moment!

Delta Loop Progression

The new M0PLK Delta Loop antenna has arrived from Poland. I've yet to unpack it as the weather has been awful, very cold and damp, not really construction weather. So I'm waiting for something a little warmer so I can build the new antenna at my leisure and not freeze while doing so!

The home brew Delta Loop is working reasonably well, so I'm in no rush while this cold weather continues to build the new antenna when this home brew seems to be working OK. I say that, but QSOing around Europe the signals seem to be down when using the homebrew, it maybe a short or something else as we have had a few gales recently and the antenna is not that strong. However once I get the new one up I'll be able to compare notes and see how they both perform.

I saw an Orion 565 mk2 advertised on a website the other day, I always hankered after an Orion especially for CW purposes as they always seem to get rave reviews. The chap selling was also interested in a swap and as I have a few radios I could exchange, I wrote to him looking for a deal. Sadly though when I saw the Orion in pictures, it was not in such a good condition and needed a lot of cosmetic work to get it up to scratch, so sadly no deal was struck.

Interestingly on swaps, there's a chap who has a brand new K3s literally says it six weeks old. Again a Ten Tec or a K3s are something I've always wanted to own. This chap is interested in my FTDX 9000, so negotiations are currently taking place, if I can get a similar price I paid my brother in law for the FTDX, I'd be very happy with a brand new K3!

Further Notes on the Delta Loop

Waiting for the parts to arrive has taken some time, mainly I suppose because Christmas got in the way, but at last all the bits have arrived and I am able to continue the build with the Delta Loop.

Assembling all the parts on the main lawn also took some time but this was due to the weather, I wasn't going to rush when it's pouring with rain. Finally after a bit of patience we got there and the poles were fitted, the element wire pulled through and the ladder line measured and fitted and finally placed on a short piece of scaffold pole and up she went.

Just put up before dusk!

I must admit I wasn't expecting anything terrific first time, I hadn't tuned, played or tweaked in any way. But I tested on the FT1000  just to see if I could receive and get out. Well blow me, I got a result straight away. Measuring against the Hustler it was very quiet I almost thought it wasn't working at first it was so quiet!

A little closer

Using the Hustler I found a reasonably loud CW station then switched over to the Delta Loop. First impression was the background noise from a vertical like the Hustler was gone, although it was down an S point most probably due to it being so low off the ground.  I hadn't tuned or played with it in any way, so I could probably tweak it for better results plus I'd been using the auto tuner from the FT1000, not the manual Tokyo 400L. 
For a quick home brew job I was pretty impressed.
The next thing is to raise it a bit to give it some height, see if that improves it being down a S point to the Hustler.

Now I'll let you in to a little secret, a few days ago sitting talking to my Brother in Law over a glass of wine about delta loop antennas, we were mulling over M0PLK design and whether it was as good as everybody says. So in the spur of the slightly tipsy moment and after looking on the web at some Polish website 
I decided to buy an original M0PLK Delta Loop! The only place I could find one was at this website in Poland, well, M0PLK is polish! No other retail shop in Europe had them, Is that a good or bad sign?

£188 for the original M0PLK design, actually not a bad price, plus they have good reviews on Eham. So I'm expecting this in the New Year and I will compare notes with the homebrew to see how it performs. If its as quiet as this homebrew I shall be well impressed!