Ham Radio Field Day, Portable Antenna Testing
Adam Curry broadcasts from a mobile Airstream setup in the Texas woods to participate in Ham Radio Field Day. He describes testing various portable antennas, including a 63-foot wire and a magnetic loop, while operating at 5 watts. John C. Dvorak discusses the technology behind small fractal antennas used for HDTV reception.
ham radio· field day· hf band· fractal antenna· antenna tuning· qrp
00:00 Just stop there for a second. Is that not the definition of bigotry? Adam Curry, John C. DeVorah. And Sunday June 26th 2016 and time once again for your Gitmo Nation media assassination episode 837! This is no agenda Calling CQ field day as one Bravo Sierra tango x-ray and rolling QRP is broadcasting live from the drone star state in the woods to my region 6 in the morning everybody I'm Adam Curry and from northern Silicon Valley where I am calling for a Cal exit Collects it collects. Yeah, you threw me off. It was good collects it
00:46 Oh, coming to you from the airstream of consciousness once again John. Yes! You're out in the woods and you sent... you tweeted a picture of your fabulous well-organized rig? Yes I did It looked like what they call a kludge. oh no that's that's the small batch studio That's uh..the podcast device. That's something else. Yeah, that's something else i'm working on No it's been fantastic Why you'll day field day, baby when all the ham radio operators go out into the field and try to make contacts? Being in that's what you were doing. That's a real reason you went out there Yeah, that's the real read also I needed to just get away just get away sure for a CQ fest yeah This is a nice one because this is the sh TF exercise Okay, no shit hits the fan
01:40 So the idea is you go out with minimal stuff, battery power and you try to make as many contacts as possible. I really like the basics so i'm just 5 watts...5 watts and I had all these different antennas to try out portable antennas. Magnetic loop, I've got an Enfed ZEPP And then of course the one that always works Is 63 feet of wire hung in the tree It's unbelievable I know you're impressed. I know it so you wait how many feet? 63 feet on the antenna side and another about 30 feet 30 feet as the Is this tuned No, it's cut to a certain length And then you have a tuner in this rig that I have and then it'll tune it'll correct the impedance
02:34 Okay, and it's it's fantastic. I love HF You have no idea how to work one of the work but sometimes it just works well. It's like these antennas That they've come out with that I have an antenna on my roof for a To pick up two VHF signals for HDTV yeah actually most of our new HF band except for one yeah and So it's on the roof, it's huge. And it gets everything Yeah but that's all line of sight Yeah thats all line of sight so I have a... there is these little freaky little flat things
03:20 That are like I don't know if there's a it fits What the technology is inside, but it's uh there was an antenna in there But it's just the cheesiest little 10 buck piece of crap. Yeah flat yeah you got piece of plastic for those frequencies You don't need much very small very small, but I have the metal ones I had effect I had a in-house before I put stuff on the roof. I had the antenna in the house and The old-fashioned one and these are called a lot of these are fractal antennas It's probably a quad array or something of that sort in the hot the old one But this little plastic thing which is ten bucks. It's a fractal antenna it's very small, and it's flat and its plastic and I guess there's some wire inside like
04:08 Maybe a lot who knows it gets better reception than anything that's going through five walls Yeah, I know the craziest antennas work my magnetic loop antenna You know which it's just a small loop you sit on the chair and you tune it with your right hand while you're Doing something else with your left And it can work very well, but the conditions weren't so good. So I just flung the wire up there and even this morning I got up at 630, Florida, Virginia New York, New Jersey... It was a lot of fun And thank you so much for getting me into this fabulous hobby, John C. Dvorak." I'm sorry! No no not at all Not at all i'm very happy it makes me feel... Well you've gone further than anyone else that i've turned on to It makes me feel very good You like it? Oh you're a tinkerer Yeah yeah I am
05:02 Alright, so let's get started. Yes good idea I will point out one thing something could happen during this broadcast Of all the gear I had then I had my checklist somehow the clamp for the mic boom didn't make it Didn't make it intact or you just forgot to pack it? It didn't get packed. At least I have not been able to find it so this morning after the show yeah, but no So I have the boom But you can't know how are you gonna make the boom in the mic work so I had a tripod and a gaffer tape And if it falls down you'll know
