So
after finishing up most of my projects a few days ago¡ I
really needed something to do¡ so I put on the drawing
board¡ a 100w automatic tuner that can work with the uBITx
(intended to go inside the same case actually) that provides
power, SWR, band memory for same antennas, low power tune,
bypass, etc. all in a kit form for about $30.? I¡¯m
prototyping the think now and will work on the
tuning/communications code (to integrate into the Raduino)
shortly.? I¡¯ve contacted a few of you off-channel to work
out some protocol/communication issues¡? but Stay tuned
(double play on words there)! ???
?
?
Dr.
William
J. Schmidt - K9HZ J68HZ 8P6HK ZF2HZ PJ4/K9HZ VP5/K9HZ
PJ2/K9HZ
?
Owner
- Operator
Big
Signal Ranch ¨C K9ZC
Staunton,
Illinois
?
Owner
¨C Operator
Villa
Grand Piton ¨C J68HZ
Soufriere,
St. Lucia W.I.
Rent
it:
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?
?
email:?
bill@...
?
?
Good
pickups!
?
So
the ALE (automatic link establishment) crowd, much like the
WINLINK crowd, tend to use LOTS of bands....and thus they
find ways to make their antenna systems work on mulltiple
bands.? ?Here are some of the most popular ways:
?
1.?
?Fan Dipoles (time honored technique of tying multiple
dipoles together at the CENTER, and the energy tends to go
to the correct one, since all the others present much higher
impedances.? ?The wires "fan" out with usually wooden
spreaders at the? end and some string involved to keep them
somewhat separate.? ?Been there done that many times, my
college ham club has a 3-band unit up on the top of an 11
story building rightnow that I built for them.? ?Build for
yourself, dirt cheap.?
?
2.?
Auto-tuners? --- everyone makes these now and many can tune
as soon as they see RF, or even return to previous settings
that were memorized.? ?LDG,? and others.? ?Low power
versions for $100? ?End fed wire to balanced line fed
dipoles---they work with lots of different kinds of wire.?
?
3.?
Inherently multiband antennas:? ?example, full wavelength
loops.? ?Build for yourself.? ?
?
4.?
Carefully tuned end-fed transformer-fed antennas --- there
are now several of these on the market and they give an
acceptable SWR on mulltiple harmonically related bands.?
?Tend to be close to $100
?
5.?
(the one I dislike)? resistively terminated folded dipoles
--- these use a resistor to make up for what a folded dipole
can't create and give an SWR that is "acceptable" literally
across EVERY FREQUENCY in a decade of frequencies.? ?3-30
MHz.? ?The tradeoff is loss, as much as 10 db at times.? And
they generally are pricey.
?
6.?
There are some multi-band vertical antennas on the market
that are basically vertical fan dipoles, but scrunched up in
a nice package.? ?An elderly ham in my city has one, 32 feet
tall....a gang of us put it up and doggone it does from from
40 meters all the way through 6 meters
?
?
And
there are probably many more....
?
Gordon
An
automatic tuner protects the rig during TX.? If the SWR
is bad during TX, some of the signal coming out of the
transmitter is reflected by the antenna back into the
radio where it can cause damage.
That said, RX is optimized by a properly tuned antenna,
but some good amount of signal still makes into the
radio when receiving, even when the antenna is not
perfect.
So I assume Doc G? is scanning for radio traffic, and
then when he finds some if he wants to transmit he does
something about his SWR for that frequency.
K9HZ