I wound T-1, for 80m, last week. When I finished I thought:

(1) *!#@ I'm glad that's over
(2) I hope I have the right amount of turns on Secondary 3
(3) *!#@ I'm glad that's over
(4) *!#@ how am I supposed to stuff an octopus like that into those itty bitty holes
(5) *!#@ I'm glad that's over

Then I just put it on the bench and walked away. I can generally tell when things aren't going to go well if I proceed as is and it's time to let things lie for a bit.

Fast forward to this evening, I decided to tackle the octopus from hell. After 30 minutes of dicking around with the leads I finally put some Q-dope on each section and squished the windings together. It's a bit messy but it worked. Now the octopus had rigor-mortis so putting the leads into the holes should be a piece of cake. Uh... no... more like *!#@ this is never going to work cake.?

But I kept working on it. Soon after I started I heard a car drive up :o/ My ex-wife had arrived to take care of her horses. No warning... just randomly showed up, shattering the otherwise peaceful silence of a crisp fall evening. Don't get me wrong, I get along with her ok, but she's an ex for a reason. The horses are here because I like horses, they needed a place to stay, and they don't bother me. Unlike her... one of life's little unintended consequences.?

So there I am, standing at the bench, magnifying visor on, muttering only marginally understandable English, staring intently into what can only be described as a portal to hell itself, and the ex walked in the house. The first layer of protection had been breached. No worries. I've got this. I turned "ignore my surroundings" mode up to 10, nearly snapping the shaft on the control. She walked past me, then turned around, leaned under so she is in my field of view, violently crashing through all of the mental layers of protection that I had put up,?and says -Hi! I'm here... *!#@ really... Asteroids crashing into planets are more subtle... I never realized that you had arrived.

It would be more dramatic if I said that of the leads were in the holes and her attention mongering made me jump and pull them all out but no... I wasn't having any success. I flipped my visor up, acknowledged that she had just broken my concentration, and went back to muttering and poking and prodding the gates of hell itself. She continued on with her business until, eventually, I heard the door close. Within a few seconds the leads started falling into the holes <--- big time drama right there. Ok so they actually didn't fall into the holes but, only thru divine intervention I'm sure, the leads started to line up and eventually all were in the holes and T-1 was down on the board. The portal to hell closed and all of satan's demons swirled into the hole like so much poo in a toilet.

By what means did T-1 save my life? While I would never consider having my ex in my life as anything but a minor annoyance, the fact that she intentionally interrupted what was obviously a tedious and mind numbing process reminded me of why she's an ex.?

try making the flying leads much longer, I discovered it allows more room for error when your struggling to get all the lead ends into their correct holes.

-Justin N2TOH

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So Mike, other then that, how did your day go?

I purchased an 80 meter kit and have not received it as yet but it's on its way.? I decided some time ago to use #30 wire so there would be no over lapse. My wire is RED.? I'm thinking now of ordering some #30 GREEN.? That way the? Secondary 3 would be RED, then the 5 turn windings on each side of the big winding would be green and then the other small winding would be between the two green windings and be red.? Maybe that would aid in installation identification.? I think nailing down the windings on the core with Q Dope makes sense too.? I'm convinced one must ring out the final installation with an ohmmeter to make sure each wire is in its correct hole.? Then too, it will check to see if solder actually burned the insulation off the wire.? I've also decided to find the center of the wire used for the main winding #3 and then start wind one side of the winding with one half the wire clockwise and then the other half counterclockwise.? That way you only have to pull half the wire through the donut hole on each pass.? As a crutch, I'm going to have a bottle of Jack Daniels on the workbench. While doing this, hope the XYL doesn't enter my shack and ask something like, "Remember that tree we had in our front yard of our old house we lived in 40 years ago?? Was that an Elm or Oak tree?"? Of course, we are talking about the 80 meter version QCX which has that large turns #3 winding on T1.?

Smoke Solder,

Lee, w0vt

I wound T-1, for 80m, last week. When I finished I thought:

(1) *!#@ I'm glad that's over
(2) I hope I have the right amount of turns on Secondary 3
(3) *!#@ I'm glad that's over
(4) *!#@ how am I supposed to stuff an octopus like that into those itty bitty holes
(5) *!#@ I'm glad that's over

Then I just put it on the bench and walked away. I can generally tell when things aren't going to go well if I proceed as is and it's time to let things lie for a bit.

Fast forward to this evening, I decided to tackle the octopus from hell. After 30 minutes of dicking around with the leads I finally put some Q-dope on each section and squished the windings together. It's a bit messy but it worked. Now the octopus had rigor-mortis so putting the leads into the holes should be a piece of cake. Uh... no... more like *!#@ this is never going to work cake.?

But I kept working on it. Soon after I started I heard a car drive up :o/ My ex-wife had arrived to take care of her horses. No warning... just randomly showed up, shattering the otherwise peaceful silence of a crisp fall evening. Don't get me wrong, I get along with her ok, but she's an ex for a reason. The horses are here because I like horses, they needed a place to stay, and they don't bother me. Unlike her... one of life's little unintended consequences.?

So there I am, standing at the bench, magnifying visor on, muttering only marginally understandable English, staring intently into what can only be described as a portal to hell itself, and the ex walked in the house. The first layer of protection had been breached. No worries. I've got this. I turned "ignore my surroundings" mode up to 10, nearly snapping the shaft on the control. She walked past me, then turned around, leaned under so she is in my field of view, violently crashing through all of the mental layers of protection that I had put up,?and says -Hi! I'm here... *!#@ really... Asteroids crashing into planets are more subtle... I never realized that you had arrived.

It would be more dramatic if I said that of the leads were in the holes and her attention mongering made me jump and pull them all out but no... I wasn't having any success. I flipped my visor up, acknowledged that she had just broken my concentration, and went back to muttering and poking and prodding the gates of hell itself. She continued on with her business until, eventually, I heard the door close. Within a few seconds the leads started falling into the holes <--- big time drama right there. Ok so they actually didn't fall into the holes but, only thru divine intervention I'm sure, the leads started to line up and eventually all were in the holes and T-1 was down on the board. The portal to hell closed and all of satan's demons swirled into the hole like so much poo in a toilet.

By what means did T-1 save my life? While I would never consider having my ex in my life as anything but a minor annoyance, the fact that she intentionally interrupted what was obviously a tedious and mind numbing process reminded me of why she's an ex.?

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Lol, my day was stellar. I finally put T1 to rest. I'm going to be the bearer of bad news though. I used 30AWG magnet wire (red) because when I wound it the first time, I came up about 4T short, and it still had overlap. I wind my coils tight and make sure they are pressed down on all four sides so it wasn't sloppy winding. I counted turns as I unwound it and secondary 3 had all 68T. I just couldn't finish with the wire I had left. The wire that came with the kit was too short. Hans told me 30 AWG would work with no issues so I used that.

I followed the winding directions and wound it one one big coil with loops at each change. I don't know if I'll do it that way again. Generally speaking I have no problem with winding coils in the proper direction.

There has been one little problem crop up. My Yaesu FT-1000MP Mark V didn't have any RF output on CW but full power on AM. It's been a while since I've used CW on that rig. It turned out I needed to enable VOX to get power in CW mode. Reading the manual is a good rust remover. There are too many buttons on that rig. ?