I built an End Fed Half Wave antenna for 20 meters and spent a day making QRP contacts across Europe. #Hamradioantenna #QRP #hamradio #amateurradio Affiliate "I Love QRP" Facebook Group: / iloveqrp
Do not worry about the fear of CW. Chuck Adams (formally K7QO) said (paraphrasing here), if you know all the letters, numbers, some prosigns and punctuation and the QSO protocol - just get on the air! Does not matter if you can only do 5WPM or 15WPM. Just get on the air! The more you get on the air and make contacts, the better you will get.
great to see that the OE8FOX station (a mere 13km away from my QTH) is working with over 880 km away. As I currently don't have an HF Station this gives me somewhat of a viewpoint on how far away i could get QRP. 73 de OE8GKE
Love all your videos Walt and this one was great. Very well done. My $.02 on CW is just dive in and try it a little each day. You'll be amazed at how much you improve as you make contacts on CW. With your enthusiasm, you will be a great CW Op in no time. In any case, keep on keeping on and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family. 73, George K2WO
Oh man, thank you so much George it really means a lot to me. I really want to get somewhat decent at CW. Merry Christmas to you and your family as well! 73, Walt K4OGO
Glad you're gonna make it home for Christmas. Hope to make it back to Norfolk/Va Bch this summer to visit family and friends. Maybe get a chance to meet up on the beach some where. I now have both the same radios you have there. Love the G90. Take care and Merry Christmas. KZ5MLS.
CW!!! Yes, yes yes 👍👍👍 It's THE way to go to get the most fun from a QRP or low power setup. You'll be amazed at the distances you can cover with 5W. Safe travels, once again.
Great video! Hope to hear u out on the bands CW. You are 100% correct, just get out and do it......mistakes are just QSB at ur end hi hi!!! 73 de VK2AOE
Really, really love your videos Walt! They’re like a shot of Amateur Radio Adrenaline in the arm. Thanks again for sharing your experimentation and results with radios, antennas and locations! 👍📻⚡️ Cheers, WA7FLY
hi walt, great video as usual, and great results with that ant, especially the dx up north. great on the cw, always good to know another cw station might give me a call one day. my 37th year using mainly cw, and originally qrp cw 2watts for 5 years home brew, which quickly taught me all about ants. this of the letter as musical notes not dot and dashes and it becomes far easier. there are plenty of slow cw groups out there. travel well my friend, and look for you back on the beach state side. 73 brian. zl3xdj.
On the 20m band I have about 19m of wire, tuned by clipping, swr 1.05. Balun 1:9. I'm doing 9.8W on a small Chinese transceiver! I also use this radio to learn Morse code
Awesome Walt! Safe travels back to the states, brother. l have empathy for ur counterpoise dilemma, it's felt throughout the ham kingdom. I always research my problem and apply it to what I'm doing, cause the variables are endless. AND that's one of the things I love about this hobby ... each time you want to play, it's different ... something went wrong and u have to figure it out, cause u want to play radio. Ham radio is part of the hackerspace and that's why i'm here. There's a baseline of instructions and the rest u will need to figure out ... and you eventually will, right?
Yes, that WAS cool, ur 1st contact being with the DX Commander gent, timing cud not have been any better! Always enjoy ur vids & looking forward to what ur NEXT antenna might be when ur in (or back in?) SP land! 73 de WA4ELW in TN 🇺🇸🤓
Great job, Walt. I have a 20m EFHW, but haven't used it much. I'll need to use it for a POTA now. Safe travels. Maybe I'll get you park-to-park when your back home.
Nice video Walt.. I worked at getting my antenna up today but broke the unun as it got stuck in a tree branch. New one on order and be here next week.. then I have to wait on weather to get it up. thx for sharing. k0klb
Hoping to see more videos of your little red QRP radio. Are you thinking about buying an FT817 or 818? I would love to see what you do with one of those
Wow. Different antenna each week! Very ambitious undertaking. How long can you keep that up? Good luck with CW. I taught classes for SPARK and the Hampton Public Service group at the Virginia Air and Space Center right up to the day they removed the requirement! A few years later I moved and joined the Williamsburg Area Amateur Radio Club. A bunch of Extras decided CW would be good to learn and one of them had attended my Air and Space Center class and asked me to teach. I had weekly classes at my house for over 5 years until we took a Christmas break that turned into a Covid break!
I live in a HOA situation in Olde Towne Portsmouth so I have so many antenna ideas I want to explore, so to answer your first question on the “very ambitious” undertaking, I’m going to keep going until I’ve built and experimented with everything I can find.
Nice video! I’ll try this 5% counterpoise size. I’ve been using my 17 feet whip vertical with no counterpoise and it’s been working fine (flat 1.0 swr) but when I have to use a coil to reach the 40 meters I rarely get the swr below 1.5. This counterpoise thing might save me front using tuners 😂 73s
Leaving them all here, I’ve got a few more duty rotations left to go here. Fortunately I have a place to leave a lot of stuff here until I return. 73 and Merry Christmas! de K4OGO
@@COASTALWAVESWIRES That would be the other option I would have chosen! Next rotation, see if you can get a "D" size shipping container for your, (ahem) "personal / professional items" on the company dime. Worth a try, right? I know, I know, every MOU is different in that regard. 73s & Good DX, John
rembr, the ONLY way to get comfy with CW is to get on & have FUN with it (which I promise u will); & since I hve no idea hw "comfy" u may be, lemme just say, it really doesn't matter hw fast or slow one's speed may be, cuz there's always folks on at lotsa' diff speeds! & re cpying, as I'm sure u know, typical QSO's are fairly routine & predictable (which sure helps, knowing wat to expect, like RST, QTH, name, etc); if anything, we can always say "pse repeat," hi hi; es hw abt sending or cpying perfectly? Well, forget it, we all goof up! But with CW, it's sorta' nice in that, no matter hw gud or bad someone's fist is, we still usually know what they were trying to say; & it's the same with cpying, one can miss a lot but will often still understand another's xmission! Most importantly, don't overthink it & just have fun! Hpe to c u on the air sn; until then, Best 73 & Happy Holidays to u & urs...de WA4ELW in TN 🇺🇸 dit dit 😀
Yes you can amplify these radios, pretty much the same method as amplifying the (tr)uSDX which I’ve done. Here’s how: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jMWerusoL90.html
@@COASTALWAVESWIRES thank. I seen video and in there is checking the USDX QRP in spectrum analyzer and I see some spikes and many noise thts really like that??. Is ask because I want to buy one. Thank for answering
@@COASTALWAVESWIRES thanks I just bought the G90 and want to activate Banks Lake K-0259 soon I have a 49 Balun but would like a wife for 20 meters Trying to calculate wire length
nice.. only thing i can possibly suggest, is instead of putting the wire through the metal frame of the window is put the coax out through the window. the metal window frame undoubtably added to the antenna lol
@@COASTALWAVESWIRES ahh that's fine then.. I was going to say (from experience) metal window frames become great antennas :D - and so do screened in porch frames (worked vk on jt65 on one :D)
Are there special locations that have an exceptional ability to pick up radio signals from far away? I'd heard about this one in Rhode Island and was skeptical. I still am after listening to this video about the Chopmist Hill Listening Station. But I though you might be interesting in going there and checking it out. Set up a WSPR station and see the results. It's described in this video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JkTW--EFY8Y.html
Wow, I saw that video last week and was doing a deep dive on Chopmist Hill. What an interesting concept. I need to take a trip up there. Thanks for sharing!
