Reminder from N3EJL regarding summer events. RSVPs requested.

I just wanted to touch base with all of you regarding our July event, POTA Support your Parks Summer 2021 event, July 17-18, 2021; as we announced a couple weeks ago, we’re planning a POTA activation for Saturday, July 17. Our ad hoc POTA gurus, Matt, N3NWV and Dennis, KC3EJA will be leading us through another activation.

What I would like to know from our members is how many of you are interested in attending; if we get enough people, we thought it would be nice to try and incorporate a family picnic/ covered dish event to go along with it. So, please respond to this email by Wednesday, July 7 and let me know if you’re interested in doing this event. This way, we will have enough time to coordinate food items and such. I will also be announcing this on our club net on Monday, July 5, so please tune to the 146.85 repeater that evening. We will also have information on the club web site.

Also- a reminder that we are planning an antenna building project for August. Matt, N3NWV has put the information on the antenna and the cost on the web site. Depending on the number of people that sign up for this, the location will either be at Matt’s house, or possibly the 911 Center classroom in Ambridge.

As always, I thank you all for your support and ideas; I’d also like to thank Matt and Dennis for last Saturday’ POTA activation, and thanks to Dennis for filling the Chef du Jour position!

I hope we can get a good response to both these events; our club has come a long way in the last 7 months and it’s because of the team effort by everyone! Let’s have a great picnic/ operating event and a great antenna project day!

73 for now,

Dom, N3EJL

Reminder - POTA activation this weekend

Matt, N3NWV and Dennis, KC3EJA are planning a POTA activation this Saturday from 10AM to 2PM at Racoon Park, Roadside East Picnic Area.

Everyone is welcome to attend.

If there is interest, we'll make a few Field Day contacts as well.

Address-

Roadside East Picnic Area

815 Raccoon Park Rd, Clinton, PA 15026, USA

See you there!

N3NWV has planned an antenna build party!

The WW3AAA club project for summer 2021 will be an antenna build!

Many of us have gotten the portable operation bug, so the antenna we’ve chosen to build is an end-fed wire; specifically, an ½ wave antenna for the 40M band. An end-fed half WAVE (EFHW) has several positive features:

- It is resonant on every harmonic, not just odd or even. An EFHW cut for 40M will resonate on 20M, 15M, and 10M as well – typically with wide enough bandwidth that no antenna tuner is needed in operation.

- It requires very little in the way of counterpoise. The design of the kit does include a connection point for a dedicated counterpoise wire, but typically your coax is all that is required. Even when using the coax as the counterpoise, common mode current is minimal, and you are unlikely to experience any “RF in the shack” problems.

- Only one point of elevation is needed. An EFHW is easy to deploy using most any fiberglass mast or your nearest tree.

We will be building two components: the radiating element and a 49:1 UNUN.

The radiating element is an ~67 foot piece of wire. Common copper-clad aluminum speaker wire is used to keep both the cost and weight of the wire to a minimum. Construction is simple:

- Cut the wire to length

- Attach a 1” piece of 14AWG solid copper wire to one end with solder and heat-shrink tubing. This serves as the point of attachment to the UNUN

- Fold over ~1 foot of wire at the far end and secure this section with heat-shrink tubing. This provides a loop for attachment to a rope or mast for deployment. The folded over section also helps the tuning on 15M.

The completed wire looks something like this:

The end of a ½ wave radiator is a very high impedance; 2500 ohms or so. To connect this to our 50-ohm coax and radio we will require an impedance transformer which most hams refer to as an UNUN (unbalanced-to-unbalanced). The circuit diagram for our UNUN looks like this (ignore the parts list – it’s for a seriously QRO version):

And the finished product looks a little like this when you’re done (mine has a BNC – the club kit has an SO-239. Also we’ll be adding a binding post for the GND connection as a “just in case”):

The whole thing is a very easy build. Don’t worry if you’re not the best at soldering. These are easy to access and not too sensitive to over-heating. Plus, there will be gurus on hand should you need an extra set of fingers. All the required parts come in the kit, and we’re planning a “build party” so that you don’t need to have any tools or experience to get it assembled. Date of the party is TBD but we’re targeting August so that we have a club event for every month while there are no meetings.

Kits are $20. You can wait to pay for it until you pick it up, either at the build party or if you can’t attend that then by arrangement to meet up with Matt-N3NWV somewhere. You just need to drop an email to N3NWV at mattheere@hotmail.com or contact him on the 146.85 repeater and let him know that you will want one of the kits.