After a 15 or so year lapse in operating amateur radio, I'm finally putting a new station on the air.  This will be my first "real" operation from our New Hampshire location.  One of the fun things about amateur radio is it evolves to your changing interests.  While Brittany is interested in contesting and DX, I'm interested in antennas, homebrew equipment, and the world above 50Mhz. 

12/26/07 -- A new experimental antenna is up it is a six element collinear array.  Basically this is similar to a stacked extended double zepp antenna.  Preliminary results seem to indicate that it has a 10 - 12 db increase in received signal strength over the loop, towards the west.  most California stations are at least two S units higher on the collinear over the loop.  You can look at the eznec results and layout of it here:  20m_stacked_collinear, and if your really interested, here is the eznec model:  20m_stacked_collinear.EZ

12/16/07 -- It has been some time since this was updated, so here is an update.  The shack was completely dismantled to remodel the basement.  Now that the remodel is complete the shack has been reassembled inside the heater room next to the boiler.  Not great, but at least it is a shack. 

1/6/07 -- New Tuner.  Now that we had the potential for higher power, we needed a new tuner!  The first try was with the MFJ-989.  This let me test the new amp with full drive.  Key down on our favorite frequency 3.795 yielded 1200 watts output.  Using the new tuner, I tested all the bands for output, everything was good....almost!  Getting a match on 160 meters was quite a challenge with this new tuner.  The MFJ 949 was easy to match, but the MFJ-989 was much harder.  Finally getting a good match, I went through the 160 meter test.  At about 500 watts, the tuner started arching.  Now remember, this is into our large loop, there should be plenty of wire out there!   Back to HRO, to upgrade tuner to the Ameritron ATR-30.  Now, 1000 watts, and no arching on 160 meters!

1/5/07 -- QRO.  I had started the solid state amplifier (project 3), but this is taking a long time to put together.  We wanted to have a little more power to the antenna, so I started watching ebay.  It's a very scary thing to buy electronics on ebay, you never know what you are getting.  I was pretty sure that I wanted something simple, so that if something was wrong, I could actually have a chance of fixing it.  I also wanted something with less expensive tubes, replacing a $900 tube would not be fun.   It seemed that an amp based on the 3-500Z would be a good choice.  Even better, a Heathkit since you get all the assembly details, and there are a bunch of them floating around still today.  To get some nice power, it seems that a pair of 3-500Z's would be the best choice.  This left me to a narrow choice.  I kept seeing the heathkit the SB220's and the TL-922's going anywhere from $600 to $1000 or more; people were snapping them up right and left.   Along came an obscure amp that I hade never heard of.  The description was limited, and the picture even worse.  After some research on the net, it turned out to be an Amp Supply Co. LK500.  Twin3-500Z's.  The price was right, and we got the amp here for a grand total of $500.  It looked like hell, inside and out was dirty, greasy and grimy.  A few hours of clean up (and wiring a 220 circuit), and it was time to try it out.   We flipped the switch, applied a bit of drive (10 watts), tuned it up, and had a nice 200 watt output.  A little more drive, and we were at 300.  Time to stop, we're at the limit of the antenna tuner!  

12/25/06 -- Christmas.  It was Christmas in the ham radio world for Brittany, along with getting her Technician license on the 14th (KB1OGL), she got a Yeasu FT-817 to go with it.  This brings QRP VHF and UHF all mode capability to the station.  Now all we need are some VHF & UHF beams to go along with it....and towers, and rotators...

12/10/06 -- Getting on 2 meters.  Along with our initial station, I had a Kenwood TM-G707, but it was not working.  Of all things to go wrong, the speaker went bad!  Finding out the problem, and replacing the speaker was a strange trouble shooting effort, but it is finally running.  We built a 1/4 wave 2 meter vertical out of coat hangers and put it on top of the chimney.   Seems to work OK for the repeaters.

11/01/06 -- Our initial station.  This station is a somewhat modest station, but has served us very well.  We have worked various EU dx, as well as many islands and Africa consistently.  Although not high power, the large loop antenna seems to provide good gain.  Most of our operation has been on 80 meters, but 20 meters seems to work well for us also.

• Kenwood TS-680s

• MFJ949E antenna tuner

• Large horizontal loop #1