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I watched some YouTube videos, and I used an online calculator to make two Slim Jim roll up J Poles. I got good signal reports on both as I was able to hit the repeaters. SUCESS!!!!!
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"I will leave when I have your wounded." MAJ Kelly
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Originally Posted By Shootindave: Making some fathers day trinkets. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/123862/IMG_0138_jpeg-3240641.JPG View Quote What are those other connectors called? |
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“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.” Ronald Reagan
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Wago lever connectors
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“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.” Ronald Reagan
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Originally Posted By TimeOnTarget: I watched some YouTube videos, and I used an online calculator to make two Slim Jim roll up J Poles. I got good signal reports on both as I was able to hit the repeaters. SUCESS!!!!! https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/432675/IMG_6459_jpeg-3241712.JPG https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/432675/IMG_6461_jpeg-3241713.JPG https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/432675/IMG_6451_jpeg-3241714.JPG View Quote |
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Test run of mobile install seems to work, so I ordered everything I think I need to make it permanent.
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Cut some radials for a 20m ham stick used with a homemade ground spike base. Soldered 5 of them together into a ring terminal. Used Amazon 18 gauge silicone wire, stuff is like cooked spaghetti.
Made contact with someone doing a POTA activation approximately 5 miles away, a station in Kentucky, and a station in Illinois. 5 watts from an FT-817ND got it done yesterday. |
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Just an FYI, I have been using one of the small DC-DC buck converters from Amazon for my Amplifier control heads to bring 12v down to 9v for my Bird Meter peak kit. Noticed today it was putting out a bit of noise on 6m and a lot more noise on 2m. I had previously tested it on HF and it was fine. I was able to add a 35V 22uf electrolytic on the output where the wires come out, and quieted it out with no further issues.
ETA: On 2m it is still making some noise, I will add some ferrites on the input and output and we will see if the fixes it. They are very nice buck converters, would love to get these where they are not producing rf noise. If that fails I will just make a linear voltage regulator for it. |
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Originally Posted By DarkLordVader: What is the bill of materials for that slim jim? Is that HVAC foil tape over nylon? View Quote Here is what I bought. I can make many more antennas with what I still have. I probably with make a few for friends. It's aluminum adhesive backed tape. $12 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KTVAI38?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1&psc=1 $9 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KTVD92U?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1 $10 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B097HL6PXD?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1 $7 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VB62YT2?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1 |
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"I will leave when I have your wounded." MAJ Kelly
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Made a 5.5*2.1MM female to powerpole, so I can use my bioenno charger with my new amazon lithium battery.
Also got a 12V to 5V 3A dual USB from amazon and put powerpoles on that so I can use my radio batteries to charge USB devices. ![]() I am now out of 15amp powerpoles. 2 hour round trip to the ham radio store, maybe I can schedule some work stuff close to it soon. I like buying them there if I can. |
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Got a little bit of work done this weekend. Made some mods to my cooling fan module for my 6m amp. Ended up milling some clearance for the fans that increased my airflow and lowered the overall noise for my 6M harris amp.
![]() Did the cutting, building and machine work for my 2m Harris amp. Went with a wider design for increased airflow on this one. But that came with its own challenges. Overall like the way this turned out. ![]() ![]() ![]() Everything was milled to fit with a nice fit and finish besides the soldering of the rails together. ![]() Have a segregated fan for the control board. Fans suck air through the fins and from the inside of the modules with air coming in through the holes on the sides of the amp. The control board will have a fan blowing air inside of it to cool with some of the positive pressure reaching the inside and being sucked out by the large 50v fans. Fans are capable of 1k CFM but running around 350-400 by operating them at half voltage and throug dropping resistor. Adding 2 relays to the circuit. NC will be 24V through a 15ohm 100watt resistor for normal operations. NO goes to the common on relay 2 where NC is 24v direct, and NO is ground. Will allow normal operation, high fans, and fans off for listening in standby for DX. ![]() The twins together. Eventually both will be mounted on the side. LED will be remote mounted in a enclosure on the bench with a plug on both amps. |
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Originally Posted By stanprophet09: Got a little bit of work done this weekend. Made some mods to my cooling fan module for my 6m amp. Ended up milling some clearance for the fans that increased my airflow and lowered the overall noise for my 6M harris amp. View Quote I really appreciate your posting of such detailed photos and the descriptions. I am way behind in my work on the fans and fan hoods for my Harris amps, and so it is quite helpful to see what you have done with yours by way of comparison. |
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Two guns, one bullet
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Just glued the PVC on my 2m junk-tenna. Checked into a net repeater 56 away miles using my Baofeng uv82-hp on about 7-8 watts. NCS said I was a little scratchy.
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Sorted a bunch of antenna parts from my old place.
One of the antennas is a 3el Archer "Crossbow" CB yagi that I cut down for 10M years ago. Going to rebuild it into a bidirectional array. A pair of relays - one at each end of the boom - will short out or enable a loading coil at the center of each director/reflector. This will be mounted in a vertical orientation on a tower sidearm, fixed-pointed at my buddies east of me. When I want to chat with folks to the west I energize the relays. Director becomes reflector and vice versa. Major lobe shifts 180 degrees. The particular tower it's going on has no room for an HF yagi mixed in with the VHF/UHF stacks so this ought to be a workable compromise. |
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Originally Posted By targetworks: I really appreciate your posting of such detailed photos and the descriptions. I am way behind in my work on the fans and fan hoods for my Harris amps, and so it is quite helpful to see what you have done with yours by way of comparison. View Quote If you ever need some info feel free to ask. Since this is the second harris I did things a bit differently this time and will be going back to modify the original a bit. Putting the relays on the inside of the 2m worked well as the power distribution was right there and 12v take off was easy to deal with. It also allowed me to tie the relays and bias keying circuit together. Being on a 12v circuit should not have to use a diode to keep for the amp keying line. The only issue with that is that puts the LPF in the RX circuit path so losses are a concern there so low loss LPF is a must. |
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New LPF came in for the 6m Harris.
And this little bundle of LDMOS goodness. Minus the LDMOS of course. ![]() |
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Originally Posted By TimeOnTarget: I watched some YouTube videos, and I used an online calculator to make two Slim Jim roll up J Poles. I got good signal reports on both as I was able to hit the repeaters. SUCESS!!!!! https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/432675/IMG_6459_jpeg-3241712.JPG https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/432675/IMG_6461_jpeg-3241713.JPG https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/432675/IMG_6451_jpeg-3241714.JPG View Quote Got some Faraday tape, a few banana connectors, and a few old seatbelts so going to try something similar on my next day off. The triglides are an absolute genius idea! |
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2m Harris is online. Have to wire the fans in yet. Have not put the fan relays in. Still have a bunch of wiring to do to clean up how both will operate together and mount the amp on its side. Using 2m legal limit relays from W6PQL. Also his 2kw LPF for 2M, and a mosfet switch. Relays and switch are on the inside of the amp. First key down video by me. Icom 9700 with 48% power in the video. 15% makes 500 watts.
![]() June 22, 2024 Still a ways to go to simplify and clean up operations, but will be ready for some QSOs in the AM. Going to keep it below 500w most of the time for terrestrial work. Will kick it up some for Meteor scatter and EME. |
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This is more of an "electronics" project than a ham project. I bought a little digital timer from Amazon, along with a battery holder and a continuous rotation servo motor. I set up the time to close the relay for 5 seconds every 30 minutes.
When the servo gets here, I'll mount all of it to a piece of cutting board that can sit in the hopper of my pellet smoker. This will agitate the pellets every half hour to prevent cavitation. On the servo, I will attach a servo horn and bolt a plastic tube to that with some string trimmer line at the end to sweep through the pellets and dislodge them. ![]() ![]() The little timer is handy as heck and can be configured many different ways. I can imagine tons of uses for it. Unfortunately the coders got it backwards and used OP for closed contacts and CL for open. But it was only a few bucks so no big deal. ![]() There is also an internal connector that can be used to trigger timing events based on low or high logic and several modes to make use of that feature as well. |
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LDMOS Device is on order. Went with an MRFX1K80N device. Little different as this is a 65V device not a 50. It is capable of 1800w CW @65V. I have another HP EPS-120 3000w power supply coming. I am Debating on modding this one for 63V or putting a high current diode set between the 2 supplies and running it at 51V. At 51v the device will make 1500W CW, the same at the MRF1K50N. But at 50V the 80n is claimed to be able to run a 65:1 SWR with 1KW and not have any degradation to the device itself. Since I plan on running this as a Dual Pallet at some point,I may stick with the 50v. The heat spreader I went larger and got a 6x4x.5" with the giant heatsink I should be able to run this at high-duty cycles and with input impedance mismatch. The key to the ruggedness of the LDMOS is keeping the junction temp down, current, and drive below maximum. Also running the V+ at lower voltages. I should have some updates this weekend as I machine the heat spreader for mounting the heat sink and soldering the chip to the spreader.
As long as the temps can stay in line, when this is completed as a dual pallet it will be capable of almost 4kw max output, 3kw without being in compression. Not going to run it at that, but legal limit should loaf along all day. ![]() ![]() |
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![]() ![]() Second server supply showed up. So I will have 51.4v at 114amps. Going to use a dual 170v 100 amp rectifier that is basically 2 Schottky diode to isolate the current from the 2 supplies and have about .69 volts of forward drop. Still not sure if I am going to get another supply for the HF amp and mod it. But for bow this will allow me to run both of my harris amps without issues. |
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Originally Posted By stanprophet09: LDMOS Device is on order. Went with an MRFX1K80N device. Little different as this is a 65V device not a 50. It is capable of 1800w CW @65V. I have another HP EPS-120 3000w power supply coming. I am Debating on modding this one for 63V or putting a high current diode set between the 2 supplies and running it at 51V. At 51v the device will make 1500W CW, the same at the MRF1K50N. But at 50V the 80n is claimed to be able to run a 65:1 SWR with 1KW and not have any degradation to the device itself. Since I plan on running this as a Dual Pallet at some point,I may stick with the 50v. The heat spreader I went larger and got a 6x4x.5" with the giant heatsink I should be able to run this at high-duty cycles and with input impedance mismatch. The key to the ruggedness of the LDMOS is keeping the junction temp down, current, and drive below maximum. Also running the V+ at lower voltages. I should have some updates this weekend as I machine the heat spreader for mounting the heat sink and soldering the chip to the spreader. As long as the temps can stay in line, when this is completed as a dual pallet it will be capable of almost 4kw max output, 3kw without being in compression. Not going to run it at that, but legal limit should loaf along all day. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/199367/IMG_0106_JPG-3252816.JPG https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/199367/IMG_0107_JPG-3252817.JPG View Quote I was on there site looking for documentation on putting together an amp, but could not find any documentation. Do the boards come with documentation about the boards and or any info on how to build a complete amp with there boards? |
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They do come with some basic instructions on setting the bias and what is hooked to the board. He provides a block diagram on how to build one with his eco system. Keep in mind its not an end all be all instructions . He assumes anyone building one at that level will be doing their research. If you go to youtube ans look up DX world E on it you will find a comparison of VK Amps board to his. It is eye opening. He has won a a World wide design contest from one of the chip manufacturer's for his boards. They work. When you check reviews for the amps that he sells they are all good. Time will tell but he checks all of the boxes of things to look for like juntion temp based Bias current. He under rates the boards keeping them out of compression and well into class AB service. So far from what I have researched he has a great design and for the price they are hard to beat. He has a presence on Ebay and his webpage. The video from the VK ham that got 500 watts from the VK Amps MRF300 4 device board got over 600 from the DX world 2 device board with much higher efficiency. . .
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How come every time there is a shooting, they want to take away the guns from the people who didn't do it?
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Originally Posted By CS223: Building a solid state amp is on my to-do wish list. Got to get my tower up and some other projects out of the way first. Converted my Powerwerx SPS-30DM to power poles. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/22957/IMG_0615-3254233.jpg https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/22957/IMG_0634-3254234.jpg View Quote Did you find that file anywhere or you create it? I hate those binding plugs on mine. Great little power supply, even has field day concrete embedded into the face plate were it took a 6' swan dive into a chunk of concrete about 10 years ago. |
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It figures that when I am working on a home made coil for 40m on a 17' whip that 40 would as dead as it is today.
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World ain't what it seems, is it Gunny?
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Originally Posted By stanprophet09: Did you find that file anywhere or you create it? I hate those binding plugs on mine. Great little power supply, even has field day concrete embedded into the face plate were it took a 6' swan dive into a chunk of concrete about 10 years ago. View Quote I created it. The PP's all lock together in one strip and the two pieces slide into the roll pin grooves on the PP's. IM me and I'll email you the STL. The only caveat is it's possible to reverse polarity if you arent paying attention and plug into the middle two PP's I tried a few different things but gave up because each change created a different problem. |
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How come every time there is a shooting, they want to take away the guns from the people who didn't do it?
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So I have decided that this Amp is going to be rack mounted. I have a band switch with 8 positions. I am building this with Auto Band switching using an Icom decoder. But will have a manual band switch for backup. I wanted to keep the face clean so I am going with a 7" Nexion touch screen. Going to buy 5u 11' deep rack box with side heat sinks and vented top. Touch screen will go is a small box and have a remote capability. I am thinking of running this with a small plate on the front panel that can be removed. Run a plug system up front and have a second plug on the back of the amp. This will allow me to mount the touch screen to the front and pull it, add the cover and plug into the rear of the amp and remote the touch screen. Thinking something the size of the KX2 with nothing but the touch screen and a power switch. Got the idea after looking at the Pw2. This way the amp can be out of the way but also have backup manual modes be run as a backup amplifier.
![]() ![]() I will be using 2 of the same finals as the Pw2 for the most part, but I will be using the MRFX1K80N instead of the MRFX1K80H. |
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Baofeng FM Radio audio amplifier for the work site.
It might just look like an empty screw container, but a lot of ham math went into that. ![]() |
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Got a bunch of parts coming. Mostly small stuff. But I did order the case for the amp. Going to rack mount this for now. Ended up going with a nice rack mount case and will mill the slots I need for the airflow into and out of the amp.
![]() Now I need to find the case for the faceplate. And figure out a way to mount the faceplate to the front and remote the cable. May put one of the Clinko connectors on the back of the plate and mill a square hole in the faceplate. Build a cover plate that screws down to cover the hole and put one of the connectors on the inside that is slaved to a connector at the rear. Not sure how I am going to do it yet but have time to figure it out. Going to run the control board for the touchscreen on the inside of the amp and just run the screen cables out of it. ![]() Going to put in in the middle or top with sliders to pull be able to slide it out and work on if if need be. Or I can set it up top where my SB-200 is. |
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Did some tuning on my A-D DX-LB Plus.
( I'm a cheap bastard. I refuse to pay MSRP for a pre-made antenna and will scout the fests for used ones or parts thereof. ![]() 160 is resonant around 1840, 75 about 3830. The entirety of 40 is under 2:1 with resonance around 7200. 15 is also GTG and 28000-29000 is below 1.5:1. Naturally, the only fly in the ointment is 20. It's ALWAYS 20. Resonance is around 13700 and it doesn't get much below 1.5:1 there. So...wait for the leaves to drop from its apex support tree, lower and try to figure out why 14MHz is a PITA. I have the loading coils from an AD 80/40 shortened dipole. Bought some wire, one of their center insulators and fabbed up a bunch of spacers. That's all going to be turned into something which covers 12, 17, 30 and 60. The latter will use paralleled wires as stubs to increase the bandwidth a bit. Don't know why Alpha Delta doesn't offer one of these pre-made. They have everything on-hand to build it. |
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![]() Finally got some time to work on this board. Man I have to tell you if you get one of these little QRP amps to play with, get one on EBay that has the surface mount parts already populated. Most of the parts labels are not correct. Using generic diagrams I was able to work through it. But I did not have any bias voltage. Luckily they did send extra parts. Also I had a capacitor in a spot for the DC bias. It is labeled with C3 but its the circuit trying to pass DC through the capacitor! Well thats not going to work. According to the schematic it needs a 200-1k ohm resistor. Ended up not having SMD resistors to got creative with some axial 330 ohm I had. Well now I have adjustable bias voltage. Now I can proceed to mounting some of the mosfets, heat sink, and testing. |
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Last post for the weekend. But some may find this helpful. Got a bunch of stuff in for the amplifier. But i ordered a ton of ferrites from Digikey and some project boards from Amazon. Decided to whip up a little board to help with some testing.
Wanted to check the insertion loss, and resistance on these ferrites at HF frequencies. How many wraps are needed and where the diminishing returns were. Worked very well. ![]() Normal calibration put the board in and a jumper wire. ![]() Not bad at all. Here is the bottom of the board with the RG-316 coax. ![]() Here is 10 turns of teflon 22awg silver plated wire. ![]() Shows a little over 32db at 40 meter band. Of course not as much at 160 meter. Seems like the big jump is around 4 wraps to about 19db of loss at 160 meter. Versus like 2db with only one. So far it is working well. Tells me that at minimum I want to have about 4-5 turns or more for control and DC wires. The large and small single core are Ferrite 43 mix, the binocular is a different company and show little different response but they work very well. This is going to be important on this big HF amp. |
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I spent about 5 hours on the 4th and another five on the 5th building two QDX tranceivers.
The first one failed the smoke test in spite of passing every other test in the build manual. Apparently it's a very common failure mode if you try to run them at 12V, so pro-tip, run them at 9V and ignore the 12V build instructions, they're a lie. The units use a linear regulator which gets very, very hot at 12V when they do work. I built a second one mostly to figure out what was wrong with the first, but after another few hours today I'm just bagging the first one as a learning experience. It does seem to barely work on RX but is very deaf and I suspect something got blown during power up. The second unit I've kept at 9V and is mostly working, a bit wonky on 40M RX though. The instructions are good, but the advice on the toroid installation and dealing with the enamel magnet wire is bad, imo -- they say to just head the wire up in a solder blob with a soldering iron for 15 seconds and it doesn't work reliably at all. The RX side in particular depends on perfection of two complex toroids and any issues massively impacts performance. On the positive side, the receiver in these things is surprisingly good, I've been doing A/B testing against the Icom 7300 and they're very very close to each other in performance on 20M. The other bands seem fairly dead right now. I've got a third kit still to build and then it's time to do some 80M roving tests. |
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Too hot for outside lately so I've been playing inside. Did a tripod base for a portable vertical antenna. 1/2" EMT conduit is used for the legs and are a slip fit. leg angle is adjustable.
SO-239 on the bottom, 3/8-24 threaded hole on the top. Assembly done with M3 caphead screws and M4 caphead screws w/ nuts ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Source & files on printables: https://www.printables.com/model/934873-antenna-tripod-with-emt-legs |
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Originally Posted By SnowMule: Just added a rubber chicken to my climbing kit. ![]() https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-NkJZmVH/0/L/i-NkJZmVH-L.jpg View Quote STL? |
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Originally Posted By KYB762: STL? View Quote i don't live in st. louis? done some work on studio-transmitter links, but it's not my primary thing guess you could say I take the strike team leader role on jobs...? |
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Case came in for the LDMOS amp, do have a bit of a problem with the size of the heatsink. I am way overkill on the heatsink, but I think I have a plan. |
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![]() ![]() Going to mount the fans on a plate on the bottom of the heatsink drawing air from the back or top, pulling through the heatsink to the center and blowing out of the bottom. or top depending how you want to look at it. Have plenty of room for other accessories and I belive with the fans being thermally activates I have a feeling they will not be turning on much. Also got this in. ![]() ETA: Control board and the rest of the relays, RF delay board, 65V to 12V converter, Autennuators and the 7" nexion screen is on its way. Still need a low pass filter, and the High voltage protection board with dual dual directional couplers for amp protection. It is time to get building and making some RF. Once this is built and working I will get the second board, module, and spliiter and combiner network coming as well for this to be a true legal limit all day amp. |
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Finally poked a hole in my new truck. Well in the SmartCap anyway. This will give me a ton of options.
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Hadn't thought of that. Looks like a very good idea for nonconductive roofs. I would be tempted to use 2 plates.
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Originally Posted By tyrex13: Finally poked a hole in my new truck. Well in the SmartCap anyway. This will give me a ton of options. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/83116/IMG_3111_jpeg-3264983.JPG https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/83116/IMG_3112_jpeg-3264984.JPG View Quote Where did you get the antenna mount? |
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“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.” Ronald Reagan
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“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.” Ronald Reagan
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Originally Posted By Mark75H: Hadn't thought of that. Looks like a very good idea for nonconductive roofs. I would be tempted to use 2 plates. View Quote I forget where I got that ring. Antenna Farm or something like that. It's designed to just give a little support for thinner roof materials. The SmartCap top panel is pretty thick and is about 4'x6' SS so should be a pretty good ground plane, but I had bought that ring for something else so figured I'd use it. I need to pull it back apart and probably remove a little paint off the bottom. I did this so I can mount a MPAS 2.0 or MPAS lite up there for quick POTA, but since it has the UHF on the bottom too I could just thread in a SS17 and should be good to go for 20M. I could do a WRC up there too, or the CHA MINI and a 73' wire for NVIS. I wonder if there is a 3/8" 2M antenna, I should look for one. |
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![]() ![]() 1st pallet is done. About time to make some RF and test this thing into a dummy load. Going to set the bias tomorrow and then use my QRP rig and a 3db autenuator for the input. Still have the 3kw dummy load I need to build but my MFJ 1.5kw one will work for this single pallet and should be good for 1200-1500 watts. Ended up having to machine the back. I had some issues I had to deal with. I can fix that issue on the next pallet to save some time. |
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