{"id":937,"date":"2010-06-25T08:24:43","date_gmt":"2010-06-25T14:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/?p=937"},"modified":"2010-06-25T08:24:43","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T14:24:43","slug":"antenna-transplant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/?p=937","title":{"rendered":"Antenna Transplant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warning – Ham Radio Geek-Speak Ahead!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> For quite a few years I’ve used a Hy-Gain DX-88<\/a> antenna when operating on the 80, 40 and 30 meter amateur bands (3.5, 7 and 10.1 MHz).\u00a0 It’s been a very good antenna but suffers from one major problem – it has a very narrow bandwidth, particularly on 80 meters.<\/p>\n

If I set it up for 3.55 MHz, the CW (code) portion of the band, then it will not work well at 3.85 MHz in the voice section of the band and vice versa.\u00a0 The adjustments necessary to change the frequency are rather complex and the antenna is over 250 feet from the house.\u00a0 I have to have a very good reason to change things and in bad weather it is not worth the trouble to make adjustments.<\/p>\n

A few months ago I started looking around for a replacement antenna that didn’t suffer from these bandwidth limitations.\u00a0 Finally I settled on the SteppIR BigIR<\/a> vertical.\u00a0 This antenna is unique in that instead of being a fixed length it adjusts its electrical length based on the operating frequency chosen.\u00a0 This means that changing frequencies is as simple as pushing a button.\u00a0 In fact, for many brands of radios the frequency change will automatically track the frequency the radio is tuned to.<\/p>\n

Assembly of the antenna is fairly complicated and the installation requires additional cables to control the antenna.\u00a0 In my stetup I have a 2″ diameter , 250′ long polyethylene pipe buried between the antenna site and my ham shack.\u00a0 I (with Jan’s help) had to pull the new cable through this pipe.\u00a0 This posed some difficulty due to tangles, stuck wires and an error in where to route the cable in the maze of other wires for other antennas.\u00a0 Who ever called radio “wireless” has never seen a ham radio installation!<\/p>\n

The next step was to take down the old DX-88.\u00a0 This wasn’t too difficult as it only weighs about 18.5 pounds but, as it is 28 feet long, it is a bid awkward to handle.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this operation as there was no one available to take pictures while we worked on it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With the old antenna down it was time to put the new one up.\u00a0 This had the same problems of awkwardness made a little worse by an extra 5 feet of length.\u00a0 Again, no pictures were taken of the ongoing process for lack of photographer but there are before<\/em> and after <\/em>shots.\u00a0 Installing the new antenna went smoothly and it only took a short while to get the guy ropes adjusted and tightened up.<\/p>\n

All that is left to do now is to check out all the cabling to be sure all is wired correctly.\u00a0 After that I will start on-the-air checks and see how it works.\u00a0 I’ll make an addition to this post once all that is complete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warning – Ham Radio Geek-Speak Ahead! For quite a few years I’ve used a Hy-Gain DX-88 antenna when operating on the 80, 40 and 30 meter amateur bands (3.5, 7 and 10.1 MHz).\u00a0 It’s been a very good antenna but suffers from one major problem – it has a very narrow bandwidth, particularly on 80 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}