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Ham Radio LinksHidden Valleys Amateur Radio Club Great River Amateur Radio Club Sterling - Rock Falls Amateur Radio Society RADIO GUY 02-17-08
A lot of water has run under the bridge since the last ‘Radio Guy’ was written. Seems like time passes by much faster than it used to. That and the fact I was on a special project at work for a few weeks did not help matters. So I guess I will cover what I can remember.
We lost another local Ham, Club member, & friend . WA9RYZ ‘Norm’ passed away in November after a long battle with Parkinson’s. Norm was good friend and will be missed by all who knew him. I am sure he will be tinkering around and making contacts with all the other SK’s in that QTH above.
We had been having trouble over a few weeks with the Savanna repeater, but W9YS ‘Mike’ seems to have found the problem and of late it has been running better than it had been in previous months. Mike and I have been looking for another back up and almost won one on ebay, but I did not put a high enough bid on it prior to the end of the auction. We will continue to keep our eyes open and will try again if one appears on the auction site or at any of the used radio places.
Radio Guy has made a change in my antenna systems. I had to cut down the old maple tree that had the one leg of my 80m dipole tied to it. This meant that I had to come up with an antenna, which would work in its place. I had been looking for some type of compromise to take care of this problem and was lucky enough to find something that would remedy this situation. I found a wire tuner that I could mount on my tower and allow me to use my 160 ‘L’ on multiple bands. It was a Yaesu FC-40, which works with my FT-897 and fit into my radio budget. Purchase price was less than half the price of a new one and it was basically in like new shape. I mounted it on my tower and Mike W9YS helped me get a control cable together that would link the radio to the antenna tuner. In order to make it work on 160,80, & 40 meters I had to add about 18’ of wire to the antenna and I can now work pretty much the whole gambit on these bands and it actually works on most of the upper bands too. So I do not have to switch to the HF5 Butternut Bow-tie beam if I do not want to. Only problem I have had so far is the darned squirrels seem to like to chew the string that holds it up in the neighbor’s tree.
The Clinton Radio Club will be offering Tech classes coming up in March, if you know someone interested in attending these classes please get with K9STP Gerry at gerryj@frontiernet.net for more details.
I hope all had a great Holiday Season and everyone is looking forward to a great year of radio fun in 2008. Hope to see some of the Club members @ the Sterling Hamfest coming up on March 9, 2008. As usual I hope to be a little more punctual in getting out my column and encourage any of you to write something up and put it on the club web site. If you do you can send it to me or my son, Matt his address can be found on our site.
73 Guy N9XBG n9xbg@arrl.net
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