On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 7:03:05 PM UTC-4, Channel Jumper wrote:
Ok, so a friend of mine died, and at his SK auction, I picked up about 6

antenna's for about $10 each.



Some were good and some were not so good...



I have a real friend who repairs my computer for free and he is into the

CB radio.

I cannot get him to study and get his amateur radio license and I wanted

to get him involved in some type of radio - with the hopes that when he

see's how much the CB radio sucks - he would want to study and take the

test and get his license and quit fooling around with the CB radio...



His best friend drives truck for the DOT and is a garbage man on the

side.

They had boxes of old CB radios, and I found a couple that still put out

about 3 watts AM with good modulation.



The person my friend bought his computer shop from was an Amateur Radio

Operator. He gave the guy a 48' piece of RG-8 coax and 30' of tower.

The tower was bent and no one wanted it - even though it was not rusted

or damaged in any other way.



So to help him out, I gave him the Ringo Ranger so he would at least

have an outdoors antenna to play with.



I know a Ringo Ranger is a dummy load - no one has to explain it to me.

But at my house with 120' of Belden 9913F7 - up about 28' off the

ground, with ground radials, I was able to compare it to my Solorcon A99

- which is tuned for 10 meters.



The Ringo was about 1 or 2 S units less noisy and I was able to talk on

10 meters to a fellow in the Neatherlands with no problems.



So I gave him the antenna, told him to wait until I got there to help

put it together and tune it.

When I got there, he already had it on top of the tower and was playing

with it.

The VSWR read 5:1 on channel 19



We tried changing the strap match on the ring and it got down to about

3:1 after we changed the match and the length a couple of times.



So after a hearty supper - 4 hours after starting this fiasco, we took

it down, put it on a piece of pipe out in the yard.

Took a second Ringo Ranger and combined the two - to make it 11'6 long.



Origionally it was around 9'



I got the match down flat to about 2:1 everywhere from channel 1 to 40!



That is as low as it would go.



I checked the coax and there was no shorts and I used a coax calculator

and even with a .66 velocity factor - the brand and type is unknown -

and I didn't have a working computer at the site - the length for a

piece of coax in multiples of half wavelengths would only be somewhere

in the neighborhood of being 2 feet less then what the coax is. Which

isn't a big deal, except that he plans on adding another 20' of tower,

sometime in the future.



I could give him my old Solorcon A99 and put up my new Solorcon A99 -

but I am afraid that if I give away my good antenna, I might have some

problems with the Solorcon...



I do not have an antenna analyzer - but I could borrow one..

Yesterday was an exception - because it was a holiday and no one was

around to ask if I could borrow theirs.



I know the Ringo needs ground radials and I am working on doing that for

him also.

But I am wondering - if there might be another solution to the

problem...



I think 11'6 is somewhere around .33 of one wavelength on channel 19....



I usually don't ask these kinds of questions - because usually I have

the answer...



If a person had more then 3 watts - loosing half of it between the coax

and the antenna mis match wouldn't be a problem...



As it is - he doesn't have a working home phone and I can't call him and

he doesn't have internet so I can't email him and there is a hill

between his place and my place - about 7 miles away - max and I can't

hear him....



His mobile also has a 3:1 mismatch and he put a 104 inch whip on it and

is able to talk about half way between his house and my house with his

mobile - on the side of a jeep about 3' off the ground...



I have a legal 4 watt CB radio - which normally talks about 12 miles in

all directions.



I am looking for idea's on how to make the Ringo better - if that is

possible.



Maybe possible lengths to try - only I am afraid that if it gets too

long - it will fall apart. The base is already wobbly from taking it up

and down the tower 25 times last night.



I don't know if there is a way to tighten the base to the first section

of antenna.



I would be willing to try to make it 18' long if that would be an

improvement.



Any idea's?









--

Channel Jumper

Hey OM. These antennas are pretty simple, The instructions are on the web. Check the instructions against what you have and you should be able to get them to work by putting them together or making repairs. One is as easy as the other.

Jimmie