On Thu, 31 May 2012 15:06:22 -0700, "Sal M. O'Nella"
wrote:

However, the real reason is that I haven't seen any decent antenna
related discussions in this newsgroup for a long time.
Jeff Liebermann

Well, with Field Day coming up, I had planned to use last year's 20m dipole
again, but I was on the phone with a guy last night and he dictated some
really easy-sounding plans for a two-element quad. It's supposed to be good
for 6 dB more gain than a dipole. Yes please, I'll take one free S-unit.
We're in the southwest corner of the country, so aiming it is a no-brainer.

Much better. Field Day is the prime incentive to do last minute
repairs on antennas and equipment. It's also a great place to do
testing that should have been performed before Field Day. Learn by
Destroying at its best. While fatalities and major injuries tend to
be minimal, I can't say the same for equipment and antenna failures.
Somehow, the miracle antenna contrived specifically for Field Day just
doesn't seem to tune or work as expected. Your "easy-sounding plans"
should be an ominous warning of problems to follow.

I'm staying out of Field Day this year. I had planned to deploy my
inflatable antenna design, but decided that doing R&D on top of a
mountain was not a good idea. I plan to visit, but not operate much.
I did my part this morning by customizing one of the Field Day
trailers with my cutting torch. Hopefully, I didn't weaken the
structure so that it will collapse on arrival to the site.

Maybe I can post a diary of the build to amuse you nice folks by
demonstrating my (lack of) skill using hand tools.

Any tool can be used as a hammer. That should be fun to read, and
more fun to watch the video.

By the way, we'll be
using N3FJP's "Field Day Network Logger" this year, for the first time.
Last year, one of our guys used N3FJP single-station logger for himself
(400+ contacts) and he registered the network version for the club. I like
it. We've had several good trial runs. Find it at http://www.n3fjp.com/.

We like to use N1MM, mostly because it's free, but also because it
took the last half dozen Field Days to train the operators in its use.
http://n1mm.hamdocs.com
We also gave up on running CAT5e all over the site because of the RFI
generated, but also because I got tired of dealing with trashed rolls
of CAT5e as everyone seem to enjoy walking on or tripping over the
CAT5 and coax cables. We tried 802.11g wi-fi, but found that high
power transmitters are really good at blocking the receiver front end
of the wireless cards. Since we don't run more than one station on a
band, there's no issue with dupes. So, no network needed.

(Jeez -- what am I _not_ doing?)

Operating?


--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS