CUBICAL QUAD - First Attempt

I failed... on the first attempt to install the cubical quad. The task, ended to be more difficult then expected. In fact, the antenna dimension, the short available space and all of the objects on the roof, gave me no great success on the task. Ended to install the fiber glass arms, and was ready to pass the wire elementos through the arms, when I notice that the 10 meter driver element was wrong, since the factory sent a shorter wire for that element. When I also was trying to round the antenna, there was allways something in the way. Or it was a chimney, or the tower, or even a guy wire. All these situation put me to think and after a while I decided that this task should not be done by one person only. So, the next try, I hope in a near future, I will try to get some help in order to assemble the antenna and after that put it on top of the tower. At the same time, I will contact the factory, in order to get the correct 10 meter driver wire.

 

LIGHTNING HIT II

Yep... it's true!!! for the second consecutive year, have been visited by a lightning hit. The Diamond X-7000 antenna, which was around 6 month old, staid completly lost. However this time, only the antenna suffered, but I start to think that some kind of black magic is doing it's effects hi hi.

 

DIRECCIONAL HF ANTENNA

One milestone more achieved.... Finally has arrived the so awaited direccional HF antenna. It came in 7 boxes, with almost all the the necessary material needed for the installation. I say almost.... because I was cheated by the seller. That's right.... PKW antenna and italian antenna builder, which during the negotiation process, agreed with everything I asked. However when I opened the boxes I checked some necessary items were missing, I was a bit of bored, and decided to send an e-mail to Mr. Steffano explaining that he or someone has forgoten to include some items in the package. I made the complete list of items he agreed to provide additionally and were not included. When I received the reply I was shocked ! he told me those items were not included because it was an extra. What ??? an extra ??? he told me previously it were includ it with no additional cost ! and now he is saying it is an extra. Bottom line is, PKW is an closed book for me, and I even told him I was publish this issue, in order, ham friends could be aware of PKW negotionation.

Well... I just hope the antenna performance justifies all this trouble. See some photos of the the boxed antenna.

 

DIAMOND X-7000N

The X-510N in inoperational and, with the recent aquisition of the IC-910H, decided to buy an X-7000 also by Diamond, since it would allow me to operate the IC-910H in all of its bands, without having to buy or build more antennas, because the list of priority is not in this way.

 

ICOM IC-910H

It was not on the initial plans to buy this equipment, let's say it was a kind of oportunity, and I ended to get this wonderfull transciever. Included was the 1.2 Ghz module as well as the 2 DSP modules for the main and sub bands. I also asked to include the high performance crystal, because I was afraid the frequency oscilation on 1.2 Ghz were high.

 

iBox

After some search on the internet, I found what I would expect to solve my RF over audio problem. Sent an email to Julius W2IHY and explained the situation. He told me the iBox would be just perfect to me. And that was it, I ordered the iBox and when it arrived I quickly tested it and... magic.... RF's gone. But, the audio was still pretty bad, not in terms of inteligibility but in equalization. As a matter of fact it was very bad compared with other ham friends. I still don't know the reason why it is like that, since I tested all kind of equalization setup. I suspect it is a matter of the IC-746's passband bandwidth, but... I could not proove yet my suspicions.Once again, project on hold.

 

LIGHTING HIT

This is one of those dates I will never forget, for the worst reasons of course. By this time I was temporary living out of my home. At the end of the morning I received a phone call from a friend, telling me that my tower had been hit by a lighting hit. I asked if she could see anything broken, but she said, everything seems to be in place. I gave no major importance to it, hoping nothing really bad happened. When I changed home, I took my IC-746 with me, so on the next weekend after this, I got home with my power supply and the IC-746 and I started to test the VHF antenna. Bad news... SWR was on top. on the HF seemed everything was ok. I quickly made a trip to the top of the building but at first sight could not see nothing wrong with my X-510N, only with binoculars I spotted a large hall on the top of the antenna. On that day, I took the antenna down to evaluate the damage extent. The X-510N gave its soul to the creator. Take a look on the antenna photos. However this was only the beggining, after this, I run a station full test and ended to realize 2 piece of equipment suffered also some damage. The Ameritron RCS-10 which the internal unit has 8 led on the front panel, all of it were with different type of contrast. The exterior unit as far as I could see, only one relay was not in good shape. The other equipment damaged was the Yaesu G-2800DXC, not the rotation unit, but the controller one, since some of its funcionalities were not working at all. Of course I could use it like that, but I had no preset function, and the rotation speed was allways the maximum. After some weeks I sended it to repair.

 

DIAMOND SX-600N

This is one piece of equipment that is allways usefull on an ham shack. Never worried about it, since the IC-746 has one, showing the SWR when transmiting. However I think I needed one to get some more accurate readings. The one has 2 sensors. One able to measure frequencies between 1.8 and 160 Mhz and, another onw between 140 and 525 Mhz.

 

TOWER SETUP

The tower preparion work ended not be an easy one. First I had to design and build some hardware needed. For instance the rotor base plate, or the tower top plate, where the mast was going to pass, the tower base plate and so on...

But after 3 years, I had everything needed to assemble it. Thanks to all my friends that helped me with this project.

 

DIAMOND X-510N

Although IC-746 has VHF capable, the throuth is that I had never bought of built any antenna for that band. So I decided to buy my first VHF vertical antenna. I decided myself for the Diamond X-510, since for me it was the best antenna in terms of price/performance ratio. Of course I would not use it for UHF operation, since I had no transciever for that... but who knows in a near future that could happen. That would never be throuth.

 

YAESU G-2800DXC ANTENNA ROTATOR

After the tower has been bought, but not yet installed since there were not yet the proper conditions to do it, I decided to move on and get on the next step of the plan. So, I bught an Yaesu G-2800DXC. This would be an antenna rotator with the necessary capacity for the pretended antenna, hopefully....

 

AMERITRON RCS-10

Since the only HF antenna I had by this time is an Sirtel 2008, although not really design for that bands, I decided to build a longwire antenna, that would be connected to a magnetic balun which would do coupling between the wire and the transciever and, hopefully would allow me to do some fun dx's. Since I would not like to get a lot of coaxial running down the wall through the shack, I avoided that situation with the Ameritron RCS-10. This piece of equipment would allow me to connect 8 different HF antennas and just one coaxial cable would come inside the shack. The second reson I bought this equipment is I believe the HF directional beam as more than 1 feed point, so I can connect all the beam's feed point to RCS-10 external box and select which antenna to use inside the shack.

 

TOWER ACQUISITION

Since I have VERY limited funds, is essencial to make a good long term planning, in order to get all the ideas connected and decide which way to go, because in ham radio, we can do a lot of diferent things, but there's allways one aspect of ham radio we like most. For me the most exciting activity is HF DX. In that way, I would need a direccional beam, an antenna rotator and an linear amplifier. But in order to support the antenna I would need a good tower. This is just a list of the most expensive items, of course that I would need several more things, but way more cheap.

After spending some time searching the internet, I found out an advertisement by CT4NH. Luís Teixeira, was selling is self made 9 meter tower. It is 3 pieces, 3 meter tall each. Although it was in very bad shape (lot's of rust), a good metal threatment would solve th problem. I ended to buy it and delivered the same day to a small company to give it the necessary threatment in order to avoid oxidation.

 

ICOM IC-746 TRANSCIEVER

This will be also an unforgetable date. I have received my first HF rig. I bought an IC-746, with an SM-20 microphone. It was in fact rather exciting receiving this equipment. It would allow me to adventure on most of the ham bands... at least the ones I could operate for my class.

I also bought a new power supply. A Diamond GZV 4000. With a 40 amp capacity, that would more then enough for the IC-746.

 

THE BEGGINING NÍCIO

We can say that here was the point where my ham activity has bigan. ANACOM which is the national authority who gives the licenses, had send me my so desired one. My callsign on this time was CT2HZU.