A Brief History of Time (Mine) Pt. 2

Ok, the ARRL 10m contest just wrapped up, so I can pick up with the second ruination of my life.

I was happy living on the boat and working in Beautiful Downtown Burbank.  Weekends were either hamming or sailing.  I liked my workmates and started hanging out after hours.  This was a small mom-pop company and "pop" (also a ham) would hang out with us too.  The problem was with where we were hanging out.

Paris Jet like "pop's" plane

I'm sure you've heard that owning a sailboat is like standing under a cold shower tearing up $100 dollar bills.  I had been able to keep things under control, but was familiar with the sentiment.  These guys at work had figured a much more efficient way to dispose of money. They were all pilots.  So we hung at KWHP and talked airplanes.  Then "pop" showed up with a plane.  Then the other guys formed a group and got a plane.   We would go and fly around California and Arizona.  Well, I was totally ruined.  I got my PPSEL and started renting planes from the flight school at Whiteman.  Flew all over the state and really enjoyed the ability to move around so fast and so far.  The problem, of course, was money.  And the boat was 45 miles from the airport.

Cruise up to 200mph

I researched costs and found out about experimental aircraft that came in a kit form.  I could build an airplane and qualify as the mechanic for that airplane.  This would save me a bunch of money in maintenance costs.  So, after 15 years, I moved off the boat and into a house near the airport.  I turned the garage into an aircraft factory and got to work building an airplane.

Little flap   Big Smile

Looking hot in the hanger

Finally owning a home on land has afforded me a back yard.  Having a back yard has allowed me to try some wide varieties of antennae.  It has been a great learning experience.

We're almost up to date....I finished building the tail, wings, and body of the airplane.  The next step was engine and instruments.   Things at work took a turn and "pop" sold the company to a big conglomerate.  Our hours were cut and then our wages were cut.  The cost of aviation fuel went to $6/gal.  Even if I was the only mechanic, I could not afford to own a plane.  Sold the parts for more than I paid. Kept the tools. 

20m Moxon

The boat is for sale

So now I have a little shop in the garage that I can bang stuff into antenna shapes. This is great 'cause I can't afford to be buying a bunch of stuff, but I can build stuff.  So that's where we are now.  I wanted to build an antenna that I could source at Home Depot / Lowes and create for as little $$ as possble.  Wire, aluminum, PVC, and fibreglass.  I'll probably talk about the antennae in the order in which I built them and what I learned at that stage.  I think each antenna got a little better as I went along.

I'm starting to think the eventual goal is going to be a hexbeam or octobeam.  That will give me a multiband antenna that I might be able to really stick in the air.  But for now, the Moxon is a fantastic antenna that really makes a difference in both transmit and receive.  The Moxon can be built for just a few dollars. I can just stick the antenna for the band I want for the weekend on the backporch roof. The other bands I can run on the dipole.  Bigger signal/smaller bucks.

Next: The Moxon Project

73

A Brief History of Time (Mine)

Maybe not so brief.  OK, this is the self-involved, historical, babble-post.
I was born in a log cabin in rural Ohio to an itinernant preacher and his rosy-cheeked wife.


Not really...My ham life started in college.  I worked at all the local radio and TV stations.  Most of the staff engineers were hams and elmered me into the hobby while the stations broadcast "Dallas" or "Masterpiece Theatre".  College was CW and dipoles.  My skills at Morse Code have always been suspect at best.  It was slow going, but I learned how to cut dipoles to kinda resonance and get them on the air.

I don't remember any antenna tuners....



Shift to California in 1981 (jeesh!) and I lived in apartments. Mostly
VHF/UHF ops due to smaller footprint of antennas.  I could put
2m/70cm yagis on a small balcony and hear little bits of SSB
conversations. I then read a series of articles about ham satellites

in QST and 73 magazines. I was able to
put a small ground station together and work
the AMSAT birds.  At the time there were both
Low and High earth orbiters; I was able to work
100 countries just via satellite. My landlady allowed
me to put up any antenna I wanted as long as she could
not see it from her patio.  Good times.

Circa 1989? 1st floor apartment

Don't Laugh, it was the 80's!

2m/70cm CP

During that time period, I started looking at small footprint HF antennas.
I only held a Tech+ license, so the lowbands were not a high priority.
I tried a Butternut Butterfly model and had pretty good success.
But it was nothing like what I was working at the time via satellite.
We had DX  I was not able to hear on HF so I did not follow
up on folded wire beam antennas.

It all came undone in 1991. I lived 4 blocks from the beach in a rent controlled apartment.  I could walk to the water's edge for sunset and then come home for a little hamming.  I had full reign of the roof of my building for antennas.  I had great friends that I could meet for drinks on the pier and then another great group of friends on Oscar 13 satellite to talk with through the night.  But then everything came "blowed up" in my life.

I was forced to move from my Shangri-La.  My so called friends at the time seduced me into activities I had never experienced in Ohio and I was sucked into a deep pit that I have still yet to recover.  I bought a sailboat.

Union Polaris 36 "The Pit"

To afford the boat, I had to live on it full time.  I had to give up my great apartment in Santa Monica and move to the marina that allowed liveaboards.  Goggle Maps Los Angeles Harbour sometime.

 So this meant all my antennas had to change.  I fought it.  I even tried setting up my long yagis on the deck and on the dock.  It's really hard to point 2.4 GHz dishes on a moving dock.

  My space also dictated my HF style of antenna.  With the great ground of saltwater and and what I was able to learn from ON4UN's previous editions, I had lots of contacts with wire verticals and inverted V's. Think single-masted, cutter rigged 40 ft. mast.  A great platform to play with simple designs.  I had a great time playing with the HF as we cruised down the coast of Baja and stopped at every IOTA on the way.  Oh, I forgot...I had been laid off from my job and took the chance to leave LA.  Left for a cruise around the world with my best girl.  Nice boat, good equipment, no money.  We got as far as Acapulco and prepared for the big jump to the Marquesas Islands.  We had discovered both the joys and challenges of living on a small boat with a small budget and the reality of the next leg hit home with my best girl.

Its a gazillion miles to Tahiti

After I dropped her at the airport for a flight back to LA, I sailed back up the coast with some buddies and we hammed it up via satellite and HF as we bashed our way back to Long Beach harbour.  I was too chicken to continue around the world by myself, so coming home was a sage bet. (that was a typo, but works).

222MHz Cheap Yagi

Back in LaLa, I found work and continued to live on the boat. Its the cheapest ocean front property I could afford.  I upgraded to General and worked lots of VHF/UHF weak signal stuff.  I still had the radios from my satellite days and they still work  to this day.  I wound up living aboard for 15 years and played around with VHF rovering.  That started me out with antenna building.  WA5JVB designed small yagis that I could build for portable use.  That will be a future topic.  I really liked living on the boat.  It was really cramped, but easy to get over to Catalina Island for weekends.  But I started hanging around with a shifty crowd at work and...again...my world began to fall apart.

Adventures in Antenna Building

Well, where to start. Thanks for looking here. I'm Steve, N8DEZ/6.  I live in SoCal and work in

Beautiful Downtown Burbank.  I have been a ham since 1981.  Lately, I've been having a

bunch of fun building antennas.  I have never had directional arrays on HF and I have 

certainly learned alot researching Moxon style 2-element wire beams.  

With my tiny city lot, I don't have many options and folding elements on an antenna 

seems a great way to go.  So this blog will just be a place for me to show what 

I am doing with these mono band designs.

  

Oh, by the way.  I am not an engineer. I was an EnglishLit major in university.  So I will 

write about what works for me and what I've learned as I go. I will try to link my sources. You

should look to your own sources and find what works for you.