CAKE Notes for March 25, 2017

CAKE  Notes for  March 25, 2017

Those taking part were  Gary K6PDL, Fred KJ6OOV, Richard W1WUH and Ron W6WO

Gary showed the Antenna Analyzer he is building from the VC2 Kit sold by HamRadio360workbench.com. Their podcast is also worth listening to. Neat work Gary we look forward to seeing it in operation.

Clearly there is growing number of such sophisticated, low cost kits on the market these days. One such is for the collection of data on Sudden Ionospheric Disturbances . This is a project on space weather research at Stanford U developed principally for high school students. It would appeal to hams who are taking an interest in the new LF bands .Find out more at Solar-center.Stanford.Edu/sid/sidmonitor/. A total eclipse of the sun will occur in August and will be a very interesting period to observe how the ionosphere behaves. How quiet will it be ? 

Fred showed us a real-time display of 20m on his cellphone of his Anan SDR by making a remote on-line connection to his PC using a program called TeamViewer. The spectrum was well populated with signals in a contest. As you may recall Fred previously reported some serious noise on 40 meters. He has narrowed the location of the source (not the cause) to two likely units in an apartment block near his home. This will be a text-book exercise of RFI detection which we can look forward to. 

Ron mentioned reading a book about WWII which described in detail the many techniques used to mislead the enemy. The ability to decrypt enemy wireless communications together with radar, played a vital role. Richard explained how Doppler Shift had been employed in smart munitions. Here’s a brain teaser.  A special agent was dropped by parachute behind enemy lines and told he must immediately report his arrival back to his base in England. He had no radio so how did he communicate? First correct answerer is entitled to a cup of coffee at our next CAKE session on April 8th

We viewed a document by G7FEK entitled “HF Antennas For Small Gardens”. It comprises an All band  Off Center Fed inverted L dipole with a 46ft long top and 24 ft high, twin wire feed-line as a vertical radiator; no balun/ transformer involved. We discussed this form of antenna which originates from the original Windom. Craig N6SBN recently constructed one in his small backyard and Ron gave him assistance in tuning it for SWR readings of 1.3:1 on 80 and 40m.  No doubt Craig will report operational performance in due course.

Thanks for your interest, plan on joining us at The Abbey on April 8 th  

73  Ron W6WO