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I had the day off work today, but with the hectic life in a house where the kids are 5 and 1, I didn't get to do much Radio. We did run some errands, so I got to spin the dial a little bit from the mobile, but there's not much to talk about on that front today.

For me, the exciting radio activities for the day were in between other tasks, and after everyone went to bed. Earlier today, while my YL was picking up our daughter from school, I had the chance to add a couple more pieces to the sound card interface I've been playing with. I'll write more about that in another post because I made a couple fun little tweaks to it. Later on, after everyone went to bed, I finally put a cord on my new paddles:

I'm actually sitting in the airport, just before 5:30am as I write this post. I'm traveling for work today, but like I always do, I'm taking Radio stuff with me!
I actually reorganized my packing for this trip. Firstly, my big stuff and work equipment I broke down into 2 cases, because I found out (after 2 years of doing this!) that it is cheaper to check 2 bags at 50lbs each, then to check 1 overweight bag. That means this trip is costing less for baggage, and I could bring a couple extra bits and pieces!

I also re-organized my "personal item" that I carry on the plane with me. It's a standard case, but slightly bigger than the laptop sized one I used to carry. This lets me be a little more organized with my stuff, and actually makes it easier to pop the body of my 867d in and out of the box quicker, since it has to go through the x-ray machine in it's own tray. The new layout is organized like this:

It's all tucked in there with pick-n-pluck foam to keep things nice and cozy!

     Sometimes things just work out.  In some cases it just seems like patience is the key, and in some cases it is just a combination of good timing and the camaraderie of ham radio.  While this is by no means a technical post, good fortune struck twice in one day in my little corner of the world, so I figured I would share!

     First, in my post about my built-from-junk antenna mast that I am working on, I mentioned that where that project currently stands, I am looking for some HDPE plastic (the same stuff cutting boards are made from) in about 1/2" thickness. Since it is a goal to make that mast from mostly re-purposed, junk, or free stuff, I figured I would sit on it, put out a request to the universe at large, and at some point I figured I'd come across an old beat up cutting board or something similar. Well, my waiting paid off and I found 2 pieces of HDPE plastic that are just big enough to be able to use.  Guess where I found them.......in my basement!  I thought I had thrown out my scraps from the last project I used this material on, but apparently I had actually put them in the re-purpose pile, and had just forgotten about them!  For you that means you'll soon get to read about my next steps in that project.

     The second item of good fortune that happened today, actually worked the other way around.  I had a few moments this evening, so I was working on programming the radio's that were part of my future operator #1's christmas gift (more on that to come in future posts, but for christmas I got a GMRS license and a couple rigs in need of some love for us to work on together.)  Anyway, the programming was done, so I wanted to test the antenna she built, and put one of the radio's on the air to see how the audio sounded etc.  While looking for the connectors and some other tidbits in the garage I came across one of the small metal pieces that connects the whip for a hamstick to the bottom fiberglass part.  I remember where it came from....I had sacrificed a 10 meter hamstick to a low bridge early on in my HF mobile experiments, and this was one of the only surviving bits. 
     Regardless, as I held it, I looked at it and asked myself "why am I keeping this?"  After all, it's one of those things that can quickly make for a full junk drawer, and we've been going through an effort to de-clutter in our house.  Not wanting to delay progress however, I tossed it back in the box, and moved on.
     Now, here is the interesting part of the story - I rarely turn on my VHF/UHF or HT radio's at night.  Most of the time I don't want to wake a sleeping child, and when that's not a concern, I usually gravitate toward HF at this time of night.  Since I was working on a little UHF radio though, I turned on my HT, figuring I'd use it to receive what I was transmitting, so that I could hear how my TX audio sounded on the rig for my little helper.  When I turned the HT on, it was still on the local repeater frequency, and I just happened to hear one of the local hams - W3CWE, mention that he was working on piecing together something for 10 meters, and he had the base of a hamstick, and a whip, but he didn't have the piece to connect them together.....what are the odds of that?!  I quickly jumped into the conversation and told him that I'd drop off just the part he was looking for.
     It seems like all I had to do was ask the universe "why am I keeping this?" out loud.  The vibrations of stuff that holds the universe together must have propagated the question quite well this evening, because less than 5 minutes later the universe answered - or it was just lucky timing.  Either way you choose to look at it, this boils down to hams helping hams, which I feel is one of the most important parts of our hobby.  Hows that for good vibrations?

     So, my YL has this thing she says about "putting things out there in the universe" and then being patient.  This week I got started on a project because of something I had left hanging out there in the universe, so maybe there is something to it after all....

     Those of you who follow along with my posts know that I have a Buddipole Mast/Antenna system that I use fairly often during portable operations.  It's great, especially when I'm flying somewhere for work, because it packs up pretty small.  There are times though when I'm driving somewhere that I'd like a taller mast.  I've spent a lot of time surfing around the web, and had kind of decided on a certain model of fiberglass mast that I liked because it seemed sturdy, had strong looking clamps to hold the sections, and depending on the model, had a top section that I could fit one of the pieces of my buddipole stuff onto, in order to use it with my buddipole parts if I wanted.  The drawback was the price.  It wasn't that expensive, but I just hadn't been able to get myself to pull the trigger.

     Cue the universe....

     I was in the Hudson Valley for work, and while on one of our jobsites I saw a pole standing in the corner with our guys equipment that looked strikingly like the masts I had been eyeballing, so I asked what it was.  They said they used to use it reach high stuff, but that the end was busted up, and they didn't use it anymore, and that they just hadn't gotten around to throwing it away.  I quickly offered to take it off their hands.

 
     It wasn't as tall as the one I was looking at, and was a bit rough in a couple spots, but is was free!  I figured I could try it out, and if I really liked it maybe I would buy the same thing, but taller.  To start, they were right about the end being busted up.  The fiberglass on the top was split, but only about 3 inches down.  My miter saw made quick work of that, so even though it was now 3" shorter, I had a good solid top.   I also noticed that the bottom section had a largish hole drilled in it for some reason (you can see that in the picture above).  I figured I would think up something to do about that along the way.  ​

     Since this was a free thing, I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to peice this together, but I decided to just let this one kind of "fall together" and see what happened.  The top section was 1.25" in diamater, so I didn't really have anything that would fit around that to adapt to my buddipole stuff, so at first I was thinking I'd just put an eye bolt through the top and use it to support the center of dipole, or wire etc.  Suddenly however, I remembered that in the scrap metal pile in the garage I had a broom handle from a no longer used broom, that had the same thread on the end as a painters pole:

     My Buddipole stuff does have an adapter to mount it's parts onto a painters pole, so I decided to try to re-purpose this, and make it so that this would be on the top of my mast, and then maybe I could give myself options - this to thread stuff onto, an eye bolt or 2 in order to hold it and also act as accessory places to hook wires or guys to, etc.  With that thought in mind I quickly chopped the top 18" or so off this handle, so that I had the business end available.

     Unfortunately, this handle didn't really fit snug in any manner that was convenient right away:

     What I needed was some way to hold this pole centered inside the top of the mast, while I figured out some way to permanently attach it so that it wouldn't move.  Step 1, center the handle in the mast, with just the thread sticking out the top.  That problem was easily solved with several wraps of electrical tape - just enough to make the fit snug:

     With the pole then inside, and the threads sticking out, I could see that I was getting somewhere:

     To start filling the gap, I grabbed two tubes of this stuff (Loctite Epoxy), and figured I could use it to fill the void, which would help to lock the handle in place and make the top part stiffer, giving me the option to clamp things around the mast as well, without fear of crushing the fiberglass:

     The thought is that once the epoxy cures, I would drill through the fiberglass mast, epoxy, and handle in 2 spots, and put eye bolts through.  I haven't gotten that done yet because it turns out that two tubes wasn't enough to completely fill the gap, so i'll need to grab more.  The thought here is that this will give me 2 spots to hook things too, and will also prevent the handle inside the mast from rotating.  

     My mind next turned to that hole in the bottom section.  More than just the ugliness of it, I worried that it would make a weak spot where the mast would potentially break.  The bottom section of the mast is 2" in diameter, so pretty quickly I thought that a sleeve of 2" PVC (PVC is sized by inside diameter) would be nice to slide over it and act like a splint.  Queue the universe again.  While I was debating purchasing a whole section of 2" PVC just to get a few inches of it, my work took me to the basements of some old buildings, that had piles of junk laying around in them.  What do you suppose just happened to be lying in one of those junk piles?  That right - a short section of 2" PVC!  

     I haven't cut it to length or permanently attached it yet, but here you can see how nicely it slides over that bottom section:

     So what comes next?  Well, I need to attach the PVC, and finish filling in the top at a minimum.  Before I do that though, I'd like to make a couple guy rings to attach guy ropes to.  The bottom one I want to slide on before I attach the PVC, as it will end up floating between the top of the PVC and the bottom of the first clamp.  The second one I plan on putting on the top section, so that it floats between the top clamp, and the eye hooks.  I had some HDPE flying around here from other projects, which would have been a perfect material to cut these out of, but apparently I used it all up, so here's my next request universe.....I could really use a couple old beat-up plastic cutting boards......

     I'll update everyone once I finish this, but so far I'm only into it for about $11.  since this is an 18' mast, that makes it about 61 cents per foot.  Not bad considering the commerial option I was looking at, while much taller, worked out to be $4.27 per foot....

     Hello 2017!

     Many people make New Year's Resolutions part of the their annual rountine this time of year.  I've never been one for doing that, and most years haven't even considered making "resolutions."  I think the practice tends to mostly just set people up for failure.  So this year, in spite of the title of this post, I'm once again not going to make any resolutions!
     With that out of my system however, I think I will make some radio "goals" for the year.  The difference between a goal and a resolution is this - a resultion has a definate pass/fail connotation.  A goal is simply something we strive for - if we don't meet it, we still did a lot along the way that we wouldn't have otherwise, so met or no, you usually accomplish more than if you had done nothing!

     So, without any additional fanfair, here are my 2017 Ham Radio Goals:

     We'll (hopefully!) remember to revisit this list at the end of 2017 to see how I did!  What are some of your 2017 Radio Goals?  Leave a comment and let us all know!