​     I guess it's because I'm fairly young (30-40ish) and I grew up in the 80's and 90's, but I can't hear the word "transformers" without following it up by singing in a somewhat robotic voice - "robots in disguise" (Here is link to a sound clip from the opening credits of the cartoon if you don't know what I'm talking about.)
     As far as HAM radio goes, I'm actually talking about RF transformers, not the robots.  The one I recently bought looks almost as cool (maybe?) as a robot.

     I ended up buying the unun transformer MFJ makes.  I mounted it under the parcel shelf in the trunk of the car, so now it is a simple matter of reaching under and twisting the knob to the location I identified during tuning of the antenna, along with popping on the corrosponding Hamstick.  While I was messing around back there, I also finally put the ferrite beads on the choke that is wound right where the antenna enters the car.  Here are some pictures of what I did:

     The only antenna that I had time to tune up (so far) with the the new unun in place was the 40 meter Hamstick.  Before, the lowest SWR I could get with this antenna was about 1.9:1 which meant I could only use it on the one frequency I tuned it to - not much fun.  Now with the unun in place, the lowest SWR is just over 1:1, and I can cover a pretty decent chunk of the voice portion of 40 meters - yay!  
     I did notice something interesting though - the directions that come from MFJ tell you to tune the antenna for lowest SWR with the unun out of the line first, then put the unun in the line, and switch through the settings until the lowest SWR is found.  My gut told me to do something different, but I followed their directions.  Without the unun in place, I tuned the antenna to the lowest SWR I could get, at about the center of the voice part of the band (7.212).  This was my 1.9:1 SWR.  I then put the unun in line, but the lowest SWR I could find switching through was about 3:1.  Luckily, my antenna analyzer (the RigExpert AA-50) does a graphic sweep, so I could see that there was an SWR dip down to about 1:1 just slightly higher in frequency.  Once I retuned the antenna again, I was all set.  This led me to believe that the directions that come with this unit (the MFJ-907) should follow this format:
 
   1) Tune antenna for lowest SWR without the unun in the line
     2) Put the unun in line, and switch through the settings until you find the new lowest SWR
     3) Re-Tune the antenna for lowest SWR at the desired frequency

     With all that being said, here was my though - before I put the unun in line, should I really be tuning my antenna for lowest SWR, or should I be tuning it for resonance (X=0)?  With my 40 meter Hamstick, lowest SWR and resonance are actaully pretty far from each other.  I don't have the numbers in front of me at the moment, but at 1.9:1 lowest SWR, the reactive part of the impedance was relatively high.  When I scan up and down in frequency on the analyzer looking for the point where the load is all resistance (maybe not all resistance, but as close as can be expected), there was a point higher in frequency that was something over 100 Ohms, pure resistance (so higher than 2:1 SWR) and there was a point much lower in frequency that was about 8 Ohms pure resistance ( higher than 6:1 SWR).
     So now I look to the Elmer's of the world....should I play around a little, and re-tune based on resonance, and then put the unun in line, or should I just be happy that I now have an antenna that "works" on 40 meters in my car?  If I do re-tune based on resonance, should I start from the 6:1 SWR point, where the antenna is longer, or should I start from the just over 2:1 point where the antenna is shorter?
     Even if I don't get answers to my questions, I'll probably play around with all the options, and just see what it does.  I might even download the data from my antenna analyzer and share it here, so that everyone can look at it with me.  Right now thought, it's COLD outside, and I can't really tune a tall HF antenna with the car in my garage, so it might have to wait for a warmer day - at least one above freezing.

​     A week or so ago I had a meeting at my company's main offices.  For those of you who know me, you know that this also means that I was very close to one of the Ham Radio Outlet stores.  Hooray!
​     If you look at my blog post titled "A Failed Experiment" from December 1st, you'll find out that I was not super thrilled with the receive audio in my mobile station.  I took advantage of the proximity to HRO on my recent business trip, to purchase a mobile speaker.  This one actually:

     All I can say is, I wish I had done that earlier.  In previous cars I just assumed that there was no way anything could sound better than the car's built-in audio system.  Now that I am using one of these speakers, I must say that it sounds waaaaay better.  I'm not an audiophile, so I don't know all the fancy terms, but I'm assuming that because this is a communications speaker, it does a better job with the frequencies specific to the spoken voice, when compared to the audio from the car, which is designed for music, AND had some less than optimal "conversions" of the audio to get it to the car in the first place.
     Anyway, since I blocked the access to the funny map pocket in the center console of my car, I stuck the speaker in that empty space.  It works well there, and sounds good, but I'm not sure yet if that will be the permanent location - this is mainly because I had planned on using that space differently in the upcoming "Phase 2" of my mobile shack.  
     Here's a pic of the speaker in its cubby-hole for the curious:

     While I was at HRO I also grabbed some ferrite beads that I needed for my coil of coax that is serving as a choke, à la the method described by KB0G that I referenced in my post back on 12/6/2015.  Maybe I'll be able to sneak some time this week to snap them on......

​Happy Hamming!

     I got plenty of time to play radio in my mobile shack today!  I had about a 7 hour drive (that took closer to 8, with a couple bathroom breaks and a lunch stop).  I started off the drive talking to a local ham, Roy, on one of the repeaters near my house.  It was nice to catch up with him because we hadn't chatted in a while.  We made our first contact a while back, because I heard him mention some things that made me realize that during part of his working career, he worked for the same company I work for now.  Consequently, it is also the same company my father worked at before he retired.  As it turns out, Roy actually worked with my father and knew him pretty well.  I heard Roy on one of the local repeaters during my drive and figured I'd say hello, and let him know I was headed to the buildings that both he and father knew as "HQ", which we now refer to with that loving title of “Corporate."  
     A little further in the drive, I made a couple HF, contacts; one with a ham from Chicago named Dennis.  As it turned out, Dennis was operating portable in a park close to where he lives - conditions must have been decent because we were both running "barefoot" on compromised antenna's - I on my mobile whip and he on a wire he had slung over a tree in the park.  That’s what ham radio is all about!
     After a couple other contacts I jumped onto a local repeater near the end of trip, and was told about a great restaurant by one of the local guys - it was just the thing after the long drive.  If anyone happens to ever be in the Westminster, MA area, I can strongly recommend The Old Mill.
     I'll have more project updates soon, so stay tuned!

     During my last post I mentioned that I was waiting on a couple parts from Amazon (I think I mentioned that....?)  The small items I was waiting on finally arrived at the end of the week last week - yippiee!  Only two of them were actaully from Amazon however....

     For anyone that is curious, the two things that came from Amazon were the ring terminals, and the external tooth washers.  The bix box store by me apparently doesn't carry external tooth washers - only internal, and only in tiny sizes.  The ring terminals I wanted they also only sell in packs of 2 for what I think is a crazy amount, so I bought both of these items online.  The spool is actaully 1 inch wide copper strap from Georgia Copper.  Of all the places I checked, they seemed to have the best deal for the quantity I wanted.  If you want a very good, and extensive article on bonding, check out K0BG's article here.  For the 30 second version, read on.
     Basically, any vertical antenna needs a ground plane.  For mobile VHF/UHF, there is often enought sheet metal to satisfy this, wherever you mount the antenna (as long as it is mounted properly!)  For HF, there is pretty much never enough metal in the car to make a ground plane.  The ground plane ends up being the ground under the car, and the car acts like a kind of capacitor between the antenna and the ground plane, so the more metal the better.  Unfortunately, the way modern cars are built, all the metal parts aren't really connected together that well (as far as RF energy is concerned) so we have to help it out, by bonding the various metal parts of the car together.  For my car this project was two straps between the hood and the front fenders, two straps across the trunk hinges, 1 strap on each of the 4 passenger doors, and a strap from the engine block to the frame.  I also wanted to put straps on the exhaust, but I don't fit under this car like I did my last one!  The exhaust straps will have to wait till I can borrow a jack and some jack stands from my buddy (or sneak my car onto the lift at his work - he's an auto mechanic).
     Here are just a couple of the pictures of my bonding straps, and my fancy soldering method for putting these together.  For soldering these I do a quick and dirty method.  Since there is no insulation to worry about melting, I don't really to worry about getting the parts just a little too hot.....

     With that done, it was time to tune up my Ham Sticks.  Between the straps and the antenna tuning, I put a 9 hour day into it!  The bad news....I am getting ignition noise on my receive audio on HF (VHF/UHF is fine).  Luckily the noise blanker on my transceiver knocks it right out, but I have a couple things I want to exeperiment with to see if I can get rid of it without relying on DSP.

1. Getting the Bonding straps on the exhaust.  The exhaust on cars can act like a giant antenna, and re-radiate noise.  Bonding stops this.  If I'm lucky, the noise I'm hearing is re-radiated from the exhaust, and will go away at that point.
2. Playing around with my engine strap.  The bonding strap on the engine is a bit longer than I would prefer, so there is a slight chance that it is causing more problems than it is solving.  I might play around with taking it off, and/or finding a different place to put it so it can be much shorter.
3. Finish the RF choke on my coax.  When I installed the antenna, right where the antenna is mounted I put 6 turns of coax.  I still need to add a ferrite bead or 2 in order to make this choke more effective at knocking down common mode currents, which can also cause some noise issues.

For now though, I have working HF!  I even spent a little time with a dummy load connected, and watching the meters bounce while I adusted my mic gain.  Now I just need a few spare minutes to actaully make a contact!  Is anybody free to help me with a test run tomorrow?  If so, you might hear me calling CQ somewhere on 20 meters.

     So whats next on the agenda?  What about the home shack?  See below:

1. A trip to HRO, or an online order to get a speaker (See my failed experiment post)
2. A couple additional antenna toys that I plan to get and install (stay tuned for this)
3. A CB radio & antenna install (because I spend a lot of time on the highway, a CB is still nice to have for talking to the truckers to find out whats up with weird traffic)
4. "Phase 2" of the mobile install - plans to be revealed when I finish items 1, 2, and 3 above.
5. The Home Shack - no actual physical progress here.  My "home project" time has been used up on trying to button up the trim in the new master bedroom, and working on the new master bathroom (projects left over from the addition we did a while back.)  Once those are done, my efforts will go back down to the concrete cube in my basement.

​73!

     So.....I'm not entirely pleased with my plan B for the receive audio portion of my mobile shack.  If you read my earlier posts, you'll see that I was shocked to find out that my 2016 Ford Fusion does not have a standard 1/8" Aux input for the stero like all of my prior Fords did (a 2012 Fusion, a 2013 Fusion Hybrid, a 2014 Fusion Hybrid, and a 2015 Escape.)  Why the folks at Ford would have taken this out of the newer model, I have no idea - but I'm stuck with it.  
     My plan B, that I am using now, is a bluetooth adapter that plugs into the 857d's audio output, and then transmits the audio via bluetooth to the Ford Sync Bluetooth Audio input.  Here's what I'm finding I don't like about this arrangement:
     1.  For some reason the Bluetooth Module never connects back up to the car right away, even if it was the last device I was using.  Also, for some reason, it only seems to work if some other bluetooth signal was already communicating with the car first.  This means that every time I get in the car I have to turn on the little bluetooth module, connect my phone via bluetooth audio to the car so that it starts playing music through the bluetooth stream, then I have to switch the bluetooth source from my phone to the module, while playing, before I can hear the receive audio.  That's a lot of screwing around before I even get out of the driveway!
     2.  The bluetooth module needs to be charged every so often, or used while plugged in to USB power.  No biggie I thought - there is a 12v power jack behind the location that I mounted the remote head.  I figured I could just plug everything in, and leave it plugged in.  NOT!  The noise that is introduced in the audio while the bluetooth module is charging is horrific!  this means that I can't use it and charge it at the same time, unless I want to listen to all kinds of noise on my receive audio.
     3.  The audio quality is noticeably worse through the bluetooth module.  If I tune the car's radio to an FM broadcast station, and then tune my 857d to receive the same broadcast FM station, the sound quality is noticeably worse when I switch back and forth between the two.  
     4.  The audio through the bluetooth is delayed.  I'm used to pushing a button on the radio and getting an instant beep, confirming my button push.  Going through the bluetooth, there is about a 1/2 second delay.  

     While I'm sure I could adjust to item 4, the combination of all of these things made me decide to attempt Plan C. 

       So, I was skeptical about plan C from the start, but I stumbled on these things while poking around Amazon.  They are basically ment to be a small USB sound card, so I figured it would only work when connected to a PC.  This one in particular though, said that it was completely plug and play, and would work without the need to install drivers in a very extensive list of operating systems, inluding various forms of Linux.  Maybe, just maybe, the SYNC operting system is based on one of those operating systems? As a bonus, someone had actaully asked the question (as you can do through Amazon) "Does this work in a car?"  To which there were various versions of the answer "Yes."  Several of these yes answers were more like "It should" or "I wouldn't see why not" but it was worth a try, right?  This little guys does have a mono mic input, so I figured I would try connecting the radio's audio output (which is mono) to the mic input on this guy (which is mono) and then I would plug this thing into the USB port for the Sync system that is designed to take audio from an iPod or MP3 player or something similar.  I plugged it all in, fired up the radio, hit the button for USB input and got this message: 
     "Unsupported Device"
Darn.  
​     I quickly jumped on the Amazon listing and added my answer to the question - as someone with personal experience - this will NOT work with a car - at least not a Ford with Sync.

     As much as I wanted to run the audio through the car's audio system, I think I'm just going to move to Plan D.  I'm just going to by one of the small communications speakers, and stick it in the empty space behind the radio control head.  It will be hidden from sight, but I should be able to hear it just fine.  Besides, if I do that I'll be able to listen to Broadcast or Sirius radio AND monitor the Amature airwaves at the same time!  Does anyone have any suggestions for a mobile speaker?  I'm considering the standard Yeasu model, because it gets decent reviews, and is reasonably priced, at less than $50  from HRO.