Hamfests circa 2020

I went to the club near my second house, intention to retire to, down in Sierra Vista, AZ this weekend and picked up a couple of toys.. I should be selling... But no, I bought... I did manage to get a couple of decent deals.  I joined the club too, lucky them... 

Of course one of them was a Zerofive GP1040 antenna which is the smaller version... 27 ft radiator or 29 ft overall of the 43' vertical that I am building at the place, but with an elevated ground structure TIG welded to the base insulator.  It will be interesting to compare it with the many ground radial (so far 71 and I do intend to get to 120) also non resonant 43' vertical I have been building from tubing from an unfinished project in Iowa.  The difference from past HF ground mounted verticals with only 32 or less radials is pretty remarkable, honestly, so far and due to, I am not kidding, 40 MPH plus winds for the last 8 weekends or so, I only have 16.5' up for a 1/4 wave  (resonant) on 20m. The higher bands were cooperative the last few weekends so I know at least on 20m and up the radial field is a winner so far.   First and only contact so far on that and my Chinese Xiegu was of course Moscow because I do have that sort of dark sense of humor. 

Yes--the Zerofive is built like a brick outhouse just like everyone claims.  The sad thing is that the mounting pipe and concrete from the Home Despot will cost more than the antenna did at the 'fest.  

I want to see if the six 100" radius elevated radials are as good as so many NEC modelers claim (they haven't been in the past in my experience especially compared to what I now have).  And if not that thing will probably end up ground mounted and extended to 33' as a committed 40m antenna.  So the impulse buy of that antenna that I probably really didn't need was a good one likely long term.

Anyway though, I am 53 years old now and am trying to buy toys in advance of retirement.  I am starting to wonder if I will be the guy who turns off the lights with ham radio, and with many other good things in life.  I still am one of the youngest people at these events.  Radio to me is still black magic, and it's a lot like the railroads.  The utility will always be there.   So will the black magic... 

I just don't know if the hobby still will be there.  I don't know how to get younger people interested either.  It doesn't even give you the slightest bit of advantage now in hiring as an engineer like it used to.  It's probably a detriment now as that flags you as being old. 

So you OMs out there need to hold on a bit longer so I still have someone to work in 5 to 10 years, record inflation notwithstanding, maybe longer until I do retire. 

I love to build more than operate so that is largely what I have done in my limited free time.  Hopefully that can change in the next few to hopefully not several years. 

The hamfest was fun and good.  The club down there is extremely well organized and has a great spread for emergency comms and a clubhouse and antennas that are enviable. 

But I tell ya, it's no Peoria IL Superfest circa 1989... Not even Peoria IL was 15 years ago.

I can't imagine what they were like in the Golden days like the late 50s through early 70s.

Well, maybe I can.  A lot of the same equipment is still for sale at today's hamfests.

I am starting to resurrect my amateur satellite equipment, and also not like the golden days which I did experience, I kinda miss it but there really isn't a lot of interesting stuff up there now.  Enough to justify the project though.  

So I am starting to build a K3NG rotator control to replace the FODTrack (dates me right?  Not like the stuff YOU were selling at the hamfest, though!) that I had attached to the G-5500 control box.  I will have more on that mañana... Nice software but the sheer amount of compilation options gave me the tics... 

73 for now... Fred W0FMS/7

The internet is scary and so are 43' verticals

 I disappeared for about, what 11 years, and just looking at this, I was able to log in with my Google Account.  So hmm.. Maybe I will bring it back. 

My free time for ham radio, which was never a lot really slowed down around ten years ago. My now adult kids became most of my life around then, work got worse, and what little I did post ended up on Facebook groups.

Like many people, I started to get shadow banned and get periodic 24 hour bans for saying stuff that wasn't bad about a year ago. My political views by any norms are mostly harmless but still I started to get in trouble there.  The final straw for me was saying "If I told you I would have to kill you" to a comment, totally in a positive context too... In my line of work that's something you jokingly hear at least once a week. It got me the last 24 hour ban that Facebook will ever give me. 

They then a couple of weeks later tried to recruit me via LinkedIn.  It's the only time in my life I explained why it was a big no. 

I did try to get back on as a regular at AmateurRadio.com but despite Matt the editor saying he'd restore a login for me, it never happened.  Just as well, even that was about a year ago and right after that I had a year of major disasters.  You probably had a bad 2021, but I assure you that I had it worse.

About 5 years ago I moved to Southern Arizona for a new job, and have more or less been in HOA hell.  I mitigated it somewhat by becoming the HOA secretary and luckily we are in a subdivision that's not militant about it.

I also just bought what is a weekend place that hopefully I will retire to eventually about 45 miles SSE as the crow flies from my house in Corona de Tucson.  12 AC, enough for a 550' Beverage again if I desire.  I had enough Aluminum tubing to start on a 43' vertical. I actually have 71 radials down this time for the first time.  Various lengths.  Only 16.5' up because it's been windy every weekend for like the last 8, and I don't have rope guy points in yet.

Brought my Xiegu G90 there and finally hooked it up two weekends ago.  First qso on that rig and antenna (and it's not even done) was to  R5AJ in Moscow.  On a Chinese rig..10w pep SSB is what I set it to for "official QRP".  I do stuff like that because I have a dark sense of humor.  The bands are coming back.  I think cycle 25 is going to be at least 23 intensity, the current predictions are wrong... Too low.. 

I will detail that and some other stuff I am working on in the next several weeks.

Why is a 43' vertical 43 feet?  It's 5/8 wave on 20m, and long enough for 30m and 40m.  Without top loading of some sort its dicey on 80m. But you get some additional low angle gain on 20m and the pattern is quarter wave ish on 60m (it is almost a quarter wave there), 40m, and 30m.

With that antenna being so hyped its sometimes hard to get that basic information. It's non resonant everywhere except for 60m where it's "almost" resonant.

Where my build is different is that I am trying to mark the quarter wave points so with my tilt over base I built I can easily change it to a, quarter wave from 40 to 15m or so.  Anything higher than that a dipole on a stick would be better. 

I am not going to do a tower again.  And the scrub in the high desert is velvet mesquites.  They don't get very tall.  So for below 20m it's gonna be verticals this time for sure.

I have less land at the new place than I did in Iowa but I don't have to lease any of it out for farming which put a bigger cramp into the ham radio antenna field than I ever imagined.  It's why I had aluminum tubing in a bag and never up.

Ciao for now. 

Fred W0FMS/7