Getting Back on the Air

I was granted my ham radio license (KC7AVA) back in January of 1994, and spent many pleasurable hours on the air making contacts with other amateur radio operators around the US and occasionally the world. Using my Kenwood TS-450S, a Butternut vertical antenna, and more often than not, my dad’s Vibroplex bug, I would enjoy hand-copying the steady stream of “dits” and “dahs” from a distant Morse code contact and doing my best to send clean copy back.

Vibroplex morse code bug

My rig: Kenwood TS-450S

Once children came along and we moved to Monroe more than 10 years ago, the radio gear remained packed away, waiting for that elusive “some day” with a bit more time to tinker and figure out how to get an antenna up in a residential neighborhood. In late 2004 I finally decided to try getting back on the air. I built a short dipole antenna and strung it up in the attic, running the feed line down to the garage where I set up the radio on my work bench. To my disappointment, I couldn’t hear much of anything and never made a contact with that setup.

Shortly thereafter we moved out to the country, an ideal location for setting up a station, but the house was pretty small and I kept thinking I’d run power out to the old geodesic dome structure that sat on the property and set up a ham shack in there. But I never did, and after we had twins we moved back into a larger house in a quiet residential neighborhood up on the hill above the Monroe fair grounds.

Our place out on Old Owen Road had lots of ham radio potential – but it was not to be

The next few years were very busy with work, family, and church life merging into a continuous stream of activity, especially with two toddlers seemingly getting into as much mischief as possible. I didn’t think too much about the radio, until a few months ago when I stumbled upon the Ham Nation podcast. Ever since getting my Windows Phone, I’d been enjoying listening to the various TWiT network podcasts such as Tech News Today and Windows Weekly on my commute or while doing chores around the house. One day while mowing the lawn I decided to try Ham Nation and it immediately kindled a nostalgia for the “good old days” of soldering PL259 connectors, working contacts late into the night on Field Day with the Radio Club of Tacoma, sitting down with a cup of coffee in the morning and tuning around to see if the band was opening up. I decided to dust off my trusty Kenwood and get back on the air one way or another.

I set up the radio down in the basement and started making slow but steady progress toward getting the station operational. The first step was to install a decent ground. With my friend Wilson’s help we pounded an 8-foot copper-clad stake into the ground right outside the basement and ran some 6-gauge copper wire between it and the radio. Next I started working on an antenna design. The kids had fun helping me take measurements out in the yard, and I drew a plan on paper for a 40-meter dipole which I figured I could tune up on at least some of the other bands with the TS450’s antenna tuner.

I suppose I should have drawn the antenna design on a napkin to be truly authentic

While poking around online, I came upon this great article and examples of the “Ugly Balun” and decided I would build one for  my dipole. After getting 150 feet of RG213 from Vetco near work along with PL259 connectors and some decent solder, I was ready to build the balun. I had a lot of fun putting it together out in the garage with the kids helping out.

4” PVC and RG213	Winding the 21’ of coax
Securing coax with cable ties	So239 installed
Preparing the coax	Adding a solder lug
Connecting the coax to the SO239	Taping the leads
Eye-bolt antenna terminals installed	Time to wire up the terminals
Unbraiding the dielectric took time!	All wired up

The KC7AVA Ugly Balun – ready to go!

The next weekend I finished up the antenna, adding two 34-foot legs of 12 gauge solid-core copper wire – a bit more than I needed so I could trim up the antenna to get it resonant once I raised it, targeting a frequency of 7.1Mhz.

Six year old Liam was my main helper getting the antenna up in the back yard the first day. After stringing it up low to the ground and connecting it to the radio I was encouraged to hear some decent signals, including a bit of 40-meter CW (Morse code). Not anything too strong and even AM stations weren’t exactly booming in, but at least I was receiving. I checked the SWR and it was way off, but after re-measuring and shortening up the ends, I got a nice 1.5:1 on my target frequency.

Later that day I climbed into a cedar tree along the East side of the property and hung the ugly balun. As darkness fell I pulled the antenna legs down into an inverted vee and tied them off. The center was probably at about 50 feet with the ends 20 feet or so off the ground. A big grin spread across my face when I flipped the radio on and tried my usual “initial” receiving tests: AM stations and the UTC time stations out of Fort Collins, Colorado. They were loud and clear, the strongest I’d ever heard them. I quickly jumped to 40-meters and as I tuned around I heard signal after strong signal, both CW and voice (phone). After listening to a few QSOs I moved to 7.1 and sent a test Morse code message. The antenna SWR was nearly a perfect 1:1! That evening I made a couple local contacts (John, K7KHW and Bruce, KF7NRW) on 10 meters and confirmed that I was getting out ok. My first HF contacts since 1998!

The next day after church I got to work finishing the antenna installation. My intention was to move the dipole legs so that they would be less visible. On a whim I decided to move the balun higher up and after clipping it to my belt I started climbing. I kept going and going until the trunk of the cedar was getting thin and I was swaying around a bit more than I liked. I heard shouts from below as the kids discovered me way up in the tree top. I secured the balun at what I’m guessing is around 100 feet up in the tree. The next several hours were spent trying to figure out how to get the antenna legs raised in a respectable configuration. With so many other trees around and the center so high, I needed to get the wires up and over the adjacent tree branches so I could pull them out away from the center. After trying and failing with a variety of approaches, including casting fishing line into the tree tops from the ground, I managed to get each leg pulled out far enough away to make a decent inverted vee shape. The southern leg of the antenna would up coming down over a branch, being pulled into a dog-leg but I figured that wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Hot, scratched, tired, and a little apprehensive about what all that tugging of wires around branches might have done, I headed back in to test the antenna. To my delight and relief, the signals I was getting were even stronger than before, really nice and clear. Testing out the SWR, I noticed that the resonance of the antenna had moved up a bit and I was at 1.5:1 instead of the desired 1:1, which was the only disappointment.

I tuned around on 10 meters and suddenly heard a call from T32C – which a quick search revealed to be a DXPedition on Christmas Island in East Kiribati, 4,500 miles away! He had quite a pile-up and wasn’t able to hear me, but I was just excited to have such a clear copy on the distant station.

A couple days later in the evening I heard T32C again, and this time I made contact. I received a 59 signal report, meaning my signal was booming in strong to the distant island. It was my first long-distance (DX) contact since 1998, making it extra sweet and really confirming, in my own mind at least, that I was finally back up and running.

Monroe to Christmas Island: 4,500 miles

Christmas Island

Of course with amateur radio there are always many projects ahead, but for now I plan to enjoy my current station, working contacts on 10 meter phone and brushing up on my Morse code skills so I can start making CW contacts on the lower bands. I’m studying for my General class license, which will open up a lot more bandwidth for me to work, and several of the kids have already expressed interest in learning more, and maybe getting started with the Technician license.

73 de KC7AVA

My station – back on the air