Our fourth build project is something I was really excited to get into, and ended up spending an inordinate amount of time on. A transmatch, antenna tuner or ATU: Antenna Tuning Unit. I will try to be consistent in using transmatch. Part of the reason for choosing a transmatch is that it ties in directly […]
CARDPUTER ADV + QMX for FT8 on the go
I have been searching for a reliable FT8-portable option for over a year. Purists will ask why, and my answer is that I am still CW illiterate, and there are just some times I am on a summit and it takes me over an hour of calling CQ to get my 4 contacts (SOTA). FT8 […]
Traps: An experimental SOTA vertical triband.
Traps are a divisive topic, with many hams saying they are inefficient, even though many commercial multi-band antennas use them. Whether they are inefficient or not, with portable operating there are many kinds of ways to measure efficiency: Radiated power (or how much power is lost in the antenna)Footprint (or how much space you need […]
All Portable Discussion Zone group build #1
On our second podcast gathering we launched our first group build project. We are building a signal generator, a sine-wave oscillator that should cover the HF ham bands. We are using the Soldersmoke Podcast Discord server for the group builds, mostly because there are a lot of people on there who are a lot better […]
Mosley traps: another look.
I recently acquired a second Mosley triband, this one has the higher power traps and – more importantly – it is complete. The Mosley that I have been using for the past year has been shaken by wind and probably mostly birds, and the director is not parallel to the other elements, so it needs […]