Ham On A Bike

Earlier this spring I did a Blog about taking advantage of the warmer temperatures in the U.S. to do antenna maintenance and construction.  One of my plans was to deploy a Kite Antenna. However, weather conditions have presented wind speeds above the Kite's ratings with lots of severe weather days or days with low wind speeds. As a result, I have had to altered those plans. But fear not; that only leads me to build another antenna.  I have a saying about antenna. They are like underwear. You can NEVER have TOO MANY. As I look back over my Ham Radio years I wish I had  built more of my antenna  as a Novice. There is nothing wrong with purchasing commercial made antenna but building your own gives one a better understanding of how that antenna works and quite frankly how antenna work in general.  I have purchased a handful of commercial manufactured ham radio antenna over the years but prefer to build my own when possible. With today's U.S. Ham Radio License struc...

   In May 2023, I purchased a 40 - 15 meter Mini Tuner Kit from QRPGuys. I didn't get around to assembling it until July 2023 which was likely not the right time for me to be building things.  For me, the summer months are the height of my bicycling and portable ham radio activities. It was an easy simple build less than an hour assembly.  The chart below show the amount of wire needed for 40 - 15 meter.       I had over 500' of 26 AWG wire so that was not an issue. I cut 100' of wire and started the process of building and marking the wire per each band and for the counterpoise.  I cut 72' for the total length to fold back for each band and a 28' counterpoise.  I found this approach very tedious and cumbersome. I spent the better part of two days while doing POTA activations trying to construct a wire to my satisfaction. At the time I found it was taking too much time away from my operating fun and put it all away. Fast forward to May 2...