Thank you, excellent suggestion and it works great. I just tried and this IS the fastest process yet. On the FT-710, go into the following menus. "operating setting" "TX General" "AM Max power", set to "10W" now I only need to change mode to tune and change back to operate. this is VERY fast.
If you want to activate a tuner and your radio tuner combination won't do this relatively automatically. put the radio in CW mode and use a cheap key or even a switch to activate TX. Use a better key, of course, if operating CW. AM carriers are annoying and not legal for some frequencies.
I'm pro-details. You also kept it moving along. At my point in radio education, everything you discussed was both interesting and accessible. Thanks for taking the time to make the video
For your temporary water seal, a balloon or condom with the coax pushed through so that it is covering the connection and then with your electrical tape wrapping it and sealing it on the ends, will help with excluding any water.
I use a similar antenna to this for both portable and at my home. The portable station was the first one that I set up and that uses a 12m fibreglass pole with a wire running up it and an MAT40 auto ATU at the base. The mast slots into a drive-on mast support. I did need to put common-mode chokes on both the control and coax lines to get over some issues with RF getting back into the radio - the control cable seemed to be the main cause of issues. The MAT-40 works well with my FT-857 and one morning I managed to work a JA station from UK on 15m so decided to deploy something similar at home. It works well on most bands and will tune nicely. The radial system is just 4x10m of wire. It takes about 10-15 mins to set up . The home system is based on the same 12m Spiderbeam pole but with an SGC autotuner rather than a MAT-40 as I am using it with a Kenwood TS-990 and an FT-847 so wanted an ATU which didn't have a need for a CAT/Tune interface and just senses RF. The ground system is similar. The SGC can also handle more power than the MAT tuner and plays nicely with the 200W from the Kenwood. The TS-990 has a few user configurable buttons so I have one set up to run 10W CW to allow the tuner to tune and achieves a match in a second or so. With the Yaesu I do tend to drop power. The overall performance is not bad. It is a little long for 10m but will tune on all bands and have managed to work into Germany on 160m although the sweet spot seems to be between 30m and 15m.
hahahaha, thats why Ham Radio seems like is designed for retired people. 4 hours setting up an antenna for portable!!!!!! wow, I don't have 4 hours to just play radio! Great build, that for me will be a home base forever installation! By the way, that's the beauty of fan verticals like DX Commander, put it up and no tuning, yes, less bandwidth but no tuning, I personally prefer the no tuning, probably just tap it up with the radio tuner. by the way, the place where you are camping looks amazing!
Great informative video. I really enjoyed watching it. Remember, that antenna is a 5/8 wave vertical on 20 meters which offers a low angle of radiation on that band. Great for working DX, as you showed. Just a note of radials..... all of your radials come into play on any band you operate on. You don't have 4 radials for 20 meters. You have numerous radials on 20 meters. Interesting remote ATU. If you would place an MFJ-929 tuner at the base, put it in a waterproof enclosure and place a T-Bias in the camper, you would not have to turn the power down. It's made to handle this condition. Put the 710 in the RTTY mode and key the mike. The 929 will tune. Also, since you mentioned that at one point the SWR did not go down below 2 to 1, the 929 will get you to a perfect match all of the time. Portable? Oh My ! I can't do that on the fly. Great for a long term stay, but for an afternoon of fun, like when I set up, too much. You are at an ideal location, no mountains in the way. I'd do the same if I had an open area and still had my camper. Again, great job in more ways than one. Barry G. Kery, KU3X
Big fan of verticals here. I routinely reach Europe with a 20m ham stick in a magnetic mount sitting on a water tank in my yard and 100W. I've even had contacts in Moscow with the water tank special. That half baked set-up has been so successful that my finger is on the trigger to buy a DX commander. 73.
If you are in a quiet zone or area there is nothing better than a vertical to reach out and touch someone. By increasing the diameter of the driven element the bandwidth is increased but it does lower the resonance a bit. If your in town or city, verticals can be a little noisier than a dipole. Good video thank you.
I've often thought about using a 43' vertical. After watching this, I may have to figure out how to support one and put down the long radials in my very limited space. thanks for a great video.
Great information, Kevin. I made a 7-band homebrew version of the DX Commander and that's what I use for my camping setup for doing POTA particularly the Support Your Parks weekends. It only takes about 15 minutes to setup and teardown and it works great. I only use 20 12 foot radials (4 bundles of 5 wires) and it works great for me. 73 de Bill, N6EF.
Nice! For 20+ years I have been running a 18ft vertical dipole with (auto) adjustable center loading on each leg. 1 inch aluminum tube. Very portable because it doesn't need any support other than the base and it breaks down with thumb screws in to 4 parts. For the most part I don't need a tuner for 40 meters to 6 meters. My favorite setup but I'm always interested in trying other options.
I like building antennas so this is right up my alley. I've had a FT-710 for a couple of months to use as my portable to replace my FT-891. I love the 710. One of my permanent antennas is a DX Commander Classic w/80m. It's been up for 2 years, survived 100mph straight line winds a few months ago, and I've only taken it down twice for routine maintenance. I have limited space for radials so I cut 32 three meter radials 360 degrees around the base. It's a great DX antenna. Although a little noisy I can hear stations with it that I can't hear with any of my other antennas. BTW I run an FTdx-10 in the shack. Thanks for the great video. I like the details.
Thanks for the run through on your FD setup. I did get a QSL with you on FD with my club’s call sign WG6OTA. You sounded great to CA and I could definitely recognize your voice. BTW, we were running my BuddiHex. It’s takes a while to setup and only does 20m and up but, the entire respective bands were flat @ 1.5:1 or less. Again, it was nice to hear you on the air.
Wonderful set up! and instruction. Thanks! Field testing is a great way to learn and just have fun with the gear. My caveat to field testing in Texas is it's difficult in summer. Today, it's 97˚ and it's 11:30 am. High of 111˚
Look what they used on large ships in the early days and up to WW2, also on some long wave land stations, they used hexagonal or octagonal clusters of wires in parallel, the wider the antenna element the wider the bandwidth. a cluster of wires simulates a meter plus wide element. A three wire cluster should be quite useful for hobby mobile usage.
Kevin, Great video! I love my FT710 it is a great buy and great radio. I have been wanting to play with a 43' vertical and the remote tuner is the wat to go but it does look to be a pain. Our Poseidon antenna has been doing greta kind of the same concept but only 25' tall. Thanks for sharing!
I saw your video that converted to the ft710 and between you and Michael, I had no choice but to get one for myself. There is a learning curve to the radio, but it is growing on me fast.
I don't treat field day as a contest myself either. I don't do it for the points. While you can practice your preparedness anytime, I tend to use it to test equipment for specific cases because I know someone is listening. This year I finally tuned up my 40m NVIS dipole and made contact about 30 miles away with another club member. Sounded like the guy was sitting right next to me or at least talking to me on a phone. It was crystal clear. I also put up a log periodic and worked some 2m SSB with another gentleman in our club who was about 15-20 miles away. These are the things I want to incorporate in our clubs emergency plan for local communications and field day gave me the opportunity to test them both. Our club also doesn't do it for the points. We treat field day as a time of fellowship and to interface with the public to promote the hobby and our club.
1. The DX Commander works well. With reasonable ground conductivity the radials need not be resonant, and I have good ground conductivity, so I haven't bothered with tuning the radials. If you are in town, however, more of the QRN is vertically polarized, so a vertical picks up a bit more (though maybe the 710's NR will deal with that too). You'll have to check your radio, but both the FT-991A and the FT-891 have an 1/8 " stereo jack on the back labeled ALC/Rem that is normally used with either the remote keypad that you can buy or with an external linear amp (so that the amp can provide ALC voltage to ride herd on the drive level. Presumably at least some YAESU linears includes a tuner (since the 991's internal tuner is not relevant when an amp is in the way), so the second signal on that jack can request a low power CW signal for tuning. I use an LDG Z-11 Pro II which has a jack that provides a suitable signal to drive that low power request when the tuner is tuning, at least as a result of pushing the tune button ON THE TUNER. (The "tuner" option in the radio's deep menu must be set to "LAMP", which is not the default. The necessary signal between the LDG and the YAESU is tip at one end and ring at the other, and a special cable connects only those two pins plus the grounded sleeve. The radio end's plug is red so you know how to plug it in correctly.) If you have that connector on the 710, you could make an external tune button. If you're lucky, it's just a matter of grounding the pin, otherwise there is certainly 12V around that go to a restive voltage divider. It's not as convenient as being able to use the radio's tune button, but it's better than what you've got. If the Chameleon's radio end coupler box doesn't provide such a signal, we can hope that they will add one. (If they're using latching relays, there should be a significant reduction in DC current down the COAX that could signal end of tuning.)
Great Stuff Kevin. I on and off operate similar way running 44ft.8in Wire on my 45ft portable GFK Mast using two different Matching Systems. 91:UNUN with a 3ft. 2,5mm Diameter insulated Grounding Wire. One end with a Crimp Ringterminal goes to the Transfomer and the End with the Aligator Clip gets hooked to the 14inch Copper Ground Stake. The internal AT-Tuner auf die IC-7300 handles matching all Bands from 80-4m including the WARC Bands. I use 63ft. Ultra Flex 7 Coax Feeder and RF Choke behind the Transceiver. Or instead of using the 9:1 UNUN I run the CG-3000 Automatic Longwire Tuner with 32ft. Coax Feedline and no RF Choke. Both ways are working fine and my Signal Reports are BOOMBASTIC . Hey, thanks for sharing another interesting Story of how you practicing portable HAM Radio...always enjoy wachting your Videos. 73 de Uncle Günter from across the Pond 💯🙋♂
For a ground mounted vertical you do not need radials for every band. In this instance 8to16 43 ft radials would do very well. The radiation pattern of single wire verticals varies with the band. If the antenna is electrically too long then low angle radiation is diminished. This antenna will have so-so but very usable performance on 80 and 40. It will have excellent low angle radiation on 20. This antenna will have a lot of high angle radiation on 10m and 15m will suffer a bit. If you use this antenna on 80 through 20 it will be quite serviceable.
Great Video!. Look through the menus. Find a tuner function, change to LAMP. This should change so you can use an external tuner. Then press the tuner function on the radio. The radio will lower the power, tune and you're ready to go.
Great video, thank you! If the FT-710 had been available when I picked up my like-new 7300, the 710 would have been my first choice. That said, I love my 7300, it sounds good to other operators and it's a work horse! Also, I installed the URT1 on my base CHA LEFS 8010 because I just couldn't tune the primary MARS frequency for nets. The URT1 is amazing! I'm receiving better and regular asked to relay messages. Two thumbs up! de WN7D somewhere in the desert...
Resonate radials are nice in the soil you're standing on but for many who recognized good soil conditions (low Z ) they could go with the flow and lay out 20-30 42 foot radials on top of their lawn and do very well
Looking to buy a URT on sale the 1st. According to Chameleon, the MAIN advantage of the URT is avoiding high SWR feed loss between the feed point and REMOTELY located tuner.
Would you take the time and effort to construct and antenna like this for the amazing result you get out of it? Do you know the magic key combination for the the Yaesu FT-710 radio to operate a remote tuner?
I can set my DX Commander expedition up in about half an hour no rush. Sure its a dozen feet or so shorter, it's pretty dang close to that, packs down nice and no tuner needed. I think you really need to look into one.
Hey Kevin... it was good to have a short chat when you last passed through Carson. I've been thinking about the magic 43-ft vertical. One of the other FD operators set up a 41-ft vertical with a remote matching unit. I also thought about a DX Commander for a comparison. Speaking of whom, Callum pointed me to a set of articles by Rudy Severns a couple of years ago. Callum thinks that the amount of wire on the ground is more important that the length of the individual wires. Severns' work seems to support this. One of the conclusions I got from Severns' work is the number of radials/counterpoises. There is a break in slope of the gain vs number of counterpoises chart in one of his papers and the number is around 16. I built a set of six wires into one connector (three sets) for use with a WRC vertical. I found that i was able to get a match on 40m through 10m with the WRC and my counterpoise setup. More than 16 does improve the output signal, but it is a diminishing return beyond 16. I suspect such an approach will work with the 43-ft vertical as well. Some experiments with WSPR will probably give some insight into such a comparison. Thanks for sharing all the details. I appreciate it. 73 de AG7TX
Excellent details tht you have found. Thank for listing them me and others to learn about. I look forward to passing through Carson again, I will definitely call out on your repeater network when I do. 73
That may be true that your inbuilt tuner needs to retune as you change frequency, perhaps more often than the remote autotuner would … but you can spend 10-15 minutes (higher end if you really want to fine tune for every part of every band) to “train your tuner” (as Doug N4HNH calls it), and the FT-710 will automatically retune as you move up and down the band. If you’ve done that, As soon as you hit the transmit button, it will *instantly* fire the combinations of relays it has stored in memory to get you to nearly 1:1 across the entire band. You can start by moving methodically up/down the band in reasonable increments, and holding the tune button at each one. Obviously reduce your power to the minimum, and try to tune slightly off of existing QSOs. Once you’ve done that, you can transmit a CW carrier and quickly rotate your VFO through the entire band to see if there are any remaining spots where your SWR jumps higher, and you can fine tune that small segment by forcing a tune there as well. At that point, you’ll find that the relays click off as you move up and down the band to keep you under 1.3:1 at every single spot. Glad you had fun on field day and thanks for sharing. Looks like a great spot to do it.
I agree with your opinion about field day which is nothing more than contest day. I have been disappointed with the whole event since somewhere in the 1980's. The only positive aspect is getting together with radio friends, usually on a camp out to set up radios and have fun. It's a little learning experience, show and tell with practice. It does very little to enhance the hobby and the art of communications. It seems we have lost our way of technical knowledge, amateur radio is just appliance operators, much like CB and GMRS. All I can say to the contesters is have fun, I wish you and everyone the best. Field day should be about learning and practicing the art of communications and contest day should be just that, contesting. They should honestly be two separate events.
Beautiful setup, Kevin. But personally, my opinion only, if my setup is that elaborate, I want to stay there and use it for at least a week. Field Day for me is a wire in a tree with a CW QRP transceiver and a little LiPo battery. Oh, and a chair.
Thanks for sharing, didn't watch it actually, when you said the bandwidth altered with wire compared to tubing, I was confused, as this should not happen, only loading alters bandwidth. Different lengths of radials is not nessary , it's the amount, unless elevated radials are used. Not sure what's going on there, but something is not right somewhere ! I have tested two verts on 20m, one is wire up to a tree and one is aluminum pole, both 1 . 4 to 1, and exactly the same bandwidth. 73
Great video and love all the details as that's how I learn and can test similar setups. I wonder what type of signal reports you would have gotten with the same setup except using wire instead of the aluminum radiator. Would have made for a good side by side comparison to see what has the most effect.
Maybe set your radio up as ATAS which is bias over coax. Eliminates the need for the inline control head. I use the LDG RT100 (very similar tuner) just like that
Re: electrical tape. Generic electric tape has a tendency to deteriorate into goo after a while. 3M 33+ tape will not do that, and it has some UV resistance as well.
USEING WHAT YOU HAVE AND MAKE G O O D USE OF IT IS A GOOD MANS BEST EFFORT! DO NOT FORGET EARTHLINES FOR 80M 40/15M 20M AND 10 M LOW END AND 10M HIGH END IE THE 10M FM BAND!
Really, I just want to build an antenna like this for RX not TX, would y’all have any recommendations or should I just do some kind of standard antenna?
Seared on HD web site and found 267 results for screw anchor. None are close to those. Can you help? Is there a different descriptor? Those look like nothing I've ever seen and I need 6! Thanks!
The true benefit of an antenna tuner at the antenna is the negligible loss on the coax. Between the station and tuner there is almost 1 to 1. I have a similar setup, with AH-730 in a 60ft delta loop and it works amazingly. And that is a completely automated process
This antenna setup is more like outdoors permanent then a “portable”. If the antenna setup takes more then 10min and does not fit on a backpack its not portable.
set the 'am' power too 5watts on each band and use than to key the ext tuner.
Thank you, excellent suggestion and it works great. I just tried and this IS the fastest process yet.
On the FT-710, go into the following menus. "operating setting" "TX General" "AM Max power", set to "10W" now I only need to change mode to tune and change back to operate. this is VERY fast.
you can thank M0JEO WHO TOLD ME .
Please don't tune with a AM signal. Use a cheap key or even abutton switch to tune in CW mode.
Amazing project. 73 Paulo
If you want to activate a tuner and your radio tuner combination won't do this relatively automatically. put the radio in CW mode and use a cheap key or even a switch to activate TX. Use a better key, of course, if operating CW. AM carriers are annoying and not legal for some frequencies.
I'm pro-details. You also kept it moving along. At my point in radio education, everything you discussed was both interesting and accessible. Thanks for taking the time to make the video
This is a good example of why I still use TH-cam, despite the issues they seem to delight in causing these days
For your temporary water seal, a balloon or condom with the coax pushed through so that it is covering the connection and then with your electrical tape wrapping it and sealing it on the ends, will help with excluding any water.
That’s awesome I like the way you incorporated the remote tuner to the antenna. Cuts on the loss on the feed line.
I use a similar antenna to this for both portable and at my home. The portable station was the first one that I set up and that uses a 12m fibreglass pole with a wire running up it and an MAT40 auto ATU at the base. The mast slots into a drive-on mast support. I did need to put common-mode chokes on both the control and coax lines to get over some issues with RF getting back into the radio - the control cable seemed to be the main cause of issues. The MAT-40 works well with my FT-857 and one morning I managed to work a JA station from UK on 15m so decided to deploy something similar at home. It works well on most bands and will tune nicely. The radial system is just 4x10m of wire. It takes about 10-15 mins to set up
.
The home system is based on the same 12m Spiderbeam pole but with an SGC autotuner rather than a MAT-40 as I am using it with a Kenwood TS-990 and an FT-847 so wanted an ATU which didn't have a need for a CAT/Tune interface and just senses RF. The ground system is similar. The SGC can also handle more power than the MAT tuner and plays nicely with the 200W from the Kenwood.
The TS-990 has a few user configurable buttons so I have one set up to run 10W CW to allow the tuner to tune and achieves a match in a second or so. With the Yaesu I do tend to drop power.
The overall performance is not bad. It is a little long for 10m but will tune on all bands and have managed to work into Germany on 160m although the sweet spot seems to be between 30m and 15m.
Excellent description and detail, thank you for listing your setup.
hahahaha, thats why Ham Radio seems like is designed for retired people. 4 hours setting up an antenna for portable!!!!!! wow, I don't have 4 hours to just play radio! Great build, that for me will be a home base forever installation! By the way, that's the beauty of fan verticals like DX Commander, put it up and no tuning, yes, less bandwidth but no tuning, I personally prefer the no tuning, probably just tap it up with the radio tuner. by the way, the place where you are camping looks amazing!
The DX Commander is an excellent vertical that is basically set it and forget it. Super low SWR and no tuner needed.
Great informative video. I really enjoyed watching it.
Remember, that antenna is a 5/8 wave vertical on 20 meters which offers a low angle of radiation on that band. Great for working DX, as you showed. Just a note of radials..... all of your radials come into play on any band you operate on. You don't have 4 radials for 20 meters. You have numerous radials on 20 meters.
Interesting remote ATU. If you would place an MFJ-929 tuner at the base, put it in a waterproof enclosure and place a T-Bias in the camper, you would not have to turn the power down. It's made to handle this condition. Put the 710 in the RTTY mode and key the mike. The 929 will tune. Also, since you mentioned that at one point the SWR did not go down below 2 to 1, the 929 will get you to a perfect match all of the time.
Portable? Oh My ! I can't do that on the fly. Great for a long term stay, but for an afternoon of fun, like when I set up, too much.
You are at an ideal location, no mountains in the way. I'd do the same if I had an open area and still had my camper.
Again, great job in more ways than one. Barry G. Kery, KU3X
Big fan of verticals here. I routinely reach Europe with a 20m ham stick in a magnetic mount sitting on a water tank in my yard and 100W. I've even had contacts in Moscow with the water tank special. That half baked set-up has been so successful that my finger is on the trigger to buy a DX commander. 73.
That was a pretty phenomenal setup! Also a really great campsite. I need to get out your way soon!
Thanks Steve, yes it would be fun to meet up.
Thanks Kevin, you never disappoint. I really enjoyed this one, hope you’re keeping well.
Love the details. With RF, the details (little things?) matter!
Fitting all that into A single Vid. Well Done! DE N2RAG, 73's
Well done! I agree with putting the tuner at the antenna to increase the efficiency of your system. Keep up the good work. I love your videos.
If you are in a quiet zone or area there is nothing better than a vertical to reach out and touch someone. By increasing the diameter of the driven element the bandwidth is increased but it does lower the resonance a bit. If your in town or city, verticals can be a little noisier than a dipole. Good video thank you.
I've often thought about using a 43' vertical. After watching this, I may have to figure out how to support one and put down the long radials in my very limited space.
thanks for a great video.
Great video! Thanks so much!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Such a thorough explanatory video for operating portable and all the complexities that go with each set up. Thank you.
Thanks for your video Kevin. Was glad to work you at 2009z on 6/22 during Field Day. Keep up the great work!
Thanks, you too!
Great information, Kevin. I made a 7-band homebrew version of the DX Commander and that's what I use for my camping setup for doing POTA particularly the Support Your Parks weekends. It only takes about 15 minutes to setup and teardown and it works great. I only use 20 12 foot radials (4 bundles of 5 wires) and it works great for me. 73 de Bill, N6EF.
That sounds really usable and fast to setup Bill. going to have to try build for myself. 73 Kevin
Nice! For 20+ years I have been running a 18ft vertical dipole with (auto) adjustable center loading on each leg. 1 inch aluminum tube. Very portable because it doesn't need any support other than the base and it breaks down with thumb screws in to 4 parts. For the most part I don't need a tuner for 40 meters to 6 meters. My favorite setup but I'm always interested in trying other options.
Great project! I have a DX Commander Signature 9. I love it. Verticals are awesome, especially for small suburban lots.
Awesome, I will be looking into a DX commander for sure.
Detail is welcome. Good vid
hello from Nova Scotia VA1SIW I wish more videos would go into this much detail as a new amateur I am grateful for details.😁
Welcome to the hobby, I try to work you guys early in the mornings before work.
73. Kevin
I like building antennas so this is right up my alley. I've had a FT-710 for a couple of months to use as my portable to replace my FT-891. I love the 710. One of my permanent antennas is a DX Commander Classic w/80m. It's been up for 2 years, survived 100mph straight line winds a few months ago, and I've only taken it down twice for routine maintenance. I have limited space for radials so I cut 32 three meter radials 360 degrees around the base. It's a great DX antenna. Although a little noisy I can hear stations with it that I can't hear with any of my other antennas. BTW I run an FTdx-10 in the shack. Thanks for the great video. I like the details.
That is an incredible amount of information. Thank you for sharing.
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks for the run through on your FD setup. I did get a QSL with you on FD with my club’s call sign WG6OTA. You sounded great to CA and I could definitely recognize your voice. BTW, we were running my BuddiHex. It’s takes a while to setup and only does 20m and up but, the entire respective bands were flat @ 1.5:1 or less. Again, it was nice to hear you on the air.
Yes, that was fun to work you guys. That hex is awesome, I am considering buying one. Thanks for being there for us. 73
Love your portable antenna setups....
Wonderful set up! and instruction. Thanks! Field testing is a great way to learn and just have fun with the gear. My caveat to field testing in Texas is it's difficult in summer. Today, it's 97˚ and it's 11:30 am. High of 111˚
yes, that is HOT, too HOT.
Look what they used on large ships in the early days and up to WW2, also on some long wave land stations, they used hexagonal or octagonal clusters of wires in parallel, the wider the antenna element the wider the bandwidth. a cluster of wires simulates a meter plus wide element. A three wire cluster should be quite useful for hobby mobile usage.
I have the FTDX10 because of the awesome DNR, and the DX Commander Signature 14.2 as my home antenna. I'm very happy with both.
Looks like a nice RF quiet location - that's the good part of getting out of town to the wide outdoors. You have lost some weight Kevin. 73
Thanks John, indeed I have. Carnivore, meat only for 5 months.💪
Great job OM. Always mount the tuner at the base of the radiator (if at all possible). Losses in the coax will be minimal this way. 73 😎
You are right, and thank you.
Kevin, Great video! I love my FT710 it is a great buy and great radio. I have been wanting to play with a 43' vertical and the remote tuner is the wat to go but it does look to be a pain. Our Poseidon antenna has been doing greta kind of the same concept but only 25' tall. Thanks for sharing!
I saw your video that converted to the ft710 and between you and Michael, I had no choice but to get one for myself.
There is a learning curve to the radio, but it is growing on me fast.
I don't treat field day as a contest myself either. I don't do it for the points. While you can practice your preparedness anytime, I tend to use it to test equipment for specific cases because I know someone is listening. This year I finally tuned up my 40m NVIS dipole and made contact about 30 miles away with another club member. Sounded like the guy was sitting right next to me or at least talking to me on a phone. It was crystal clear. I also put up a log periodic and worked some 2m SSB with another gentleman in our club who was about 15-20 miles away. These are the things I want to incorporate in our clubs emergency plan for local communications and field day gave me the opportunity to test them both.
Our club also doesn't do it for the points. We treat field day as a time of fellowship and to interface with the public to promote the hobby and our club.
Excellent points. sounds like you had fun. thanks for the details.
Good presentation. Thanks K7SWC
Amazing project. 73 Paulo.
Nice job Kevin
The details are very useful. Thanks for the video.
1. The DX Commander works well. With reasonable ground conductivity the radials need not be resonant, and I have good ground conductivity, so I haven't bothered with tuning the radials. If you are in town, however, more of the QRN is vertically polarized, so a vertical picks up a bit more (though maybe the 710's NR will deal with that too).
You'll have to check your radio, but both the FT-991A and the FT-891 have an 1/8 " stereo jack on the back labeled ALC/Rem that is normally used with either the remote keypad that you can buy or with an external linear amp (so that the amp can provide ALC voltage to ride herd on the drive level. Presumably at least some YAESU linears includes a tuner (since the 991's internal tuner is not relevant when an amp is in the way), so the second signal on that jack can request a low power CW signal for tuning. I use an LDG Z-11 Pro II which has a jack that provides a suitable signal to drive that low power request when the tuner is tuning, at least as a result of pushing the tune button ON THE TUNER. (The "tuner" option in the radio's deep menu must be set to "LAMP", which is not the default. The necessary signal between the LDG and the YAESU is tip at one end and ring at the other, and a special cable connects only those two pins plus the grounded sleeve. The radio end's plug is red so you know how to plug it in correctly.) If you have that connector on the 710, you could make an external tune button. If you're lucky, it's just a matter of grounding the pin, otherwise there is certainly 12V around that go to a restive voltage divider. It's not as convenient as being able to use the radio's tune button, but it's better than what you've got. If the Chameleon's radio end coupler box doesn't provide such a signal, we can hope that they will add one. (If they're using latching relays, there should be a significant reduction in DC current down the COAX that could signal end of tuning.)
Great Stuff Kevin. I on and off operate similar way running 44ft.8in Wire on my 45ft portable GFK Mast using two different Matching Systems. 91:UNUN with a 3ft. 2,5mm Diameter insulated Grounding Wire. One end with a Crimp Ringterminal goes to the Transfomer and the End with the Aligator Clip gets hooked to the 14inch Copper Ground Stake. The internal AT-Tuner auf die IC-7300 handles matching all Bands from 80-4m including the WARC Bands. I use 63ft. Ultra Flex 7 Coax Feeder and RF Choke behind the Transceiver. Or instead of using the 9:1 UNUN I run the CG-3000 Automatic Longwire Tuner with 32ft. Coax Feedline and no RF Choke. Both ways are working fine and my Signal Reports are BOOMBASTIC .
Hey, thanks for sharing another interesting Story of how you practicing portable HAM Radio...always enjoy wachting your Videos. 73 de Uncle Günter from across the Pond 💯🙋♂
Thanks UG 👍
For a ground mounted vertical you do not need radials for every band. In this instance 8to16 43 ft radials would do very well. The radiation pattern of single wire verticals varies with the band. If the antenna is electrically too long then low angle radiation is diminished. This antenna will have so-so but very usable performance on 80 and 40. It will have excellent low angle radiation on 20. This antenna will have a lot of high angle radiation on 10m and 15m will suffer a bit. If you use this antenna on 80 through 20 it will be quite serviceable.
Great Video!. Look through the menus. Find a tuner function, change to LAMP. This should change so you can use an external tuner. Then press the tuner function on the radio. The radio will lower the power, tune and you're ready to go.
That would be so cool if it was that easy. I will try it, Thanks for the suggestion.
Great video, thank you! If the FT-710 had been available when I picked up my like-new 7300, the 710 would have been my first choice. That said, I love my 7300, it sounds good to other operators and it's a work horse! Also, I installed the URT1 on my base CHA LEFS 8010 because I just couldn't tune the primary MARS frequency for nets. The URT1 is amazing! I'm receiving better and regular asked to relay messages. Two thumbs up! de WN7D somewhere in the desert...
Nice setup Brian, thanks for sharing for me and others to see. 73
Another great video. Thanks
This has given me food for thought. Maybe an option to try for NFD.
Resonate radials are nice in the soil you're standing on but for many who recognized good soil conditions (low Z ) they could go with the flow and lay out 20-30 42 foot radials on top of their lawn and do very well
That's a lot of wire, solid advice.
Fielday has always been a contest, among other things. Ron W4BIN
Looking to buy a URT on sale the 1st. According to Chameleon, the MAIN advantage of the URT is avoiding high SWR feed loss between the feed point and REMOTELY located tuner.
Would you take the time and effort to construct and antenna like this for the amazing result you get out of it?
Do you know the magic key combination for the the Yaesu FT-710 radio to operate a remote tuner?
I can set my DX Commander expedition up in about half an hour no rush. Sure its a dozen feet or so shorter, it's pretty dang close to that, packs down nice and no tuner needed. I think you really need to look into one.
I had a feeling it was easier. Thanks
Great video! Thanks for the detail. 73 Rick N9VQ
Kool setup 73
Hey Kevin... it was good to have a short chat when you last passed through Carson.
I've been thinking about the magic 43-ft vertical. One of the other FD operators set up a 41-ft vertical with a remote matching unit.
I also thought about a DX Commander for a comparison. Speaking of whom, Callum pointed me to a set of articles by Rudy Severns a couple of years ago. Callum thinks that the amount of wire on the ground is more important that the length of the individual wires. Severns' work seems to support this.
One of the conclusions I got from Severns' work is the number of radials/counterpoises. There is a break in slope of the gain vs number of counterpoises chart in one of his papers and the number is around 16. I built a set of six wires into one connector (three sets) for use with a WRC vertical. I found that i was able to get a match on 40m through 10m with the WRC and my counterpoise setup. More than 16 does improve the output signal, but it is a diminishing return beyond 16.
I suspect such an approach will work with the 43-ft vertical as well. Some experiments with WSPR will probably give some insight into such a comparison.
Thanks for sharing all the details. I appreciate it.
73 de AG7TX
Excellent details tht you have found. Thank for listing them me and others to learn about. I look forward to passing through Carson again, I will definitely call out on your repeater network when I do.
73
Enjoyed the video thanks.
That may be true that your inbuilt tuner needs to retune as you change frequency, perhaps more often than the remote autotuner would … but you can spend 10-15 minutes (higher end if you really want to fine tune for every part of every band) to “train your tuner” (as Doug N4HNH calls it), and the FT-710 will automatically retune as you move up and down the band.
If you’ve done that, As soon as you hit the transmit button, it will *instantly* fire the combinations of relays it has stored in memory to get you to nearly 1:1 across the entire band.
You can start by moving methodically up/down the band in reasonable increments, and holding the tune button at each one. Obviously reduce your power to the minimum, and try to tune slightly off of existing QSOs. Once you’ve done that, you can transmit a CW carrier and quickly rotate your VFO through the entire band to see if there are any remaining spots where your SWR jumps higher, and you can fine tune that small segment by forcing a tune there as well. At that point, you’ll find that the relays click off as you move up and down the band to keep you under 1.3:1 at every single spot.
Glad you had fun on field day and thanks for sharing. Looks like a great spot to do it.
thanks, i will try those combinations.
Thanks for the video and your field day antenna experiences. Please post a video about your Yaesu FT-710.
Your welcome
I agree with your opinion about field day which is nothing more than contest day. I have been disappointed with the whole event since somewhere in the 1980's. The only positive aspect is getting together with radio friends, usually on a camp out to set up radios and have fun. It's a little learning experience, show and tell with practice. It does very little to enhance the hobby and the art of communications. It seems we have lost our way of technical knowledge, amateur radio is just appliance operators, much like CB and GMRS.
All I can say to the contesters is have fun, I wish you and everyone the best.
Field day should be about learning and practicing the art of communications and contest day should be just that, contesting. They should honestly be two separate events.
Beautiful setup, Kevin. But personally, my opinion only, if my setup is that elaborate, I want to stay there and use it for at least a week. Field Day for me is a wire in a tree with a CW QRP transceiver and a little LiPo battery. Oh, and a chair.
makes sense to me Larry
Thanks for sharing, didn't watch it actually, when you said the bandwidth altered with wire compared to tubing, I was confused, as this should not happen, only loading alters bandwidth. Different lengths of radials is not nessary , it's the amount, unless elevated radials are used. Not sure what's going on there, but something is not right somewhere !
I have tested two verts on 20m, one is wire up to a tree and one is aluminum pole, both 1 . 4 to 1, and exactly the same bandwidth. 73
Great video and love all the details as that's how I learn and can test similar setups. I wonder what type of signal reports you would have gotten with the same setup except using wire instead of the aluminum radiator. Would have made for a good side by side comparison to see what has the most effect.
Would be fun, just not too practical on field day. Need tons of space for sure 👍
Such beautiful scenery there! What area is this located at? I really liked your video especially all the details!
Central Utah in the mountains
Could you program a memory on each band at QRP CW to get a low power carrier for tuning then change to you operating frequency.
VY NICE !!!! GDX ! 73!!!! de US4ET Victor. ..
Maybe set your radio up as ATAS which is bias over coax. Eliminates the need for the inline control head.
I use the LDG RT100 (very similar tuner) just like that
I appreciate that, I will try that tuner config.
Re: electrical tape. Generic electric tape has a tendency to deteriorate into goo after a while. 3M 33+ tape will not do that, and it has some UV resistance as well.
USEING WHAT YOU HAVE AND
MAKE G O O D USE OF IT IS
A GOOD MANS BEST EFFORT!
DO NOT FORGET EARTHLINES
FOR 80M 40/15M 20M AND
10 M LOW END AND 10M
HIGH END IE THE 10M FM BAND!
Great Video, can you tell me where you got your 43 foot painters pole???
It's a window washer pole that I purchased used from a local window washer company
Great need to know information. Excellent and logical setup. Thanks for the advice. What was your elevation, fmi ?
9,000 ft
Great antenna Kevin it looks like a lot of time to put up im wondering whats better tp hook up the unun or the tuner from chomilion tunner???
They both worked, so it really depends on how you want to operate it. To me, it is fun each way.
Contesting is not allowed on WARC bands. Field Day is restricted from the WARC bands. Does that mean that Field Day IS a contest?
I AGREE WITH THE HARSH CONDITIONS, SOMETIMES IT’S IMPERATIVE THAT YOU GET AWAY FROM THE HONEY DO ‘s 😂🍺🍺
oh man, THAT was a good one, and so true. 👍
@@hamradiowithkevin Yea wait till I get home from last night I’ll hear a lot of good ones 😂🍺🍺😎
Really, I just want to build an antenna like this for RX not TX, would y’all have any recommendations or should I just do some kind of standard antenna?
For the effort and cost, if you are only going to RX, I would build or purchase an RX loop. If you have the space, put out a long 32 to 64 foot wire.
What headphones are you using for the FT710?
Heil BM 17 dual ear is the headset. Works great
maybe it could work in atas-mode ? the ft857 and other models should do, remember to remove the t-bias to run this way.. rgds fm oz1fjb - ou2v
I bet you could easily hit that guy in Australia 14,800 miles away long path with that setup!!
I like field day because we can try out different antennas without nosey neighbors passing judgement or HOA Karens running in.
Using a 43 feet wire vertical on 10m, wouldn't that radiate steep into the sky?
Where can you find a 43 foot window washing pole?
I contacted window washing companies and asked if they have any out of service or older poles they wanted to get rid of.
Random wire antennas rock.
Why didn’t you just drill a hole and join them together with a bolt wou don’t have to make them super tight and they will not turn ? Just wondering .
Or some self drilling/tapping sheetmetal screws" They're quick, cheap & plentiful.
Cool
Seared on HD web site and found 267 results for screw anchor. None are close to those. Can you help? Is there a different descriptor? Those look like nothing I've ever seen and I need 6! Thanks!
Absolutely, find them while you can
geni.us/GroundAncho
Does Harry still make those trailer hitch mounts. I’ve tried numerous times to contact him and no response.
@@chuckmcdermott7053 I will ask him, I am not sure.
@@hamradiowithkevin Got one set to try. I will probably get a second set to stow away.
@@hamradiowithkevin Must have been a hit. Lowes cancelled my ship to store order as out of stock.
The true benefit of an antenna tuner at the antenna is the negligible loss on the coax. Between the station and tuner there is almost 1 to 1.
I have a similar setup, with AH-730 in a 60ft delta loop and it works amazingly. And that is a completely automated process
The AH-7300 is about $100 USD more. The AH-7300 has a dedicated control cable, which the URT1 does not, so it can be used with any radio.
keep the details. JT
안녕하세요
Excuse me, but do you really? And this would be a portable antenna?
Can you imagine if it were easier to setup.
This antenna setup is more like outdoors permanent then a “portable”. If the antenna setup takes more then 10min and does not fit on a backpack its not portable.
The great failing of these videos is they never show how the antenna worked out in the shack.
Is this comedy ?
Great video. Thank you.