OFARC Meeting Minutes       2023_0722.       

The meeting at TranStar was called to order at 0909 by Martin (W5XUK).

Today's demonstration is about antennas.  The antenna on display is a tunable antenna that has sliding parts that will tune the frequency.  It looks a lot like the Wolf River coil vertical antenna that was shown at one of the other meetings.  Martin has a SWR meter hooked up to the antenna that helps with tuning the antenna to a specific frequency.

0933    Fighting with TRANSTAR video equipment that does not want to respond.

Abridged version due to lack of supporting equipment.  Martin's presentation can be found here.

This presentation was given due to our survey about what people were interested in.  If you get a fancy receiver and get a crummy kind of speakers, you’ve waited your money.  If you buy a great HAM radio, and buy a junk antenna, and you end up with a junkie experience.  If. you have a cheap radio and a great antenna, you may still end up with a great experience.  See the Presentation.

  • Reciprocity – you get back out what you put into the antenna.
  • Directivity – is the ability to aim the beam.
  • Polarization – the antenna's ability to transmit and receive using the electrical fields of the Earth.

    • Using a hand held 4-5 decibels can be loss changing the antenna from 90 to 45 degrees.  They were in England listening to Russian Tank Commanders yelling that they could hardly hear each other on the Finnish border, yet in England they were 5X5.

  • Impedance – DC+AC resistance          A power meter with a good SWR meter is really important to get a good signal.

  • Capacitance – The ability to measure how well something can contain an electrical charge.  in the 1960s DECA made radars, while ordering a part in England, a Secretary made a decimal error while ordering a capacitor, and they ended up with a capacitor delivered on a big rig truck.

    • Antennas are a series of tradeoffs when designing and installing the things such as size, frequency and mounting.

    Presentation ended due to lack of video monitor support at 1012 hours.

    Presentation started again at 1024 since the presentation equipment started working.

    Martin has found that single strand larger gauge wire works better than stranded wire.  See the pictures within the powerpoint presentation here.   Ended again at 1033

    MFJ analyzer was shown to the assembly, it has the SWR meter and other measurements built into the instrument.  MFJ HF/vhf/220MHz/ SWR ANALYZER 530 KHz-230 MHz + UHF MODEL MFJ-269C WAS SJPWM/.   It also measures SWR & OHMS along with MHz Rs and Xs

    This was shown along with Super Antenna (www.newsuperantenna.com) MP1 series.  This was being used with the MP1C Superstick antenna.  The antenna has a top whip element, a super slider top fitting, the “Super Slider” that is used for tuning, a locking screw and upper extension rod.   there is a coupling nut, lower extension rod and a mount fitting and mount.  The whole antenna is about 7 feet, 2.1 meters tall.

    The super antenna is available at Amazon here.

    MARK WB5ANN did a presentation about his portable equipment for tuning antennas and stated that you should never store batteries within any equipment that may be stored for a while, he uses plastic bags to hold the batteries so if they leak, they do not mess up any equipment that they are stored with.

    Air TV2 P/N 216140 was used by a Hal to expand his Internet TV from upstairs to downstairs bypassing using a TV antenna wire to catch the signal.

    Meeting ended at 1104, with displays of antennas and measuring equipment continuing.