Al's Blog-o-Sphere

[dewplayer:http://gritzmacher.net/wp/audio/Kilbrannan%20-%20A%20Simple%20Man.mp3]

Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.
– Winston Churchill

I’m listening to a favorite local band of mine – Kilbrannan. They disbanded several years ago, going on to form two other bands, but that’s neither here ‘nor there. I know quite a few fans, though, that still miss their shows.

They were one of two local bands (Jackdaw, the other) that fed off my fascination with British Folk/Rock, such as Steeleye Span or Fairport Convention, and made me a fan of live Scottish/Irish music melded with Rock.

The driving force in the band was Kirk McWhorter, whose knowledge of traditional and contemporary Scottish tunes as well as his own songwriting skill, still impresses me.

So what has this got to do with Veterans Day, you might ask. If it isn’t already playing, play the song in the player at the top of this post. It’s a Kilbrannan song called A Simple Man. It’s the story of a young man who goes off to war, following “Bonnie Prince Charlie” in the Jacobite uprising of 1745. It was an unsuccessful attempt to claim the British Throne and, predictably, ended disastrously for those fighting in it, including the farmer’s Son of the song. Yet, it became, as these stories do, the stuff of songs and is remembered that way.

I can’t help but think of our servicemen overseas when I hear it. Continue Reading…

Today I finally got around to working on the 7 Band Portable Dipole I wrote about earlier. I had finished building it, but hadn’t tried it out or even seen if it works.

One thing that delayed me was my MFJ-259B antenna analyzer was in pieces. A couple years ago, I dropped it on the floor. It landed face-down and smashed the tuning knob. In the process, it bent the shaft of the tuning capacitor and made it stick and short out as it turned. I ordered a replacement from MFJ and installed it, but it still had problems. It acted flakey. It turned out, although it looked fine upon inspection, the range switch was also damaged and was working intermittently. It sat on the shelf for a couple of years while I decided what to do with it. The antenna project made up my mind to look at it again.

I was dreading tearing into a multi-position rotary switch. I had visions of parts and wires hanging off every terminal. Fortunately, it was a PC-mount switch and every connection went through the PC board. If I could only get it off the PC board without destroying anything, I could replace it. So I carefully disassembled the ‘259 far enough to access the back of the switch. With some care to carefully desolder each pin and a little wiggling, the switch came out. I ordered one from MFJ, along with some of the plastic parts to the push buttons that had also flown off and been lost in the fall. Continue Reading…

Warning: Ham Radio-related content. If that bores you, better steer clear of this post.

I don’t know what inspired me to do it, but I have undertaken the construction of a portable antenna for my Ham Radio operations. Probably just for something to do, or curiosity to see if such a small antenna can really be effective.

I usually use some method of shooting a wire up into tall trees for this type of operation, camping or just operating “Field Style” for fun. I’ve been pretty happy with the fishing-reel-on-a-slingshot method and I built a Pneumatic Launcher that can be very effective at putting a line over even the tallest of trees. I’ve also acquired some telescopic fiberglass masts (fishing poles) that work quite well as supports for vertical wires. But this design caught my eye and I decided to try it and see.

The idea come from a web page that I saw mentioned on the QRP-L email list: VE3GAM. There are commercially-made antennas that are similar, but this looked easy to make. It might be fun to try.

The idea consists of a shortened dipole on a portable mast and tripod that can be disassembled when not in use. The central portion of the antenna is built using a plastic electrical box and some aluminum tubing. Loading coils are made out of plastic PVC conduit and tapped for the various bands. Further tuning from band-to-band is done by varying the length of the ends of the dipole, which are made out of long telescopic whip antennas. Think of rabbit ears or a transistor radio antenna, but longer. Continue Reading…

Found on Facebook…

Wow! Has Facebook ever riled people up?!? All you see today is complaints about some changes they made and announcements/stories about changes they have just announced.

Continue Reading…