First thing, we gotta talk about chow.  Because the weather is still cool.  In fact, there’s even a mention of SNOW in the local extended forecast out in the week-from-Monday range.

This is when I don’t beat myself up too much for eating carbs.  Yeah, carbo toxicity and all that, but half a pizza is easier to convert to heat and muscle power than a steak – no matter how big the cow.  So last night, that was the call.

Today, I’ll be doing a pork meatball and cabbage soup with a shot or two of Lenni (aquavit) on the side.

And for the balance of the week?  Two of my favorites for cooking arrived and were unwrapped in the shop Sunday:

The finer juice is great stuff when married into a Jamaican jerk sauce from scratch.  And the sulfite-free Sicilian lemon juice?  Oh, we’ll find a use for it in the BBQ, broiler, or air fryer.

I just won’t weigh myself for a couple of days. weeks.

Easy way to make points with the spouse (and sneak more tool purchases into the shop)?  Unwrap everything in the shop and bring only new – clean – things to the house.  Elaine appreciates the lack of clean-up.  And, like I said, no box inventories and I can smuggle in damn near anything up the the new floor-mounted drill press I have been thinking about…

(Easy solution is call my UPS buddy and have him plan the stop here while Elaine’s out feeding the feral cats out front. No audit, no mentions.)

Designer Tool Carts

A while back here on Amazon, I picked up a blue tool chest with three slide out drawers.  And over the holidays, possessed by a fit of cleaning disease. There was this sale, you see, on blue roll around carts with drawers.  Though the colors are slightly different.

About here you may be asking “How many roll arounds you got?”

In my office there’s only a single red one and a black equipment cart.

In the shop (blushes a bit but WTF) there’s a green one for general tools (from HF). There’s the blue tool box and roll around drawers for electrical tools  (“Electric Blue” – ah…remember them days?).  Two black roll around handle sharps, a not often enough used mortising machine and such wise.

On the back wall there are three more roll arounds: One is for welding paraphernalia, there’s jewelry. drill station bits, and artwork materials, and I half forget what’s in the third on.  (How about everything I didn’t put in the others?)

The drawers are all arranged with “grab and twists” in one drawer” like so:

While the next one down is the “cut your nuts off tools” like these:

The “electric blue” is smaller electrical gear – the big mechanicky things are in the green roll around.

OK T2FH Antenna Dissertation

When last we spoke about the T2FD *(twisted, tilted, terminated folded dipole) antenna, I had ordered one (on sale, of course).  But when it still hadn’t shopped by mid week due to a supply chain glitch, the outfit I bought it from promptly refunded. Perhaps they understand people in their 70’s with ADHD…

About that same time, my buddy Ehor (up in what will be Frozen Canada – until August or statehood, whichever comes first) sent me his professional level take on my plans to employ a T2HD for frequency agile HF ham modes like ALE.

After telling me about his approach (in part):

“Have not heard of a T2FD antenna, decided to do a quick check what performance may look like based on a simplistic model, sketch attached.

Some explanation when it comes to modeling, if one has no initial idea what is going on, mathematics goes CRAZY!!!  This is simplified by making certain assumptions, if correct, it eliminates a lot of mathematics to get at the fundamental principles.  Good example being Maxwell’s equations….

Using Faraday’s experimental results, it reduced complicated math to 4 equations describing the total field of electromagnetics.”

Eventually, Ehor got down to a George bite-sized math answer:

“Bottom line, if I had an antenna requirement, T2FD would not be on my list.”

As punishment, I sent Ehor an electronic copy of the late L.B. Cebik’s book “Antennas Made of Wire Vol. 3”  Where I directed him to page 741 (chapter 77) of this monumental book on antenna modeling where Cebik reached the same general conclusion.

“The purpose of these notes is not to recommend or disrecommend
the vertical or sloping T2FD. Instead, the purpose has been to
explore what modeling might tell us about the basic performance
characteristics of the T2FD. Actual use decisions must measure the
antenna performance characteristics (refined for the actual
proposed design) against the application. “

Another Country Heard From!

Still, I kept wondering about canceling the commercial-made T2FD especially because of that British ham who had posted on one of the radio boards about having good luck using inductors instead of resistance on the un-fed side of the T2HD antenna.

This ham (whose initials are G3RKF) was kind enough to tell me about his inductor experience.

“I removed the resistor many years ago and threaded/taped several inductors onto a 3ft plastic rod. The centre 35ft of the t2fd is inside my loft at 25ft, whilst the ends slope down to 18ft. The inductors include traps from a Comet 80m-10m dipole and  Multiturns on ferrite rods that I wound myself. They are all in series and hang horizontally in the loft. I’ve no idea what the inductance of this arrangement is George.

I did this after seeing a EZENEC radiation model. With >5% at best radiated and with such low angles on 160/80m, my thoughts turned to getting these better. The inductors have.

“I chase dx and play in some contests. So far my atno score is much improved. Incl obsoletes from the previous century, it’s approx 317. I have dxcc on 7 bands, WAS, WAZ and so on. 160m is 42 and 6m is 67. SFI obviously helped this along on the higher bands.”

That is some mighty impressive ham radio work.  But, I also know (from experience) that you can have the best of everything in the way of equipment and radiation patterns and still be outgunned on any particular weekend by a superior operator, regardless of what they attribute their contest scores to.

After ruminating on it (again and again) and more iterations in EZNEC (the antenna modeling program I use) it came down to dumping the T2HD and going with the late W4RNL’s recommendation – the slightly oversized doublet antenna – a long center-fed dipole. But with the hip-shot of using horse fence tape which is 2″ of woven poly with 12-18 strands of stainless.

On we  move in that direction, then.

Or, it will be the OCFD out of horse tape which on 20 meters would model like this:

And even better because a dB or so of modeling losses can be added back to these gain figures so 8 dBref (which in my model is set to dBd.

For Solder Smoke Fans…

Three of my old “restoration project” radios sprang to life this week.  The Hallicrafters SR-400 is waiting for a new tube and troubleshooting of the P.A. tuning section.

One of the Swan 500’s is working so-so.  Likely needs a 6GK6 driver tube (so that was ordered).  The other Swan 500 is also receiving, but the AGC sucks on it, so ordered the tube which is used as the AGC amplifier.  6BN8.  While I’m at it, another 6GK6 driver and then we’ll see how that one plays.

The radio bench is back in business and I’m praying for a long winter so I can clear out some of the gear restoration projects and sell some of the herd off to more dedicated (less ADHD) collectors (and bases and drains and..- rimshot).

Write when it warms up, but not like SoCal…

[email protected] AC7X