Amateur Radio Station KG4IGC

My Boat Anchors

Here is my vintage boat anchor setup. Equipment includes the following:

Receivers:

Heathkit SB-303
National NC-98

Tube Transcievers:

Yaesu FT-101E with the FV101B plus the Halli T.O tube type keyer.Mic is a vintage Shure Brothers crystal mic case model 737A with a shure element from an old Shure 444 mic. Unfortunetly, this rig is dead...I was trying to fix the drift in the rig by reseating some things. Like an idiot, I wiggled the IF board while the rig was turned on and something shorted out. I saw a wisp of smoke and now nothing works. Guess I should leave the tinkering to the professionals. Now it sits in the closet.
Tempo One (not shown) accesories include the Tempo digital frequency display and the Tempo AC one combo power supply and speaker; mic is a Turner plus three.
Swan 350 (not shown) with an Electro-Voice 630 HI-Z (serial number 1345) mic. Bought this setup at a local yard sale for ten dollars!

This is the old boat anchor setup as it used to be.

The main part of our station of course is loaded with some awesome contest rigs and accessories which include the following:

Yaesu FT-847 with the optional FC-20 automatic antenna tuner and the SP-8 external speaker; mic is a Hiel goldline.
Yaesu FT-1000MP Field with a MD-200AX mic
MFJ 4726 Desktop/Remote antenna/transceiver switch.
MFJ-969 Deluxe Versa Tuner II

Meters include the Diawa CN-520 for HF and the Heathkit HM-2102 for VHF

I also run a Kenwood TS-430S with the LDJ AT-11MP autotuner; mic is a vintage Shure Brothers Slim X model 777s.

I have three interfaces by Rascal for digital modes, two of them were in kit form.

HFAntennas:

Ground mounted Gap Challanger
Maco V5/8 for 10 meters
Eight element sterba curtain for 10 meters
Extended lazh H for 20 meters pointed N/W S/E
282 foot horrizontal loop
W4TWW coaxal inverted L with 8 130 foot radials for 160 meters
K4KIO Homebrew 5 band hex beam (featured in the March 2009 QST page 30)
160/80 meter ground mounted rotatable recieving loops

UHF and VHF Antennas

Homebrew 2 meter copper J-Pole
3 element 2 meter beam
11 element 70 cm beam
4 stack lowes loop array for 70 cm (featured in QST) This is an AWSOME 440 SSB antenna !!
2 homebrew stacked copper squalos @ 30 feet for six meters.

Antenna Farm Pictures

K4KIO Homebrew 5 band hex beam

Maco V5/8 tuned for ten meters ( This is a very good vertical for 10 and 12... still in use after 7 years of sevice)

Ground mounted Gap Challenger

Corner view of my 160 meter W4TWW coaxal Inverted L ( I am currently in the process of relocating this antenna and am going to make some improvements to the radial and vertical sections by enclosing them in a weatherproof electical box . I plan to terminate each radial by soldering them to a terminal strip inside of the box.This be done for for neatness plus better mechanical and electrical contacts.Right now,all the radials are soldered together in one big mass of wire and solder covered in electrical tape lying on the ground.)

Feed point and radial connections (8 @ 130') OF 160 meter Inverted L ( Here you can see the ugly construction of the radial system)

WX Receive

Here is my Tall narrow QHA( quadrifilar helix antenna) WX recieve antenna which is still in use, just relocated to the back of the house and is now hanging in a tree I use this antenna and WX to Imaging software to download wx images from satelites with my Icom T-81A handi talkie the software is free and can be downloaded from http://www.wxtoimg.com

Here is a picture of Tropical storm Hannah and Hurricane Ike downloaded from the NOAA sattelite when it when over my house using wxtoimg software.

Here is another link for QHA's: http://perso.wanadoo.es/dimoni/ant_qha.htm

6 Meteres VHF & UHF

6 Meter stacked Squalos (As you can see, the former Mimosa tree was doing its best to get into this set of antennas as well. Boy, am I glad that thing is gone!) NEWSFLASH!!!!! UPDATE 5/30/09 : I just put these antennas back up and instead of using the normal heavy 10 foot poles (you know, like you get from Radio Shack...I gotta throw this in...their motto...."You have questions? We have blank stares.... ) I thought about well, what if I want to go portable someday with these antennas. I needed a support that was lightweight. Being the cheapskate that I am, remembered that I had an old extendable pool pole holding up a section of my chain link fence that was messed up after one of my neighbors dead pine tree fell on it in a storm a couple years back.Why I never thought of this before is beond me. The extendable pole works excellant as a mast and us very lightweight. Whats really cool about it is that I can disassemble the entire setup in about 10 minutes and put it in the truck for easy portability. The pole extends to about 15 feet what is really cool is the fact that I can set it on top of a ten foot section of that heavy TV antenna pole; it is a perfect fit.

Former Farm Antennas

30' Tower with my copper 2 meter J-pole, three element 2 meter beam, and 11 element 440 beam. The rotator is an old Archer made for tv antennas. This is a very cheap roter and lasts forever I found one brand new still in the box at a yard sale and paid 5 dollars for it. Come to find out, the guy who sold me this was an inactive ham!

Here are some shots of previous antennas in the farm, Sadly, I had to take down all my wires in 2008 because we were having a new roof put on the house and I also had to have two dead trees removed from our yard before they fell. One of the trees was a 55 foot tall pine that was becoming dangerous so I had no choice but to have it removed and the other was that pain in the behind Mimosa tree that gave me years of hell when errecting wire antennas. Naturally,the pine tree that died was the main support for my loop and also my inverted L for 160. Not really sure what killed the two trees, kinda wierd that they both died at the same time. (Perhaps too much RF exposure?)

On the plus side, after taking down all the antennas this gave me a clean slate for all new wire antennas! The Inverted V and Sterba Curtain are history although I am concidering building a new multi-band Sterba in the future and hanging it in the back yard instead of the front. My phased squalos for 6 meters are grounded for now, and I have to climb the tower to fix the copper j-pole because when the dead Mimosa tree was removed, it took out the coax on the way down. I have put the loop back up and now am experimenting with three 88' doublets in the shape of a triangle with a remote switchbox. I will post new pictures and some sources of information on these antennas in the near future. For now, I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Overall shot of the old antenna farm. Here you can see the VHF tower,the Maco V5/8 on its 30' tower, the 282' Loop, Sterba Curtain. squalos, and extended double zepps

20 meter Inverted V (History...I was not too impressed with this antenna anyway so no real loss)

8 Element 10 meter sterba Curtain (note the homebrew ladder line to the far left..I made all the ladder line and phasing lines by hand...... they were constructed out of 3 inch long wooden dowels covered with parafin wax and number 12 wire. I wanted to get a feel of how the "old timers did it. I wouldn't recommend this project to anyone! The results was satisfying and worked very well, but it was a lot of work.

Plans for construction of this high gain bi-directional antenna can be found in the ARRL publication "ARRL's Wire Antenna Classics" (c) ( I would recommend this book to anyone) chapter 6 page 6-9. This is a great artical written by James D. Cain, K1TN I have done some research on the internet since building this antenna and have found a few pages on how to build a multi-band version of this antenna. I am seriously concidering making a new one because this anteena really kicks butt! I have given it some serious thought and think that I will use #14 wire instead of # 12 and commercial ladder line to make the antenna a few pounds lighter. The old antenna weighed a ton and was tough to keep in the air on account of its weight. Who needs an amp when you got one of these in your yard?