VK3BQ*™ Cliptastic-Tenna Review.

Earlier in the year, Icom released the IC-7300, an SDR based Ham Radio, it was the first of the big three commercial ham radio manufactures to provide an all in one desktop SDR based device. This caused a bit of a stir in the worldwide ham community, A lot of people were keen enough in…

SotaBeams Dipole Traps

A couple of months ago, the SOTABeams Facebook page Posted a link to a new item they had just finished making. A simple pair of lightweight dipole traps for portable use to help with running multiple bands and the band changing efforts. I had built a link dipole last year and this works well, but if the…

Case for SARK-110

Ive been looking for a bag or case for the SARK-110 for months. I had a look at point and shoot camera bags/cases, but they were all too small for the added bits or too bulky for what I had/wanted. The other week, a ham posted a photo of his case he had found at…

Strange link dipole shenanigans?

Help!!!.. In the true spirit of this page, i installed a poorly built antenna on the weekend, and I don’t know why? I got the courage to cut my unicorn blood DX wire, and began the process of making a link dipole. Followed the guides form all the normal places, VK3ZPF and VK3PF and the Sotabeams Calculator among many. I built…

Tuning the dipole using the 1:1 Balun

I had some time yesterday afternoon to tune up the wire i am using with the 1:1 Balun dipole project. I set myself up outside and ran out the dipole as I would deploy it for a SOTA activation. The antenna was too long as expected given how I had cut the wire!   I started…

1:1 Current Balun

To Balun or Not to Balun, this is the question? Like Ford vs Holden, Canon vs Nikon or Yaesu vs Icom; the world is divided into two camps on how best to connect a resonate wire antenna to a bit of coax. Until now, my dipole had been direct connected. and this had worked as…

Codan 9350’s are not indestructible

When Chrisitne got her new truck (4wd) I was keen to install some HF radio gear into it, i realised a codan 9350 auto tune antenna would be a nice addition, I had previously used a terlin tapped whip, and while this was a good performer, it was a pain to change bands when mobile!…

Sark-110 Antenna Analyser

In the PO Box the other day was a new toy. (this one is my birthday present to myself) 😀 I had been using a you kits FG-01 for a and while and that device worked well, BUT…  it lacked some functions and stopped at 60Mhz. I had read and seen a lot about the little…

EARCHI End-Fed 40-6 build.

Back when I started Sota, i was looking for a quick and easy antenna for portable use, along the way other items have been built and obtained that have made this project not as critical. The project is a simple 9:1 Unun that creates a match for a random bit of wire, it still needs…

Core Flute Wire Winders…

The other week, the EMDRC club had a presentation on portable and lite HF antennas as well as some other ideas on portable operation. Len Steel vk3fb showed a nifty and cheap way of making some wire winders. The video of the presentation can be seen on YouTube at the bottom of this post. I…