Merry Christmas to all! Celebrate the birthday of the only Savior of the lost sinners! Hallelujah!

Merry Christmas Dave, K4PHM

What is the capasity of the powerstation ? Dose it have 12v out ? Or just AC out?

I used to first hear them about 30 years ago, when another amateur told me what they are, looking for the MUF's. 😊

I knew that Santa 🎅 was real.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas keep up good work 73

Happy Christmas to the three of you, all the best for 2025

Merry Christmas to you and the family also

You always have great explanations. Thank you very much!

Thanks a ton for this video Dave. I just picked up a used D-104, mostly for nostalgia reasons, and need to have someone wire it to work with my W2IHY EQPlus. More than 30 years ago, twelve year-old me, whose voice hadn't dropped yet, was using a D-104 on SSB, and probably hurting ears all over. I would check into nets, and hear "Let the YL go first"

Tnx dear friend, you are the best.

Just because it resonates doesn't mean it radiates. Anybody remember the Isotron?

Gee I wonder why so many of us elmer types prefer ladder line over coax? Could it have something to do with the impedance of free space? Or the fact that the best balun will always have _some_ reflection and power loss, so designing the entire signal train from amplifier to antenna to not need any baluns or additional impedance transformations means a more efficient system? Antennas are not complicated, nor are they black magic, nor are they hard to understand - _if they are explained well_. The same E&H fields that make up all RF signals - indeed all EM waves period - exist in the coax, or the ladder line, and the antenna. A magnetic field at right angles to a voltage field, each out of phase with the other, so that they exchange energy with each other, back and forth, at the speed of light...it's the same fields in air, as in the antenna, and in the feedline. Here's another unpopular opinion: If you need ferrites on your coax to keep RF out of your shack, you are doing something very wrong.

I tend to visualize decibels as the tenths of the order of magnitude, or somewhat reversed scientific notation of numbers (x•10^n). So I look firstly at the tens (and higher) digits (i.e. full Bells or characteristic of the logarithm) to determine the order of magnitude (n), and then at the unit digit (and fractional digits, e.i. mantissa) to decipher the multiplier standing before 10^n.

Although I was born in 1989 and used in schools only the modern calculators, it was really interesting for me to play with my mom's pocket slide rule until our dog chewed it... But later I bought my own tables of functions and two longer slide rules. Just in case SHTF 😜

Very well explained. 👍

While I am confident you are very well versed in the principles of radio propagation and utilisation of WSPR, your comments regarding the crash of the aircraft are misleading. You mention that the crash would have been unsurvivable, but given the condition of the parts found it is a possibility that the aircraft made a controlled landing on the water, where the good structural condition is maintained as observable with US Airways 1549 in the Hudson, as a popular example. This would be a survivable condition, just in this case it is highly likely that the passengers were deceased before impact by method of manual cabin depressurisation. This is an attractive theory as a controlled landing means minimal debris and ocean surface detection from a following search. The trailing edge components found may have been torn with flaps extension for a slower landing on the water. Just FYI, I know it doesn’t contribute a lot to this particular research case.

You could make the cage dipole out of steel rods welded together..... just sayin. All sorts of variations are done to AM broadcast towers to widen the tune. Same theory the skirt makes it look wider (obviosuly depends on how its attached). As for chicken wire used in a ground mat.... NO and Agreed. But use Dog Mesh..... its squares are the size of a cd cover and all cross wires are spot welded! The copper thieves will hate you! wink wink

short answer is NOW....PS Bigger is better !

I didn’t really learn anything about logging with this video! I learned what software Dave uses but nothing about how to use it!

Have you flown since this flight Dave. I'm back after a long hiatic

And stay away from cheap fuses! Buy quality name brand.

OMG i bet you tell on yourself all the time

If you connect two different coaxial cables together, even if the characteristic impedance is the the same on both cables, there will be the equivalent of a capacitance put in parallel to the line. This effect has been calculated in 1944. See the paper by: Whinnery, Jamieson and Robbins. This capacitance may eventually cause a reflection or phase shift. This effect can be minimized in theory by using a taper interface between the two cables. This is only theory because I have calculated the value of the capacitance and found that for ham radio frequencies the effect is totally negligible. Also, RG-58 RG-59 and all those designations were old military specifications that have long been abandoned. Nowadays, the only expectation when you buy cable from the cheap suppliers is that somehow the current flows thru it! Even that is not guaranteed. For example you discover that solid copper center turns out being plated aluminum or mechanical tolerances are not respected. Not to mention the quality of dielectric or the shield. It is a disaster when you have to patch a cable with electric tape when installing high quality high price connectors. On the other hand, it you insist for having properly specified cables and connectors then you will have a big surprise because those are government suppliers... Good stuff is rare and expensive.

There are two good reasonns for getting the Mars mod without wating to use it for MARS work.. First of all, the 101 has a wierd way of doing 60 meters, it has preprogrammed channnnels but the frequency display is for the center of the band and not the SSBV carrier frequency. Also, you can not move the receive frequency which can be handy even for channelized communication. Aslo the person you are working may be slilghtly off frequency. If they allowed you to change receive frequency annd displayed the actual carrier frequency instead of channel center frequency, I would have no complainnt. Seconndly, and this does not apply to most hams. I use all of my ham rigs as a frequency generator for designing filters, amplifiers, etc. I run the rig at low power and it beccomess an all mode frequency generator for my test lab. One problem with the 1101 is that its lowest output is a whopping 5 watts, which is huge for a general purpose RF generator, so I made a high power attenuator that reduces the actual output to the mW level. It is also handy for working true QRP on the air, but I have real QRP rigs for that sort of activity. Just another reason that the 101 is an awesome rig. Thanks for alsom video.

Thanks, Dave. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. N0QFT

That was awesome. Thank you.

What is this 'coax' that you speak of? This new-fangled stuff is like alchemy!

REP Design use to make a heavy aluminum bracket that went from one side of the cargo bed to the other in my Honda Ridgeline. It’s mounted on top of the cargo brackets and I had those stripped and tin plated for conductivity. The installation and pictures are on QRZ and my call sign is KD8RHC.

Happy holidays, Dave.

Problem is the new trucks are aluminum bodies. 🤦

Excellent video Dave. I never had any idea what the oscilloscope could be used for. Now I know what a useful tool it is. Thanks much!

Thanks!

Thanks!

Got 11 meter dipole would 25 foot from ground be ok

Looks like the SteppIR is no more at Brad's QTH, parts are up for sale on QRZ.

I feel the ZS6BKW is a really good first choice beginners antenna. I use an external tuner and this antenna is useable on every band 80 through 6 It really shines on 40, 20, 12 1nd 10. All the others use a tuner. Honestly if you have 90 ft available horizontally and at least 30 ft high it is a great choice.

Nice video as always Dave. I'm a bit puzzled by the fan dipole I just built. It was originally a 40m (not quite but close) dipole, feedpoint up high off a 1:1 balun I built in one of those 4x4 Cantex boxes from HD. So each leg around 32-33 ft. Worked great. I then added two legs for 10m, each around 8'2" or so. When I checked the SWR on this new configuration, resonance hadn't changed on the 40m band, but it was also way off on the 10m band, as in, unusable. Not sure what's going on, so it's my current radio Sherlock Holmes adventure.

I've have my R1500 over a year, no issues!

great vid thanks you handsome devil

Just bought mine earlier today and for the moment can't use it. I'm unable to switch to VFO, and the menú is incomplete, it's missing submenús. I wrote a email to the seller and I'm waiting for an answer. Hoping for the best.

My shortned dipole jumped to 160 meters because of the rain and I made my first entrance in the lower bands. So, I had a 40 meter dipole 30 feet in the air and I decided to experiment by adding a coil at the ends and dropped a 4 feet wire, tuned it and was able to reach 80 meters. I was a happy camper, but then it rained. So, the coils were wrapped on a cardboard cylinder covered with duct tape, and rain detuned the antenna. It was no longer resonant in 3.9 MHz but lower in the band. I decided to change the ends to 2.5 feet, and by chance the shortened dipole resonated in 1.9 MHz. I tried it and it worked. I made my first contact in the forbidden band with several 5/9 reports. Isn’t t he at amazing!

Probably reading higher watts on the battery pack because of the inverter power required that way it calculates hour left for unit.

Portable ? OK for a caravan or in the boot of a car.otherwise you would need a backpack to carry it LOL

I built a three section top rail mast, but I raised it up next to the gable end of my house, using a pully mounted on an S hook attached to an eye screw at the peak of the gable. I dug a 6 inch post hole in the ground about 2 and a half feet deep, and sunk a 2 inch pipe about 36 inches long in the hole, then filled the hole around the pipe with concrete. The center of the hole is 2 feet from the wall under the peak of the gable. The concrete took about a day to cure. The pulley made it easy to raise the mast while my son steadied the base of the mast and placed it into the pipe. Then I attached 2 foot standoffs at the 10 and 20 foot level of the mast and mounted them on the gable wall. This is very sturdy, but it hasn't been through a storm season yet, so we'll see. In the meantime, I have a half wave verticle end fed 10m antenna mounted at the top. So far, so good. KJ5DUL

Thanx David. On one of the future 'reviews', would you mind placing the Drill Motor under load...say even with your hand, or driving a drywall screw, so I could see what the sinewave does on the oscilloscope? Bless Your Bunions!

Thanks, Dave. How much does that thing weigh? N0QFT

So the channel is an infomercial feed now, eh?

Thanks ke4hpq