After I did some looking around and talking to a fellow ham, I made some significant changes to my j-pole antenna. You may say to yourself, “self, what did Warren change on that antenna? It looks the same.” Well dear friends, I made it flexible. You see, an antenna is not naturally born tuned. There are fancy tools to let a builder know when the antenna is running on all cylinders. A big part of what makes my antenna work is related to measurements. In particular, that little wire that goes across from the long pole to the short pole of the antenna. Moving it up and down makes a difference when tuning in Taiwan as the kids say.
My original version was wrong on many levels but one of the biggest issues was that the little wire between the poles was fixed. Now, I can move the wire up and down when I get one of the antenna tuning tools (an swr meter if you care). I am not sure if I will be able to tune in Taiwan but I may get outside of Kanawha county!
I still don’t know what I am doing really but I am able to follow the FCC regulations and have met a number of folks on the air who have been fun to talk with and have been willing to help me with information and encouragement. Emily ad I sometimes sit on the couch and text each other. I think the next step is to get her licensed so we can talk over radio on the couch. What do you think?
I foresee a monster in the making. Maybe you and the wife should go “low tech” on the couch communications. I am thinking maybe the old can and string routine. Otherwise you may have problems with two antennas and receivers being too close to one another. All of those radio waves bouncing off one another can’t be healthy.
Sounds like a big ten-four. Oh wait… that’s CB radio talk. How to ham operators sign-off… over.
I’ll tell you what! I’m about ready to ban all high tech gear in my house and that would be bad for my husband since he is a high tech man. He sits there with his cell phone texting. Then he has a computer or an ipad he’s working with too! My daughter is on the ipad texting her friends and me! lol And I’m sitting here with my laptop. Kids now a days don’t even talk on the phone anymore. All they want to do is text! It’s crazy! I also hate it when we go out and my daughter and her friend are texting other friends instead of talking. I did ban the phone yesterday but it somehow creeped back up! Rant over and out Warren! 🙂
The dog butt is the only thing I recognize in this post!!