Nick Taylors blog

I’ve mentioned this before, but now I’ve almost completed the antennas and cabling from my shack in the basement to the Diamond X6000A on the roof, the Diamond X50A in the attic, and the yet to be installed Alpha Delta DX-EE. This should give me good coverage from 40m up to 23cm.

I really like the Times Microwave products, and the connectors work well with their cabling, obviously. I’ve used LMR-400 [LMR-400 specs - PDF] and LMR-400 Ultraflex [LMR-400-UF specs - PDF] for VHF/UHF and I use Belden 8267 for HF. The connectors I’ve used are the TC-400-NMC N-connector [TC-400-NMC - PDF] and the EZ-400-UM PL-259 connector [EZ-400-UM - PDF]

I usually source cabling from Ham Radio Outlet and get the Times connectors from Hutton Communications.

While up on the roof, winterizing the swamp cooler, I decided to swap-out my Diamond X50A dual-band antenna with a tri-band Diamond X6000A, which I’ve had sitting in the garage for a while. It was just in May that I installed the X50A.

It was an easy install, though I did install a second chimney bracket (a Channel Master 9067) as the X6000A is much longer, and I also re-terminated the co-ax using N-connectors rather than PL-259s. I’m glad to make the move to N-connectors, as well as having better impedance characteristics, they seem better quality than the PL259s (I especially like the Times Microwave TC-400-NMC that I’m using on my LMR400 cable).

The X6000A is a big bugger, at over 3m long, but it’s specs are impressive:

Band

2m/70cm/23cm

Gain (dB)

6.5/9/10

Max Power Rating

100/60

Wind Rating

112 MPH (no ice)

Height (feet/meters)

10.5/3.05

Connector

Type-N

Element Phasing

2-5/8l, 5-5/8l, 6-5/8l

So it’s about a 2dB gain over the X50A on 2m and 70cm. Of course, it now opens up the world of 23cm to me, which I’m looking forward to when I get my Icom ID-1 – D-STAR too! Of course, it’s an omnidirectional antenna, so I won’t get fantastic gain in any direction but I think it’ll be a great place to start on the 23cm band.

Installation Instructions are here (PDF link)

In the corner of the garage I’ve had a High Sierra HS-1800/Pro for about a year. I’d procrastinated as I knew the install would be a little “mechanical”, involving drilling the bodywork of the Green D90.

But, having recently attained my General Class license, I though I should just get it done.

Having purchased the “Platinum Package“, I had everything I needed to install the antenna.

Firstly, I lined up the mount at the rear of the D90 (making sure I had garage clearance), and had the top 2 bolt locations line-up in the rear interior and the bottom 2 line-up inside the wheel-arch outside the truck. I braced the nuts and bolts with a couple of sheets of aluminum on the non-visible sides. Next, I drilled holes for the ground, power and co-ax. The ground is a short run below the antenna to the exhaust bracket. The power runs in the top of the bracket to the interior. The co-ax runs a little higher and into the interior with a female-female SO-239 connector.

With the bracket mounted and the basic cabling laid, I added powerpole connectors to all the electrical connectors.

Plugging in the tuning module (basically a fancy switch that moves the antenna up and down, and altering it’s electrical length while showing the SWR), I could see the antenna was working – I could also hear it working!

I knew I wouldn’t like the HS way of tuning the antenna, so at the same time I bought a “Turbo Tuner“. This would enable me simply to hit the tune button on my IC-7000, wait a few moments, and have the Turbo Tuner find the lowest SWR for the frequency I require. As the Turbo Tuner has great reviews, I thought it’d be a great way of doing this.

Alas, I ran into problems almost immediately. Despite triple-checking the connections (one to the CI-V port, the other into the tuner port), and the settings (basically the baud rate and the CI-V address) I could not get it to work. After more experimenting I decided to do a factory reset on the IC-7000 to see if that would help. But that meant loosing all the information I had stored in memory… I had a cup of tea and a think…

As luck would have it, the mail showed up, complete with CI-V leads and my IC-7000 cloning software – perfect timing! A couple of days ago I ordered the WCS7000 software from RT Systems. As soon as I installed the software, I had the rig backed up and performed the reset.

Voila! It worked! The tuner was tuning. But not quite right. The instructions suggest that for the HS1800/Pro antenna the direction should be “normal” and the stall current should be “750ma”. After some experimenting, I had to change the dip-switch settings so the direction was “reverse” and the stall current was “500ma” (so the antenna would reverse direction when it reached the end of its travel).

That seemed to fix things, but then my radio started playing up. I’d read some background on how final stages can be destroyed by ill-using antenna controllers. But I’d done my research and the Turbo Tuner shouldn’t do this! My IC-7000 display was wavering and when I hit PTT most times it would restart.

Then I realised that I’d be transmitting all morning, and the antenna was moving up and down and the rig needs a good 13.8V to work correctly. So I started the D90 and all was well again, phew!

I dressed in the cables, and am ready to give it a good test tomorrow!

I’ve finally got around to installing by base station 2m/70cm antenna no more using the crappy mag-mount!

The Diamond X-50A antenna was my antenna of choice after sizing up the chimney stack and reading some good reviews.

I also needed a way of mounting to the chimney – I sourced a 5ft mast from Home Depot and a Channel Master 9067 chimney mount.

Finally, from Ham Radio Outlet (one of the few brick and mortar stores I still visit), I bought 65ft of LMR-400 (PDF specs) and 30ft of LMR-400 Ultraflex (PDF specs). These cables are made by Times Microwave and so far seem to be exceptional quality.

I bought this coax as the loss figures for VHF and UHF were the lowest I could find.

The install wasn’t too difficult. I installed the Chimney Mount to the chimney (be careful of the stainless steel straps, they’re sharp and I have the scars to prove it), pulling the straps with pliers before crimping them to the brackets. The brackets then adjust with a pair of bolts, making the last bit of tightening possible with just a wrench.

Once the mount was installed, I simply installed the mast, which tightens with 4 bolts to the clamp, and popped the antenna on top. I also drilled a hole in the mast to mount a screw through the clamps to stop the mast rotating. Now it got windy, and I called it a day for now…

The next day was about cabling, so with my 65ft of LMR-400, I attached a PL-239 and climbed up to the roof again to install.

Of course, the PL-239 would not fit through the mast – damn! The mast, after all, was designed for TV antennas and a smaller connector would fit through easily. Still, I needed a short patch lead, so I chopped 1m of cable off, threaded it through and attached a new plug. After securing everything, and double-checking all the nuts and bolts, I walked the cable across the roof (I’ve not yet found a good way of securing cabling on the roof), and down the side of the house closest to the basement window where my office/shack is located.

I quickly popped the cable through the window, attached another PL-239 and connected it to my IC-7000 via an SWR meter and threw out a test transmission.

I’m happily seeing S9/S9+ from the local repeaters on VHF and UHF, with an SWR of as close to 1 as I reckon is possible. Now I’m looking forward to participating in some of the Denver area Nets more frequently.

Next step, lightning protection! We get a lot of lightning here in Denver, and currently the manual disconnect will have to do, but getting some expensive copper from the roof and into the ground is a high priority.