With Varying Frequency - Amateur Radio Ponderings

Working with our friend W9EVT on various projects, his yearly winter experience of slow antenna attrition is a stark reminder that “What Goes Up Must Come Down” in terms of antennas.

Winds have taken a toll, with even the big ProSistal Rotors having a tough time coping with the heavy winds of the Island.

What the Winds don’t mess with Ice has a go at. Specially at the “edges” of the seasons significant ice loading occurs.

Snow, Snow and More Snow also play havoc. In the last few weeks snow went from a modest cover to a meter (three feet & some) on the level with drifts double that height.

Metal in cold is a serious contender for damaging outdoor gear. At temperature lower than -25c metal breaks that might have withstood the stresses in summer temperatures.

Difficult working conditions, with short hours of working daylight, cold temperatures, wind, precipitation and the need to plow away snow to even get to the towers makes winter antenna work a real challenge.

Current Antenna Inventory of what’s in-op is impressive:

There may be more, but George didn’t want to completely depress himself recanting all the antenna woes.

Fortunately there are antennas still working - the 17m, 15m & 6m M2 are in operation, as is the RadioWorks Carolina Windom.

From the back-up shack at least one long-wire antenna is still working (though it’s multi-band yagi is down with the winds damaging its small HyGain rotor).

Here at the K9ZW QTH winter overtook me and the GAP Titan vertical never was moved and cabled, so it is in-op.

Reworking some of the yard with a back-hoe the NVIS 40m dipole ended up coming down for clearance.

Fortunately the main antenna cluster of the two Log Periodics and the Sloper are working, though the tower base wiring is basically balled up inside poly sheet for winter protection. Building a box to lay out the wiring correctly, physically fasten down the lightening protection and house a 2kW ex-Military dummy load is on the summer “to-do” list.

The shortened 160m vertical never made it up before winter and lies in pieces in a warehouse.

Looks like spring will be the season for antenna work!

On Washington Island George W9EVT’s XYL saw fit to see that the farm has a Terex boom lift that will make much of the work easier once the snow is gone and the ground gets firm after thawing.

Here in Manitowoc it will be the old fashioned way of ladders & pulleys to do the work. Low work will be off the scaffolding.

73

Steve
K9ZW

In installing an Array Solutions Remote AnTenna Switch - RATPak, Model RatPak 6n, I needed to select a cable and connector setup to install.

After emailing the owner of Array Solutions Jay WX0B for suggestions I settled on using Cat-5/6e cable and standard RJ-45 Cat-5 connectors.

Cabling was inexpensive and easy, and with some help from Tim N7TAL each of the cable ends & the pig-tails for both the in-shack control and tower-base mounted remote switch had male RJ-45’s installed to standard Cat-5 wiring pattern.

But I had forgotten to work something out to hook male-to-male connectors together.

A run to Office Max, two local computer shops and a rummage through the parts box at work didn’t turn up any suitable connectors.

That left my least favorite local shop, a Radio Shack. The people there are always nice as sales folk with a good understanding of their cellphones & consumer electronics. The demand for the sorts of electronic parts & bits I am usually after is pretty light, so it is always a scrabble through seldom open bins like some sort of treasure hunt. The Radio Shack stuff must be treasure too, as if they have what I am after I somehow never can guess high enough for what they want to charge.

So the sales staff fixed me up with two Barrel Connectors for RJ-45. That one had been opened before & resealed should have been a tip-off that I was cruising for troubles.

Hooking the system up I found that Antenna Positions 1,2 and 5 worked, but 6 did nothing and 3 & 4 were causing a dead short, popping the internal fuse if I didn’t instantly move off those positions.

Metering showed everything was “to Hoyle”. Hooked back up it did the same…..

Cutting to the chase, after a fari bit of struggle I figured out the Radio Shack connectors were not Cat-5/6 connectors, but rather old fashioned RJ-45 phone cable connectors.

A Cat-5/6 Barrel Connector preserves the exact position of each wire, matching it to the exact same spot in the other end. It does this by either internal wiring or more commonly by flipping the ends so they are one connector-up and the other connector-down if you had x-ray vision and could see in it. What this means is Pin 1 at one side is Pin 1 at the other, Pin 2 is matched to Pin 2 and so on.

A RJ-45 phone Barrel Connector preserves only the PAIRS of wires, with the usual wiring being straight through matching Pin 1 with Pin 8, Pin 2 with Pin 7 and so on. Usually both connectors are orientated the same way, rather than one-up one-down of a Cat-5/6 connector.

Everything is now working flawless, it only cost me a couple hours picking stuff up, running for more fuses, rechecking everything and returning the wrong connectors.

Radio Shack didn’t have the actual right connectors, so in the end I sourced a durable shielded version from a website Tim N7TAL recommended, DeepSurplus which had everything I needed for this and some other Cat-5/6 projects at a great price.

Wonder who Radio Shack will try and sell the RJ-45 Phone Barrel Connectors as Cat-5/6 connectors to next?

73

Steve
K9ZW