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Antenna Construction TMRA Amateur Radio Beacon January 2020 HAPPY NEW YEAR! From Rob, KV8P News from the President – January 2020 Welcome to the New Year! I sincerely hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and got all the radio presents you were looking for. :) Our family has had a very busy holiday. My wife, daughter and I tend to travel a lot around the holidays to see friends and extended relatives, which is fun but I'm always looking for normal life again when we return..haha. Christmas is also our annual meet-up of ham radio friends from college on 75M SSB, which is always entertaining and fun catching up. (I think some of them have to find their radios, search for the amplifier, and/or fix their antennas every year just for this event..haha) We had a great "I'm new to Amateur Radio, now what" course again on December 7th at the 911 Training Center in Toledo. It was great to see many new faces there! The participation was fantastic and a big thanks for those that helped me provide the details in the class. It's a great team effort. However, I think I may need to provide some sandwiches for the next one. It was a great session. Also, if you missed the December Christmas party, you missed a really good time! The food.. Fantastic! I surely ate too much and my daughter kept reminding me, "Daddy, that isn't good fo your diet". haha The entire 1 evening was a good time and my family and I thoroughly enjoy it every year. Big thanks to Bruce AA8HS for leading the effort this year, and for all of those that helped setup, tear-down and for those that provided some terrific music entertainment this year! It was great to see everyone on the guitar and piano this year. I'm looking forward to the January 8th General meeting (starts at 7pm). We'll be spending some time discussing and showing our membership how different digital modes and radios sound, work and discuss some of the benefits and drawbacks to each. The emphasis will be on helping new hams determine what they'd like to get into next. Lastly, don't forget that we have Winter Field Day coming up soon on January 25th at the Maumee Public Library. We'll be sharing more information on it soon and look for more at the General meeting on January 8th! Check out the work that our 2020 ARRL Great Lakes Convention Committee has done by checking out the new event website (http://toledoglc.com)! Huge thanks to Zack, N8ZAK who put in a lot of time making this website detail and payments work perfectly. Check it out and don't be afraid to pre-purchase tickets for Saturday and Sunday activities. Pre-purchased tickets will net you a $5 discount! - 73 and Happy Holidays and let us have a great 2020! Rob – KV8P 2 TMRA Technical Committee From Dan KE8UE Hello Everyone, We have installed the six meter antenna a raised it up other 8 or so feet. A station in Fulton County (Wauseon) was able to get into the repeater The repeater has very low VSWR and seems to be putting out about 38 watts. The tech Committee has discussed putting a preamp/ preselect but we right waiting to see if we need it . I want to remind you that there is a FM net on Mondays at 9:00 pm everyone is welcome. I will not be able to head the net because I have another comment on Mondays. I will return after the first of the year. I want to let you know that there is an AM net on Wednesday at 9:00 pm on 50.400 and is generally vertical polarization. Also remember the Thursday night SSB round table net at 9:00 pm. This net is generally horizontally polarization but if we hear we do our best to keep on the net. The 147.270 has had some interference we are trying to chase it down. The other repeaters are working ok so far. You should remember that the repeaters are link together. From the Tech Committee are wishing you a very Happy Holidays. Dan KE8UE 3 Pictures from the TMRA Christmas Party 4 5 6 7 Courtesy WD8IOL 8 Thanks to Glenn W9MUK for his leadership in this event. 9 ARES News From Tim, KD8IZU [email protected]. Don’t Forget January 25 ARES General Meeting and the Northwest Ohio Mesh Committee Meeting at St. Luke's Hospital. NWO AREDN Mesh Committee Clinic The next meeting will be held at the 911 Training Center, 2127 Jefferson Ave, Toledo, Oh 43604, on Saturday January 11th from 11 am to 2 pm. The topic will be installing AREDN software on devices. Nondirectional Aircraft Beacons Bruce AA8HS, Editor This article does not necessarily involve our amateur frequencies, but it can be useful for antenna design on several of our bands. 10 Introduction The AM broadcast band extends from 530 to 1710 Khz internationally. You can hear stations from Mexico and Canada at night on 530 AM. In fact, one station in Toronto has only 1000 watts on 530 Khz (CIAO)but you can hear its broadcasts in several languages even in the daytime with a good antenna system. I often wondered how frequencies below our AM broadcast bands were used. In Europe, frequencies between 148.5 and 283.5 kHz are used for broadcasts such as the BBC. In the US, however, there are some marine communications around 500 Khz but the majority of medium and long wave frequencies are dedicated to NDB’s: Non Directional Aircraft Beacons. Non- licensed use of these long wave frequencies is still permitted with severe power and antenna limits on 160-190 KHz and hams have the 135.7-137.8 KHz (our narrowest bandwidth, 2200 meters) and 472-479 Khz (630 meters) regions. Loran C transmissions are at 100 Khz. RFID devices have a very short range (less than 18 inches) and operate on 125 to 135 Khz. Microchips used on pets use this frequency range. NDB’s and Hobbyists These NDB’s have been interesting to many radio hobbyists including hams that enjoy DXing. There are numerous websites, publications, and even software dedicated to locating and logging beacons. The Longwave Club of America has a column called “Dx Downstairs” in their publication where beacon loggings are noted. Beacons are located at airports or oil platforms and used mostly by private aircraft pilots to confirm their location in the air. The receiving antennas generally consist of numerous turns of wire wound around a frame. The exact tuning method used for the variety of beacon frequencies is not clear. The July 2019 issue of QST featured an extensive article about propagation of a large number of beacons and how this can be applied to operating on 630 and 2200 meters. Stephen P. McGreevy N6NKS has photographed large numbers of international beacons and studying the construction of the beacon antennas can give us hams some useful ideas for 11 our next antenna project. I have seen the beacons at Adrian, Michigan, Fostoria, Ohio, and Grosse Ile (Detroit), Michigan. There is another at Port Clinton. The Detroit beacon is particularly strong on 419 Khz with its repeating double sideband AM broadcast of RYW. You can probably hear it with a suitable receiver. A tone modulated carrier with one or two characters is typical of US beacon transmissions. These beacons have been around for decades and some have been decommissioned because of maintenance costs and because so many aircraft have chosen to use GPS. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of international and US beacons around. Their power inputs range from 25 watts to thousands of watts. In the aircraft, loop antennas in the wings are used with variable capacitors to tune in nearby beacons. Antenna construction In this medium and long wave frequency range, antenna efficiency is generally poor and beacons are usually limited in range to tens of miles except for the high power ones. The general approach is to use a vertical radiator which may be 25 to about 80 feet in height with a series coil that can be base loaded or placed anywhere within the vertical radiator (see image below). These loading coils can be very substantial, often consisting of a 12 inch in diameter unit with 60 or more turns. A capacitive hat (as in many HF antennas) is essential and may be made of a large circular element or horizontal wires extending 50 to 100 feet horizontally in opposite directions ( a Marconi T); this could also be described as a double inverted L. The capacitive hat is very important because it forms a capacitor with underlying radials, improves efficiency, and reduces the number of turns required in the loading coil. Thousands of feet of radials would be ideal, but this is always not possible. AM radio stations have grounding systems made of thick “chicken wire” extending over acres of land and this would be the best arrangement. The reason that NDB’s are so inefficient is two fold: the antennas are greatly 12 shortened and the grounding system is not extensive enough. For example, the quarter wave length of an antenna at 474 Khz is 517 feet, the total length of a typical vertical or inverted L antenna is only a fraction of the required physical length. Since beacons extend from 201 to 521 Khz (from the latest Dx Downstairs), you can easily calculate the physical quarter wave length that would be required.
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