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The Lincoln County repeater
K1LX/R is alive on a new hill
After a long absence, thanks to
the efforts of Ernie Richards,
K1NI, Dave Hawke, KQ1L
and Randy Lewis, K1XI, the
Lincoln County Amateur
Radio Club's K1LX repeater
is now back on the air.
They found the original location on Huntoon
Hill not to be the best possible site for various
reasons, so they set up on nearby Blinn Hill in
Dresden. As before, the repeater frequency is
146.985 MHz with a PL tone of 136.5 Hz. The
LCARC hopes to get their ARES Net running
again sometime in December. Give it a try and
see how it works for you.
NEAR-Fest New England Amateur Radio Festival
Don’t forget, Friday & Saturday, October 14th & 15th
at the Deerfield, NH Fairgrounds is the fall edition of
NEAR-Fest. Come have fun with your fellow Hams
from all over New England and the northeast.
Getting to NEAR-Fest by automobile is extremely sim-
ple. The Deerfield Fairground is located at 34
Stage Road, Deerfield NH 03037. Stage Road is also
NH State Highway 43.
Back by Popular Demand,
The W1ZE PVC Frame
6-Meter Moxon
By Bruce Randall, W1ZE
Driven Element Max
Several years ago I had an article in this
newsletter that described a simple inexpen-
sive six-meter beam antenna that per-
formed equally as well to a two element
Yagi. I thought it was about time to put it
back in the newsletter so that some of you
that want to build a small six-meter Moxon
beam antenna could go about building one
for yourself.
As you can see in the above diagram the
Moxon is a two element beam antenna that
is smaller than a full size two element
Yagi. Being smaller than a two element
Yagi the Moxon makes a good portable
antenna on the higher HF bands plus six-
meters. The Internet was loaded with in-
formation about the Moxon so I went about
building a six-meter model from available
hardware store materials.
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I found a web site that had an Moxon
antenna dimension calculator at:
[http://ab1jx.1apps.com/ham/calcs/moxon/index.html].
So by just entering the frequency and wire
size it gives me all the wire length and
dimensions.
Being a guy that likes to build antennas
from PVC pipe I thought the Moxon would
be a good candidate. After some calcula-
tion on the old graph paper I headed off to
the local hardware emporium to gather up
the stuff to build my six-meter Moxon
antenna frame. I purchased two 10-foot
lengths of ¾ inch schedule 40 PVC pipe,
two ¾ inch PVC pipe Tees and a ¾ inch
PVC pipe cross connection. While in the
local hardware store (Rogers in Bath) I
spied a display rack with bicycle flag
whips used to keep an eye on your kids in a
crowd. The whip was made with ¼-inch
fiberglass rod stock. I thought that would
make a pair of stiffening rods to keep the
PVC pipe element from bending in when
the wire elements were tightened up. That
proved to work out well.
About an hour in the workshop I had the
frame assembled (see above diagram) and
had cut the needed No.12 stranded wire in
accordance with the Moxon calculation
program. For the feed-point of the driven
element I uses a couple stainless steel 6- 32
screws, washers and nuts and applied
crimp-on connectors to the end of the wire
and attached them to the feed point.
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I then secured the wire elements to the
frame and used electrical tape to hold the
wire in place until I got through with the
tuning process. When finished I used black
tie-wraps to secure the wire to the frane. The No.12 wire I used was insulated so
when I applied the antenna analyzer to it,
the antenna resonated at 48 MHz rather
than 50.1 MHz. It hit me quick. The calcu-
lation program was for bare No.12 AWG
wire and with the insulated wire taped to
the PVC pipe the Velocity Factor had
changed. I shortened up the elements little
by little until I achieved a 1.15:1 SWR at
50.1 MHz. The antenna appeared to be
fairly broad banded so it would play with-
out a tuner from 50 to 50.6 MHz with an
SWR of less than 2:1. The element end insulator needed to be
2¾ inches apart so I thought of using some
scrap PVC pipe but came up with an idea
I thought would work and it did. I made
the end tie-insulator out of some heavy
Weed-Whacker® monofilament line and
two crimp type wire splicing sleeves (blue)
I made the antenna so it would have a
15-inch section of PVC pipe that would
slide into a pushup mast or into a TV rotor
motor mount.
At the feed point I used s short section
of RG-58U coax with a few ferrite beads
slid over it to act as a 1:1 current balum. If
you do not have ferrite chokes, you could
build an RF choke by making a four or five
turn coil in the coax feed line about six
inches in diameter at the antenna feed
point. Then came the acid test just before Field
Day. With the Moxon at about 15 -feet off
the ground and a 20-foot length of coax
hooked up to my transceiver I tuned-up on
50.125 and “YIPEE” I had an SWR of less
that 1.2:1 and I could hear stations
thundering in. Good time to have the band
open because I worked several southern
and mid western state hams with the
antenna only 15-feet off the ground. Front
to back was what you would expect for a
two element Yagi, about 15db change on
the S-meter, front to side was even better
while tuned to the WA1OJB beacon in
Bowdoin about 8 miles away from my
QTH in Phippsburg, (ground wave).
If you want a small effective but cheap
six-meter beam, try a Moxon. I think you
will be pleased with the results.
73,Bruce
Big Ham Radio towers & antenna
farm appears in Harpswell
MARA member Richard ‘Dick’ Bean, uses
K1HC/1 for contacts made from his vacation
home in Harpswell, Maine (grid square FN53).
Dick is in the process of erecting two large self-
supporting towers at 160 feet above sea level
above a tidal marsh. His 120-foot tower will have
32 five element Directive Systems end-mounted
Yagis, 16 at 60 degrees and another 16 at 240 de-
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grees. That tower will also support a 25 element
Directive Systems 432 MHZ Yagi, a 146/440
MHZ Diamond X50 vertical, a six meter loop, and
a 160 meter inverted V. The second tower is
70-foot tall and will have a M2 log periodic and a
seven element Directive Systems six meter Yagi.
The 19-acre site will have other antennas
springing up as time permits.
The 32 element Directive Systems two-meter Ya-
gis installed on the 120-foot tower, but not yet
connected to the ten power dividers. Transmis-
sion lines are coming soon.
MARA Members attend
BOXBORO Reported by George Szadis, K1GDI
Photo of serious ham operator with crank up tower attached to
his RV at Boxboro
I was able to attend the Boxboro Hamfest on Satur-day September 10th. Good crowd, sufficient flea market tables and pretty complete vendor indoor display. Certainly worth the trip.
Enigma machine display and lecture was the high-light for me. More modern hf rigs for sale than usu-al. Quite a few tables packed up early Saturday after-noon and not sure if the returned Sunday morn-ing. Not good if that was the case. Still waiting to hear if I won the grand prize. . 73, George K1GDI
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Last year DR Steve Kercel, AA4AK wanted to get
some wire up in the air at his QTH in Brunswick
that would exhibit some gain on the fourty meter
band. With paper and pencil and a antenna
modeling program he started in on plans to
fabricate and install a 7 MHz Double Extended
Zepp antenna and an associated balanced
matching tuner.
The above graphics show what he came up with
and got up in the air, assisted by Harry McNelley,
N1TTT. There is a story about the trials and
tribulations of getting this 177 foot long wire up in
the air but that is a story for them to tell.
Before it went up in the air Steve spent many an
hour assembling the parts and building the
balances tuner that feeds the antenna. The
following is the tuner diagram.
The following photo shows the tuner before
placed inside a weatherproof container made
from a 50-Cal. Ammo box.
Steve obtained/fabricated some real open-wire
600-ohm transmission line to feed the antenna
and fabricated a center feedpoit using ceramic
strain insulators.
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After it was up in the air and adjustments made
with the tuner Steve’s experience with his new
Double Extended Zepp has pleased him no end.
He is working 40-Meter DX with ease and
made the following observations:
Steve is very pleased with his 40 Meter EDZ and
should give W1ZE and his rotary 40M SteppIR
dipole at 55-feet a run for his money.
Steve did a presentation of the EDZ at the ARRL’s
New England Convention in Foxboro in September
where the above power point slides were used.
After the convention the following comments were
made about Steve’s presentation:
Hi All, Although I won't be able to attend this meeting, as I
will be in Massachusetts that weekend, I just want to say that
I attended Steve's presentation at Boxboro and thought it
was absolutely excellent. Here is what two friends
said:
Hi_Steve,
Sorry I had to leave the session at 11 for another meet-
ing today, but I did hear your talk in total. It was very
well done.
Two friends, neither of whom knew that I knew you,
came up to me afterward and asked if I had heard it –
they both felt that it was the best talk they heard at the
convention and really liked the way you knitted it all
together from VOCAP through design, top-level con-
struction, to positive results. LOTS OF WORK for one
[very important] Q! --73, Larry W1DYJ
Well done Steve.
People you may know
Photo By Marjorie KX1I
Leisure time at the 2016 Windsor Hamfest
Bobby Donohue W1JX, Tom Donohue W1QU,
Bruce Randall W1ZE, Dan Lindsley N5AGG &
Harry Mcnelley N1TTT
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Midcoast
ARES/CERT
members attend
Lincoln County EMA
Event
Reported by the MARAs photo journalist
Marjorie Turner, KX1I
On Saturday September 17th a group of hams
from Midcoast ARES/CERT and MARA at-
tended the Lincoln County EMA event held at
and in front of the Lincoln County Courthouse
where the County EMA set up their portable
command post to demonstrate to the public it’s
capabilities.
The Ham attendees were: Norm Bosse (W1MKD),
Harry McNelley (N1TTT), John Goran (K1JJS)
Ed Wynn (N1WY), Marjorie Turner (KX1I) and
Dick Michael (AB1YX).
Inside the courthouse the Lincoln County ARES
Hams set up and demonstrated their communi-
cations ability with various digital modes using
the FLdigi programmed into their computer.
Kudos to all.