W7YV Ham Radio

I enjoy working QRP and, usually, run 5 watts when working CW or SSB. Sometimes, I get grumpy and turn my power down as low as I can to 792 mW on my ICOM 7300. I figure, if they cannot hear me, they need a better antenna. HI HI There are 1000 Mile Per Watt awards that are offered to Hams that work stations on low power. I have a paper certificate around here - somewhere. I have learned that 1000 miles per watt is Child's Play. As this article shows, there are two ways to reach out and touch someone with less. Turn your power down and you will see.  Fig. 1, Typical 1000 Miles/Watt Award The better your antenna, the better your chances. It has been said, "If you have $100 to spend on your hobby, put $90 into your antenna, $9 into your receiver, and $1 into your transmitter. Recently, I setup a CW 10 M beacon on 28.2365 MHz. It drives a 20 M Vertical tuned to 10 M and is on-air during daylight hours when I am not using the rig. I have been running it at about 5 watts (QRP) with d...

I needed an RF Signal Generator for testing radios. They can be expensive. I found the one described in this article on Amazon for $104 including tax. It arrived today and, given my initial mixed reaction, I thought I would offer this review. Unboxing It came in a well-taped tightly wrapped box with no documentation to be seen anywhere. Lots of bubble-wrap but no docs. The product photo is shown in Figure 1. Other than the front panel, there are no inputs or outputs on any side. Fig 1., Signal Generator, Front View Having no documentation, I searched for a manual. I found a couple but they did not explain the functions. Figure 2 is a useful YouTube video that turned the light on for me, at least so far as my uses are concerned. Fig 2, YouTube Video,  OM0ET I won't detail instructions herein - do your own research. F1 is your Go To button. Testing with ICOM 7300 The author of the video,  OM9ET Paul, Slovak Republic , demonstrated using the product to test sensitivity of a...

 I was explaining to a fellow ham the other day about the need for baluns in the shack. For my purposes, I have a balun on my antennas that are naturally unbalanced. For example, feeding a dipole directly with a coax creates an unbalanced condition. This causes common mode currents to flow on the outside of the coax feed line. This causes the coax shield to radiate into space - most commonly, into your neighbors stereo system. To my surprise and delight, I ran across a YouTube video published by Gregg Messenger - VE6WO where he shows how common mode currents can occur on a feedline. How To Build A Terrible Antenna! Common Mode Current Experiments

Efforts to hear weak signals are hampered by noise. Most often, noise outside of the home cannot be mitigated. However, noise on your own property can often be eliminated. The purpose of this post is to document my Noisy Fox Hunting efforts. 04/4/2025 Broadband noise on 10 M For some time, I've been seeing a band of noise wandering through my spectrum display on 10 M. I finally took time to track it down. My shack has switched outlets, one on the north and one one the south. These are controlled by voice commands. This is cool because I can say, "Hey, Google, turn radio shack off." The outlets are on the north and south wall. The north wall is where all the ham gear is. When I turn the north side off, everything goes down except the radio and the computer. When I turned the north side off, the noise you see in the display went away. I traced it to my main ASUS display. It turns out that, when the screen is active, the noise is present. If the screen goes dark, via a power...

 I was studying an ancient book, "Transmission Lines Antennas and Wave Guides." In the first chapter, it derived the impedance that represented the lowest loss. This was 77 ohms. I asked Perplexity.ai why we use 50 ohms. The answer is below: Question: Coaxial cable often has a characteristic impedance of 50 ohms. However, literature states that the lowest loss is cable having an impedance of 77 ohms. Explain why we have most cables at 50 ohms. What are the reasons behind this? Answer: The prevalence of 50 ohm coaxial cables in many applications can be attributed to several key factors, despite the fact that a 77 ohm impedance offers the lowest signal loss. Here are the main reasons why 50 ohms became the standard: Compromise Between Power Handling and Signal Loss Maximum Power Handling : The highest power handling capacity is achieved with a characteristic impedance of about 30 ohms. This is because lower impedance allows more current to flow, which is beneficial for high...

 This site documents my activities in the hobby of Amateur Radio. It is intended for a wide audience, not only for hams, but also, for those that might want get into the hobby. I was licensed on 1/17/2006, right after Hurricane Katrina. My original call was KE7FMN. Once I obtained my Extra, I was granted the vanity call of W7YV. My favorite mode is CW and I love QRP. I always say, "If they cannot hear me, they need a better antenna."