Month: February 2012

More work on the Cushcraft MA-5B along with VSWR plots

After I replaced the balun and coax tails on my MA-5B, I posted recently to say I wasn’t quite as happy with the results as I could have been.  I contacted Bob at Balun Designs who suggested that if I’d made the coax tails a different length to the originals that I may need to […]

Winding coils for various radio projects

Over the last few days I’ve found myself winding coils for construction projects. I dug out my MKARS80 kit from where it’s been sitting for the best part of a year and the next stage was fitting some trifilar wound transformers. These are made by lightly twisting together three lengths of 38swg enamelled wire and […]

The CQ WPX RTTY Contest 2012

Anyone who follows me on Twitter or reads this site will have noticed that I was planning on taking part in the CQ WPX RTTY contest last weekend and that I was keen to sort my aerial out in advance.  I lowered the mast, fitted my new balun along with two new coax tails and […]

A replacement balun for my Cushcraft MA-5B from Balun Designs

After the investigative work a couple of weeks ago where I tracked the fault on my Cushcraft MA-5B to the cable between the balun (matching network) and the 12m/17m element I decided that I wanted to replace the entire balun, including the two coax tails out to the elements.  I figured that because one tail […]

Statistics – January 2012

I’m keen to continue posting the monthly statistics posts so I can keep a track of how things are going and so that I can compare against last years figures.  I’ve made over double the number of QSOs in January this year compared to 2011 and I’m slowly getting more countries confirmed on LoTW.  My […]