good afternoon everybody so I had to
cancel my soda activation or attempt to
so the activation because the kids the
kids messed with my sprinklers and they
broke a line in my sprinklers that I
needed to take care of really badly
so I took care of that and so now I'm
gonna take my my kit my soda bag let me
go to the local park where I got a nice
wide field and I'm gonna tune my 20
meter dipole the kg6 HUD diaper let's
get to it before we kick this whole
thing off want to make a mention to this
little tent spike mast mount that I made
using a PVC pipe and a little end cap
you can just throw this into the ground
when the ground is soft and you can put
throw your antenna masts right in it
like that vallabha very very cool so if
you remember a couple months ago I did a
really cool livestream one of my
favorite live streams with kg6 hqd
making a dipole antenna out of in my
case lamp cord what's called zip cord he
made one out of speaker wire speaker
wire is a little bit lighter and may
pack a little bit better but you know
what lamp cord is cheap you can buy a
huge role of lamp cord and you can be
making wire antennas to you so the cows
come home or just make a really really
big one for 80 meters or something along
those lines so it folds up pretty nicely
in my pack and I figure 8 it fold it
over and it weighs very little as far as
soda goes this is a really nice way to
go but basically stretch the legs out I
have a linesman knot at the feed point I
guess you'd call it right where the
connector is for the mast basically at
that point stretch everything out that
line that I'm stretching out right now
is your feed line this is basically
functioning as ladder line this will
connect to a BNC connector that you will
see later in the video but yeah pretty
straightforward you got three ends you
got your feed line and then you got the
two legs of the dipole that are tied off
in a linesman lineman's knot so that you
don't strip it any further so this is
all locked into place the lines are all
centered so you don't have to worry
about
that I'm doing a little bit of
last-minute work here stripping off some
of the ends of the feed line which you
can do beforehand or you can do it on
the field it's a easy antenna it's a
very easy project and it is a ton of fun
and performs very well it's worth
pointing out that the ends of this
inverted V configured dipole will
connect to tent stakes via Dyneema line
a extremely lightweight tent line that
has kind of a memory to it so when you
tie like in this case a sheet Bend that
I'm talking right now it holds on really
really tightly great for guy lying
really really nice stuff a little
expensive but good stuff this would be
the time you'd want to put some whipped
grease on that dipole too if you're
planning to do so once you kind of have
things laid out stretched out a little
bit just go ahead and bring the mast up
keep in mind that you're really not
going to use the last two segments of
mast when you use a telescoping fishing
pole because what happens is it's going
to bend one side or the other and even
when you get it all centered once you
start pulling on that feed line it's
gonna pull down towards you so use as
much rigid end of that mass as you can
by a longer mast and then do not use the
smallest segments what you'll basically
do is you'll attach your eyelet to the
smallest and then you'll just keep those
folded into the larger segments that'll
add rigidity and then you can just hoist
the mast up you'll kind of know when you
get to the sweet spot because it won't
fold over as much I've got my little
pack seat and I've got my zi jue X 5
1:05 in that hydration pack there this
is what I take out in the field I did a
video on this if you'd like to watch
that link will be in the description a
very lightweight seat I believe that is
under two pounds for this I keep
thinking I'm gonna kill myself on that
thing and break it but it has survived a
couple of soda activations and I've used
it camping multiple times and well it is
not the most feature-rich seat it is
actually very comfortable no cup holders
but
it is it is really comfortable if you're
sitting down operating radio or sitting
by the fireside so I am a big fan you
make the whole thing connect with a dual
post BNC connector which I'm playing
with right here
these are really cheap you should
probably have three or four of these to
be honest two is not enough because
you're gonna want to devote one to a
go-bag or to a soda bag or something
like that so by a couple of them I will
try and find a link on Amazon but you
know what it's often easy enough to get
them at hand swaps or electronic stores
you'll usually find them much cheaper
okay its resonant on 20 meters midway in
the single sideband portion of the
frequency band but the SWR is two to one
which is fine but I'm gonna see if I can
adjust a couple of links here so then
drop that down to 1.5 let's see an
antenna is very easy you just pull more
of the line up back over itself
shortening the antenna if you needed to
go the other direction be careful don't
cut so much of the line make sure though
that you're gonna snip off those leads
because that does add impedance all
right so I cut down a couple about five
inches on each leg of the dipole and I
still need more to cut but I'm gonna
leave that because I'm gonna tie the end
and eat drink it and wrap it it's really
really tight this carbon fiber is not
the greatest mast bowing out pretty hard
to add a bit more detail here when you
are trimming a dipole you're going to
basically take the dipole that you've
measured and cut based off of many
calculators you can find online link
will be in the description to one and
you will use something like an antenna
tuner and basically figure out what your
SWR is if you want to increase the
frequency you are going to cut the
dipole if you want to decrease the
frequency you are going to lengthen the
dipole so figure out what the center
point is where you want the antenna to
be the most efficient and then you are
going to either trim or lengthen that's
why I said leave some slack when you
build this so that if you need to
lengthen you
can ideally though you're gonna be in
the sweet spot when I make these dipoles
I generally leave about six to seven
inches on one side of the other and then
I tune it in the field when it's
deployed that's going to give you kind
of the best bang for your buck so make
sure you do things that way not the
greatest I imagine that when you're up
on the hill and if there's a lot of wind
it could potentially break it
w5w said this is kilo India six November
alpha Zulu house copy
all right van conditions are pretty
awful so I'm not gonna try and get any
more see Q's going or make you so I have
a feeling this is fine
it's tuned it's one-to-one it's almost a
perfect match it's fun it's gonna be
fine just go up on the mountain let's do
it
so anyway look forward to that video as
well