Hawaii Ham Radio Information Pages
Rabbit Ears have been used to solve the limited space antenna problem of how to operate HF from a condo in Urban Honolulu. After much testing, this design has been working:
Near Vertical Incidence Antennas in Hawaii have been the source of much speculation. The NVI mode is ideal for HF communications statewide, critical to emergency communications where VHF simplex cannot span the distances required. Here is a modeling study of optimized NVI dipoles:
A comparison of Portable Antenna types using EZnec modeling. Including dipoles, optimized 1/4 wave vertical systems, fan dipoles and inverted V's:
The "Stake Stick" is a multi-band antenna for the higher bands designed for portable use such as backpacking. It uses full size, tunable elements on 20, 17,15 and 10 meters with six meter operation available as a 3/4 wave antenna:
Vertical antennas are great, as are end fed wires. Easy to put up and locate in restricted spaces. But they often put heavy demands on ground systems and radials. Here is some of the "bad news" about grounds, ground enhancements, what does and does not work:
An entirely new area, Ham antennas for WiFi, extending operation of 802.11b wireless network access to allow high speed digital radio experiments cheaply, even up to and including adding amplifiers which for licensed Ham Radio operators is legal under part 97. When it exceeds part 15 specifications, it should be properly called HSMM or High Speed MultiMedia hamming:
For portable operations, many people are attracted to lofting field day type antennas with gas filled balloons. Here are details on what it takes to get such a project off the ground:
Almost as popular as balloons for portable antenna experiments are kites. Here are a few kite related notes:
The SLOPO is the result of much research with EZnec looking for a reasonable portable antenna that had as little to carry as possible and yet had significant performance. It was hard to beat a simple dipole and come up with a single pole system that had merit, but the SLOPO, the combination of the sloper dipole with a reflecting support pole, making a sort of beam, shows promise:
The EDZ extended double zepp antenna is a classic. It may have fallen from favor due to its ugly feed point impedance. It is highly reactive at about 120 ohms resistive. But a tuner like a Johnson Matchbox and parallel line should make short work of that problem, and provide a multiband antenna of merit. It also makes a good gain producing antenna for portable use at the higher bands such as this example at 15 meters:
Here are lots of numbers for wire antennas on various bands from 160 to 6 meters to help you decide how big a given antenna design will be, what might fit in your "personal antenna farm", and what style of wire antenna might be appropriate for your QTH:
Information on the new online Ham Radio Licensing system, how to use it, the new forms and the FCC websites to download the new online forms. This is how all Ham licensing issues will be addressed in the future:
Camping and Ham Radio, especially QRP or low power, go together well, but here are some things to consider to make life in da tent easier and more fun when the two activities are combined:
Batteries are a great emergency power source, but their ratings and chemistry, especially rechargeable ones, is often Witchcraft. Here is some information to help sort them out:
Jumpstart Powerpacks have appeared that are compact units with a sealed lead acid battery and integral charger. This is a report on one such example and conversion to a highly portable QRP/HT power source:
If a repeater fails, a Net Control Station will have to establish a net protocol on a VHF simplex frequency. Here are some guidelines for both Net Control Stations and Net Participants:
One of the hardest parts of traffic handling on a net is figuring out how to count the message. The message count is an important "checksum" to verify that the entire message was received. Getting it wrong can cause lots of confusion:
This site contains the latest information from the repeater frequency coordination database for Hawaii:
Salt air and Aluminum or Iron do not mix well. Here is a guide to goo and gunk designed to make aluminum connections stay connected and fight the rapid conversion of your new beam to white powder and all steel fasteners to red stains:
In May 1998 there was a major series of solar events. The result was one of the most intense HF blackouts and Geomagnetic storms in a decade. One of the QRP-L list regulars unloaded a massive broadside of information in the form of annotations of solar reports, descriptions, explanations, etc. that constitutes one of the best learning experiences available on solar phenomenon and HF propagation. Suck in your gut, brace yourself and read:
This is an great discussion of working Sporadic E skip on 10 meters from a member of the QRP-L Email list:
To help sort out any RFI problems you might be having, here is a list of the frequencies of TV channels, both over the air and cable:
This is a listing of selected web sites for Other Hawaii/World/Mainland Ham Clubs of merit:
You may find the following Ham radio related web sites useful, they include some very nice Ham utilities, some Callsign lookup locations, propagation related sites:
Here are some major mail order Ham radio stores, manufactures of Ham equipment, and some selected special sites. Most of these we have some personal experience with:
These pages are local Hawaii weather information pages:
06/02