quadrifilar helix

This week, I had a couple of interactions with a company called DX Engineering They're a big ham radio dealer in Ohio that I sometimes buy stuff from.

You see, I got laid off recently and there was a severance, and so after finding new employment, I decided to spend some of the money on some new gear. I've wanted a Yaesu FT-847 for a while now and, while that particular radio is long out of production, it's pretty readily available on the used market. So, I bought one. That's when the trouble began.

Well, I finally went and did it. I built the 6-meter quadrifilar helix I've been talking about for years. Okay, it's not quite done, I'm waiting for a decent pair of wire strippers to arrive, but a week ago I took a four-inch PVC pipe, some 3/8 inch dowels, some Romex, and adhesive and fabricated a QFH antenna. I used a short Python program I wrote to determine the dimensions and, well, I did it wrong. The short wire in what I built should be the long wire at the operating frequency, so the whole thing is too long for the 52 MHz design frequency.

It's been a while since I've put anything here, but I've been busy the whole time.

I received a Peaberry SDR V2.0 kit as a gift, and I've been assembling it. I've gotten to the point where the entire receiver is built and works, and I'm working on the transmitter. I'm building the 20, 30, 40, and 60 meter version of it, if anyone cares. At some point, I'll have to find a nice Linux SDR application I can use it with. Up to now, I've just be using the recommended Windows application because it's recommended. I want to control the uncertainties in any project I do.