Wire Work Day

 Today was prep work.  I'm working towards getting on the air with my FT-840 at home.  This means setting up an antenna in the back yard and running a cable over to my porch where I'll have the radio setup.  This is a temporary setup because it still needs to cool a bit more here before I dare start working in my garage and attic to setup my hopefully permanent setup.  I believe I have almost everything I need to do this temporary setup except 1 item for my mast which should be in any day now.  For the rest, it is really just prep work.

Setup

I believe I have settled on what antenna I am going to try first.  It will be a Quarterwave Vertical and I am basically following Walt Hudson's design (K4OGO) from his Salty Walt's Portable Antenna Sketchbook which you can get from places like Amazon.  He has 2 of these types of books and they are pretty cool.  I also recommend checking out his videos on Youtube.  I actually recommend you immerse yourself in all sorts of HAM content creators.  Find ones that match you and are not trying to sell you things if possible though there are those that sell things that also put out great videos.  Walt will bring up his book but he doesn't push them and he goes over what he is doing in the videos.  The book is just handy.

So with that said, here are the parts I am going to use to do this

• Transmitter - For this I'll be using my Yaesu FT-840
• Tuner - MFJ-941E
• Power Supply - FP-800
• Mast - POTA33H - I can do up to a 40m Quarterwave Vertical
• Antenna wire.  40 meter requires ~32.61' and 20 meter requires ~16.44' (using the quick reference he has in the book which is honed in on 7.175 Mhz and 14.230 Mhz respectfully.)
• Counterpoise wires - At least 4 at ~17' long each. 
• 1:1 Balun
• Coax cable run long enough to go from Balun to Transmitter.  I have a great 20' and a cheap 50'.  

Counterpoise Preparation

For the Counterpoise wires, I started by cutting 4 approximately 17' long 18 gauge wire.  I figured this is a good start.  I'll make more later when I have better storage for them.  For each wire, I left one end alone and on the other end I put an alligator clip.  The baluns/unun's I have are really setup more for ring ends and I may switch to that at some point but for this I wanted something quick to attach.

I started by sliding a piece of heat shrink tubing over the wire that was big enough to go over the end of the clip as well.  Then I stripped the end of the wire so we have something to solder.

Then I soldered the wire to the clip.  

Next I crimped the clip to the wire so that we don't put stress on the solder job.

Finally, I slid the shrink tubing up and put my heat gun to work and it looks pretty nice like I might know what I'm doing.  

Antenna Wire Preparation

There is less to prep for this part.  The main thing we want is an easy way to hook up the antenna end to our mast.  I started by cutting the 2 wires to a desired length.  For the 40 meters, we want ~32.61'.  I cut it long to something like 35 and for the 20 meters which needs to be ~16.44', I did something similar with extra wire.  I did this for 2 reasons.  The first is you always want to cut long.  It is easier to shorten your wire than to lengthen it.  I went extra long on these just because I don't have the measuring tape I want so I have a normal metal one that is hard to do 32 feet on.  Plus I was doing this in my office and don't have an easy way to lay out 16 or 32 feet of cable to easily measure it.  When I go to set it up, I'll be able to lay it out in the yard and cut it a bit closer to what I need and then after testing I can trim and adjust even more before putting a connector on it. 

I start by bending back an inch and a half give or take of the wire. 

Then I use some electrical tape to wrap it down leaving a small loop for a clip.

And then I go one step further and slide some heat shrink tubing over it and using my heat gun to make it look all clean and tight.

And then I put a clip on the end.  These S clips are pretty great and cheap on Amazon.  One side to the antenna and one side to the mast (or to rope or something you are using to run the wire to if not to a mast).

So now I have a couple antenna wires ready to go with the exception of the other end which will connect to the balun.  For now I'll just strip those.  

I'm using a "The Everything HF antenna build kit"  I put together (and I really hope it works as it was a pain in the arse) from K4QCD.  If I was successful, it will do 1:1, 4:1, 9:1 and 49:1 depending on where you hook things up to on it.  So I'll just tie things to the proper wire nuts and once I get things where I want them signal wise, I can throw a connector on them to make it easier in the future.  

So that leaves me with the above.  4 Counterpoise wires and 2 different Antenna wires and my multi-purpose feedpoint.  So the next step will be putting it all together.  Once my mast support piece comes in to make using guy wires much easier and more stable I'll execute.  This will probably be next weekend.  So just in time for my birthday.  I'll also have a choke that I can throw inline to help.