We haven't had much time lately to continue tinkering with The Yagi Project (YP). First, we had to visit our 87-year-old Mom in Indiana and then we had to prepare to leave Arizona for our Idaho Falls home. Meanwhile, we have swapped a lot of email with Don Butler (N4UJW & The Ham Universe website). Don has been extraordinarily helpful in trying to help us learn how to build the YP without a drill press. We will talk more about that later in this blog post. THANKS, DON!
Yesterday we had enough time to buckle down and put together Draft #2 of the YP. We used Don's idea and it was a great improvement over our earlier haphazard method of drilling holes in a PVC "T." After marking and drilling the four holes, we threaded all four with the metric tap. (The driven elements were already threaded in Draft #1.) We purchased a cheap soldering rig and solder at Harbor Freight for a mere $7 total and really anchored down the alligator clips to the small coax cable.
We uploaded the long-lat for the Jump Off Peak repeater into our Garmin 60CSx GPS unit and then programmed our HT for the machine's frequency and tone.
Since we're rather certain it would be problematic to reach Jump Off Peak from the central city of Idaho Falls, we drove 8.25 miles east to find a nice high spot on the flanks of the local foothills. Our elevation in the city is roughly 4750 feet. Our location and elevation east of the city was 5100 and offered a line-of-sight opportunity to reach Jump Off Peak at a distance of 63.4 miles away. ( N43 30.621 W111 53.320) We used the GPS's onboard compass to get a good visual bearing on the repeater's location on the far side of the Snake River Plain beyond the Idaho National Laboratory near Howe, Idaho.
After assembling and aligning the antenna, we transmitted an "antenna check" to the repeater. After hearing no reply, we were rather discouraged. Just as we were getting ready to pack it up, we heard a faint reply. We could not make out the call sign but we gathered that we had been heard by someone using a 10 watt mobile unit. We thanked them for their reply to our antenna check and prepared to sign off. At that point, about 3:55 pm, we received a much stronger signal from Jonathan S. (W7VEO) who lives in Marsing, Idaho. Marsing is located due west of Boise not far from the Oregon State line. Jonathan was using a 75 watt rig with a j-pole antenna and his signal was very clear. He told us our signal was very good with minimal static. It was great talking with him. THANKS, JONATHAN!
We suspect our signal was relayed through the intertie to the repeater on Mt Harrison and then to War Eagle Mountain east of Boise. We definitely need to learn more about how that intertie functions and whether we should even be using it for something such as an antenna check. We sure hope we are not treading where we shouldn't be!
After taking some photos (tripod & time delay) and making some notes, we packed it up and called it a day. So far, we are very pleased with the progress of the YP. We will continue to work with Don to find an accurate way to drill the hole in the PVC "T" so that the driven elements are in perfect alignment with the reflector and director elements. We suspect we will go through at least two more drafts before settling on a final version of the antenna.
It's exciting and thrilling for us to be able to use a little 5.5 watt hand held and be able to reach a repeater so far away. As astute readers of this blog know, that was our primary purpose for obtaining our FCC license in the first place. Of course now we are studying for our General exam and hope to learn a whole lot more about amateur radio than just low power handhelds and home grown antennas!
Thanks for reading. Have a great day and Many Cheers! 73, jp
PS--The graphic below was designed and sent by Don B. (N4UJW & The Ham Universe website). We used a woodworking pipe clamp and a metric ruler to refine this idea. It works great as far as locating the four holes. The only remaining issue is that one must be able to correctly align one's drill so that each driven element is BOTH plumb and square to the planes of the reflector and director elements. In Draft #2, we were successful with 3 out of 4 holes. A slight slip up in drilling the fourth hole caused one of the driven elements to be about 15 degrees out of plumb. Practice makes perfect, eh? THANKS, DON!
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