Another week of amateur radio has expired. Expired Ham, get it? 🙂
Welcome to another issue of Expired Ham, a weekly newsletter where I discuss the ways I participated in the amateur radio hobby this week.
I have yet to use my tape measure yagi antenna apart from the foxhunt event for which I built it. Not altogether surprised by that, actually. Although, I do want to try it out for satellite work, even if just to listen. Or maybe I could find some high ground and see how far I can reach with just a 5W HT calling CQ on the 2m calling frequency.
I bought a Weller butane soldering iron after seeing one in action at the VWS club’s Fall picnic. We were building the yagi antennas and a fellow club member was using his. He sold it as the best thing for soldering, both at home and in the field. I had purchased a soldering kit some time ago on Amazon, nothing expensive, just the basics, but have never been that happy with it. It gets the job done, but is pretty cheaply made and can be fidgety. The Weller Super-Pro Self-Igniting Cordless Butane Soldering Iron Kit comes with a butane torch and several tips for different applications. I tried it out for the first time today and it gets five stars from me. Super simple to use and gets hot quickly. Maybe the best feature, though, is that it is ultra portable. I can take it with me on camping trips or POTA outings for those situations when a repair must be made to an antenna or I need to build a new counterpoise wire. Speaking of which…
If you’ve been following along with me here on the site, you may remember that I’m a big fan of NØAPX’s EFHW “biscuit” antenna. I use it all the time here at the house since it’s just a short 35′ length of BNTECHGO 18 AWG wire spooled around a 49:1 transformer that sits inside a 3D printed spool. Its small size allows me to easily deploy it in the confined space I have and still allows me to reach other hams via Morse code and a few watts of power. However, it has no counterpoise so the feed line ends up being the other half of the antenna. From what I’ve read, while this may work fine and makes for an easy and quick antenna deployment in many different environments, it may not equate to the most efficient antenna system. This is why I purchased this in-line choke from KF8ASE on their Etsy store. My plan was to add a removable counterpoise to the NØAPX EFHW and then use the choke at the feed point to make a more efficient EFHW antenna. Today I used a 17′ length of scrap 18 AWG wire to make a counterpoise for use on 20m. I used my new soldering iron to add an alligator clip to one end so that I can easily clip the counterpoise onto the ground tab on the side of the 49:1 transformer. Due to weather issues, I have not been able to deploy the antenna using the counterpoise so that I could check it with my new-to-me Comet CAA-500 Mark II that I also got an in-person introduction to at the club’s Fall picnic.
The next project is to choose a length of wire to complete the W5CWT EFHW that I’ve yet to make and test. (It looks like David has built a new model which can handle 80W SSB and 40 CW/Data. Neat!)
And last but not least, don’t forget that the Fall “Support Your Parks” weekend is October 18-19, 2025 for all y’all POTA activators and hunters. I am hoping for nice weather and so far, Saturday looks favorable. Wish me luck!
73, K2MAS dit dit
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