Comments (2)

By va3sie, July 3, 2012 12:39 am

Fariba and I were privileged to be able to rent a pair of high end road bikes (a Litespeed C3 – $3,600 MRSP, and a Litespeed M1 – $2,300 MRSP) from the Bloomfield Bicycle Company.   

The Bloomfield Bicycle Co isn’t your ordinary bike shop.  Rick & Katy have a passion for cycling and it shows!  They offer a full range of services from thier funky store in Bloomfield:  guided tours, club rides, minor mechanical miracles, rentals, beautiful bicycles and accessories and much more.  The range of bikes in the rental fleet is astonishing.  From tandems to recumbants, from mountain bikes to high end road bikes.

How great are they?  Check this article or listen to this podcast.

We had set our sights on cycling out to the County Cider Company.  Many times we stopped at Culinary Conspiracy across the street from our home to pick up home made muffins or scones and coffee to take to work.  We were often greeted and served by Darcy.  Darcy moved out to Prince Edward County this summer to work at the County Cider Company so it was a good chance to drop in and say, ‘Hello!’.

The weather on Canada Day (July 1st) couldn’t have been more perfect for cycling.  A nice hot summer day, peaking around 30°C in the mid afternoon.

Rick at the Bloomfield Bicycle Co recommended a 27km route (one way) which took us south of Bloomfield, a short climb up a hill to Picton Airport.  We had to use the lowest gear in the Shimano Ultegra shifters for that hill.  The route then crosses over some of the highest ground in Prince Edward County, beautiful roads perfect for cycling through picturesque country, not too many cars, loads of birds and trees, coming out at a lookout on a cliff overlooking Waupoos Island.  From there, we join a tarmac road which winds down a cliff to the Waupoos Marina.  The speed we were able to achieve down that hill was astonishing!

The route then tracks along the southern coastal road of North Marysburgh adjacent to farms and forested hills, we passed berry farms and just after the Waupoos Estates Winery we climbed another small hill to arrive at the County Cider Company.  We had ridden at a leisurely pace and completed that portion of the journey in 90 minutes.  We relaxed at the restaurant and enjoyed a couple of tall glasses of dry cider, some roasted garlic hummus and a pizza prepared in a wood fired oven, served to us by Darcy 8-)  … it was great to meet with Darcy and steal a few minutes out of her busy day to catch up.  It’s obvious why Darcy chose to move to Prince Edward County.  The view from the Cider Company is just lovely, it’s a different world from downtown Ottawa

County Cider Company

From there, we rode inland, North over the top of North Maysburgh to the North coastal road, which we then followed West, back towards Picton.  That road was a gentle climb up through pastoral farmlands including a steeper section of road which had been blasted through a hill.  Again, we had to select the lower gears.  The Provincial Park at Lake on the Mountain was teeming with visitors, picnicking and enjoying the view of this astonishing Lake.  This beautiful turquoise lake has no visible water source and lies 62m above the Bay of Quinte only a few hundred meters away!

After the lake, we were rewarded for all that previous uphill cycling by a glorious slope down to the Bay of Quinte.  Again, we were able to reach stupendous speed on those bicycles   Finally, we rode back into Picton where we enjoyed the on-street activities laid out for the Canada Day festivities and finally a short ride back to Bloomfield.

The ride took us 3½ hours and 53km.  It was SUPER FUN !!   Huge thanks to the Bloomfield Bicycle Co…

Comments (1)

By va3sie, September 25, 2011 8:48 pm

Bike Portable (Hogs Back)

Today I cycled to Hogs Back Falls.  I was trying out three new products/concepts for my portable ultralight amateur radio work.  When I’m cycling/hiking/canoeing/etc, I like to carry as little weight as possible.  Also when I’m out cycling to join a HF net, I want setup to go as quickly as possible.

So today I was trying out some stuff.

• A tiny 50 gram amplified speaker from Diamond called a ‘mini rocker‘.
• A tiny 170 gram 6½ amp hour battery from Novuscell.
• A quick deploy all band antenna

The speaker did work… after a fashion    Certainly it is tiny and powerful.  The most obvious shortcoming was that when I’m sending morse code I cannot hear my side tone on every frequency.  Some frequencies were okay, others were not.  I guess the RF was affecting the amplifier circuit.  I also noticed a lot of noise on the band which may have been generated by the speaker’s amplifier circuit.  I didn’t have earphones to compare with.

Bike Antenna

The battery also is not without it’s quirks also.  I’ve taken it on a few outings so far.  There’s a button on top.  When it charges up, and I press the button, four LEDs light up.  Last time I took it out, I charged it with a 5W solar panel for around 6 hours and afterwards I got four LEDs.  After about 2 hours of operating, it was down to two LEDs.  The following morning I couldn’t get any of the LEDs to light

So today I had it charged up 100%.  After 2 hours of very light operating (listening mostly) it was down to 3 LEDs (out of 4).  My gut tells me that I should be getting more endurance out of this battery (if it really is 6½ Ah like it says on the front).

So…  the jury is out… for now.  Time will tell if these two items become a permanent addition to the VA3SIE/P ‘go-bag‘.

The quick deploy antenna concept however worked well.  I strapped a Jackite Pole to my bicycle in a vertical configuration just behind my bicycle seat.  When I got to Hogs Back, I rested the bicycle up against a low wall, hooked up the wire and extended the pole.  The antenna was up in less than 5 minutes and I was on the air on 80m through 20m.

73!

Martin.

Comments (2)

By va3sie, September 2, 2011 7:34 pm

QRP Setup

I took the day off work today, and the weather looked okay so I jumped on my bicycle after lunch and cycled up into Gatineau Park.  I was heading for a location suggested by Tom, he calls it the ‘Super Secret Location‘ (#6).  The ride to the operating location was 13km in length and hard work once I was in the park, lots of climbs. 

I set up just off trail #26 not far from trail #5. There was a nice cleared area with some tall trees.

Route

I tied a rock to the end of some string and threw it over a couple of tall trees (around 40′ up in the air).  I pulled an 84′ wire through the tress with the string, ending up with an inverted-L W3EDP-esque antenna.  I connected two counterpose wires (16′ and 32′) and I was able to support these at 8′ over the ground in small trees.

Great fun!

As I was finishing the antenna, my cellphone bleeped with news that a couple of Summits On The Air (SOTA) summits were on the air:  Dave WN1E was on Mount Greylock W1/MB-001.  He was on 20m CW. Chuck  K4QS on North Marshall Mountain  W4/SH-009 and Batman JP and Robin VA2SG/P & VE2DRO were on Mont Blanche (White Mountain)  VE2/SG-011.

All three of them started on 20m and I tuned to 20m to see if I could hear them.  I thought that I could hear Chuck bur after listening for a while I realized that I was hearing other stations working Chuck, not Chuck himself.  I could not hear the other stations at all   I spent an hour listening for them to QSY to 40m and hoping that propagation would shift.

Cycling

Finally at 1900Z, I heard Chuck on 40m but the there was extreme interference from lightning (QRN) and his signal was light around RST 449 with QSB so I could only get little snatches of his callsign.  I called him when I thought he was asking for callers and I passed my signal report.  I heard RST 339 in response, Yay!!    My ‘chase’ was successful.  A couple of times I called Chuck back and repeated my exchange just to be sure, sorry for the QRM Chuck, but the QRN was wicked.

At 1945Z I head a station calling CQ QRP on 40m (7.034 MHz) so I decided to take a break from SOTA chasing.  It was Bob WK1N, he was on the air with 5W into a G5RV.  He had a honking FB signal, RST 589 and I could hear him under the QRN.  We had a short QSO and compared notes about our QRP equipment before Bob had to leave.  Great to work a fellow QRP op !!

On the way back, I found a geocache and left an Algonquin Park pin in it.

The return trip brought my total kilometers cycled to a round 30.

All in all, a great day.  I had originally planned to activate VE2/LR-002 Mont Tremblant today but when I got home and checked the weather radar I realized that was where all the lightning was – right over the summit.  Good call to do a SOTA chase today instead!!

Comments (1)

By va3sie, July 16, 2011 5:58 pm

I had to rebuilt my bicycle mobile antenna yesterday, the old one failed.  This was not unexpected I had made an error while building it and I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did (3 years).  So I thought this is a good opportunity to build it better and share the details.

The Design

The DBJ-2 (construction article here) is a roll-up dual-band J-pole.  It offers significant gain (7dB – 10dB+) compared to the stock rubber ducky antenna.  It is better than a ground plane for a bicycle because it does no need a counterpoise and the high current sections are higher up off the ground so there is less ground loss.  Also because it is a base loaded long antenna it is easy to mount on a bicycle.

Construction Plan

This design is interesting!  While a standard 2m J-pole does resonate on 70cm, the radation pattern is not ideal.  Most of the energy is directed out at more than 45° elevation resulting in a 4dB to 6dB loss compared to a groundplane. 

This antenna design incorporates the following elements.  At the base is a (shorted) 15″ matching stub, tapped for 50Ω.  This stub is λ/4 on 2m and 3λ/4 on 70cm.  At the top of this matching stub is the first ¼″ notch.  This notch stops isolates the current on the other side of the twinlead, ensuring that the bottom 15″ does not radiate (since the RF current flows on both sides of the twinlead in this section).

Above that is a λ/2 UHF radiator.  Above that is a λ/4 shorted stub constructed from RG-174 coax.  This coax stub is open circuit at UHF.  At the top end of the coax stub is an additional 18″ of 300Ω twinlead which completes the λ/2 VHF radiating element (which includes the UHF radiating element, the coax stub and the remainder of the twin lead).

The coax stub is slightly inductive at VHF and the twinlead has a velocity factor, so the lengths shown above are all shorter than the value you might expect.

Construction Details

I constructed this antenna using TV twinlead from Princess Auto. 

Stage One

I started by completely removing the twinlead plastic from 1″ to 1 ½″ from the bottom of the coax and twisting together the wires at the bottom end of the coax.  This gives me a ½″ section to slide the feed wires along to find a good 50Ω match. 

Next, I removed the three ¼″ notches on the ground side of the twinlead.  But rather than snipping out both the wire and the plastic I snipped the plastic with a cutter at either end of the ¼″ notch and then slit it down the side with a hobby knife, pried the plastic open with a screw driver and pulled out the wire with needle-nodes pliers.  This way, when I tape up the plastic afterwards it is still very structurally strong.

Stage 1 Build (stripped matching section, twisted together base wires, cut notches

 Stage Two

After that, I prepared the coax stub.  I clipped a 4¾″ section of RG-174 and I stripped the outer cover from ¼″ at each end to expose the shield.  At the top end, I pulled back the shield strands and straightened them out, and I removed the inner dielectric, then I pulled the shield strands back out to mingle with the inner strands.  Thus, the stub is shorted at the top end.  At the bottom end I pulled the shield strands out and then clipped them off, exposing the inner dielectric.  I removed ½ of the dielectricm exposing some of the coax inner wire.   I realized that during soldering ½ again of the exposed dielectric would melt back.  This completes the 4¼″ stub preparation.

I also clipped out two ¼″ notches and this time I removed the plastic, to expose two ¼″ wires to connect the stub between.

Finally, I soldered the stub into the twinlead and taped the ends securely.  In order to ensure a good connection, I did not twist any of the wires of the RG-174 inner/outer or the wires in the twinlead.  I mingled all the wires together and then soaked in some solder at 750º.  Capillary action created some nice strong sections without too much solder.  I then taped the notched areas securely.

Shorted the top stub end and exposed the inner on the bottom, notched twinlead then soldered stub in

 Stage Three

Finally, I prepared the RG-58 feed coax by exposing ¾″ of inner and outer separated by ⅛″ of dielectric and I trimmed some of the outer wires so that the outer and inner were roughly the same diameter, easier to work with.  Then I taped up all the remaining notches and weak points, and I connected the RG-58 feed point to the ½″ matching area, ready to perform the final testing & trimming.

Prepared RG-58 coax, taped up points and attached feed point

Installation

I connected the antenna to my bicycle.  It is supported at the back of the bicycle by two fiberglass sections of a Shakespeare Wonderpole TPS-20 fishing pole to which it is simply taped.  There is a coax balun in one of the bicycle panniers and then the coax runs to the front of the bicycle where it connects to my VX-8r H/T which is attached to the handlebars with bungee cords.  The microphone (and integrated GPS antenna) is also connected to the bicycle frame with a bungee cord.

Radio, Balun & Antenna installed on Bicycle

Trimming

I used an MFJ-259B antenna analyzer (on loan from Anthony at the QRP Club – Thanks, Anthony!!) to analyze the antenna.  It was resonant at 136MHz.  I guess this is due to the velocity factor of the twin lead.  Moving the feed point across the ½″ sliding area produced no change in the resonant point but did change the SWR.  The SWR was better (around 1.2:1) at the top of the sliding range.  So I proceeded to trim off one inch at a time from the top of the antenna to bring it into the 2m band.  I ended up having to remove 7″ to get the resonant frequency to 147MHz.  With the feed point at the top of the sliding range, the match was 1.1:1.

Since I removed this length from the area above the UHF trap, I expect that the antenna is not a good match on UHF.  I estimate that it will be around 410MHz.  I don’t have a UHF analyzer to be able confirm this guess.  Next time I build this antenna I will scale the entire antenna to be 15% shorter in all the twinlead sections, assuming that I use the Princess Auto twinlead again.

Testing

Finally, I took it for a test drive on my bicycle!  I use a bluetooth headset to connect to the radio wirelessly, this offers superb freedom while cycling.  I compared the APRS map from this cycle trip with an identical trip with my old J-pole.  The results were encouraging.  Excluding some minor variations, the same digipeaters heard me as well as they used to.  Also I was able to hear some fairly distant repeaters and to have conversations on some close ones so the antenna was working and was working well!!

Microphone, Radio, APRS Map - Testing the Antenna

As an aside, as I approached the Rockliffe Airport, I monitored airband and heard 3 aircraft arranging themselves into a landing pattern for runway 09.  The end of runway 09 is right on the cycle path, so I stopped my bike there and continued to monitor.  A few minutes later and three aircraft all landed in succession right over my head.  I could hear the propeller blades feathering in the wind.  Wow!!  What fun!