Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020
Today my son and I picked up a large load of ham gear from a Silent Key friend of our. The equipment ran the gamut, from HF to VHF/UHF, and assorted wire, cables, manuals to radios he hadn’t owned in a decade, and all sorts of radio related “stuff.” We hauled in a small portion of it, mostly because I wanted to check out the HTs and dual band Yaesu rigs.
Tonight I was upstairs looking at some of the gear and noticed it was nearing time for my CW traffic net. I tuned near the net frequency and checked the antenna tuner SWR (the SWR changes when it rains). So I touched up the tuning for lowest SWR and waited for the net to start.
I was listening to my regular 75-meter roundtables while waiting for the net, and signals seemed decent. Come net time, I checked in and listened to the net until I was cleared. No problem with signals at all.
It wasn’t until I came downstairs that I realized that my knife switch was never switched to connect my feedline from upstairs with the actual antenna! I have about 100 feet of twinlead that runs from my antenna tuner upstairs down to the knife switch behind me inside the window. Well, tonight proved that 100 foot of twinlead — unterminated — can serve as an antenna on 80 CW! I have no idea what my signals were like, but the NCS was clear and strong,, and I assume he heard me as well.
The knife switch that I use probably still radiated a signal; there’s only about an inch between the center contacts (where the antenna connects) and the contacts on each end where the lever connects to complete the circuit for my rig here in the library or for the shack upstairs.
I’ve almost made this mistake before, but I could tell the signals were down enough to make it very clear the switch down here wasn’t in the correct position.
My wife is out of town this weekend, so my plan is to try to put another item or two on eBay before the weekend is over.
73 es CUL de KY4Z …. SK … SK … (dit dit) …