Zero Retries is an independent newsletter about technological innovation in Amateur Radio. Zero Retries promotes Amateur Radio as (literally) a license to experiment with radio technology.
This is the primary story for Zero Retries 0083. This is the unabridged version; the original required significant editing to "fit" within Substack's allowed size for email.
The Antenna(s) Problem
There is a Zero Retries Interesting angle to this story - keep reading.
New 144 / 222 / 440 MHz antenna at N8GNJ Labs - photo by Steve Stroh N8GNJ
As much as I love experimenting with radios, and especially data communications over radio, to me, dealing with antennas is merely a necessary evil. Thus I get that it’s tempting to put most of one’s “radio experimentation” efforts into the radio, rather than the antenna. But, eventually you learn that in an optimally functioning radio system, a reasonable antenna, installed reasonably high and in the clear, is generally more important1 than the radio .
For purposes of this story, I won’t address the growing trend of remote access stations at clubs, and even “Station as a Service” such as Remote Ham Radio.
Amateur Radio Operators of a certain vintage (those of us who remember life before personal computers) take it for granted that our Amateur Radio stations require multiple antennas to accommodate various radios of differing functionality. But that seemingly mundane “fact” is a huge differentiation between older Amateur Radio Operators and new Amateur Radio Operators. The latter rightly say “How do I put an antenna up into the air?” Unstated, but implied is “How do I do it safely, with minimal long term impact to my apartment / condo / house?”.
“Back in the day”, “antenna / tower parties” were common. A small group of one’s Amateur Radio buddies would gather at the home where the new antenna / tower is needed. Some younger (or older, but still energetic) person would do the difficult work of getting an antenna mounted on the roof, or erecting a tower and then installing an antenna onto the tower. The rest were ground crew - tugging on ropes, keeping an eye out for dangerous obstacles, keeping the beer cold, cooking the burgers, etc.
My perception is “antenna / tower parties” are mostly a thing of the past. The tribal knowledge of “antenna / tower parties” is rapidly aging out. Another understandable, but still sad factor is that there is inevitably a significant risk of someone injuring themselves on your property and the possibility of lawsuits and denied insurance claims - putting up “structure” can reasonably be argued as a job for professionals.
I recently had breakfast with a small group of Amateur Radio Operators, and I mentioned that I finally got a new antenna, with new feedline, 30 feet in the air, and it was barely doable by me on a ladder with my wife assisting me on the ground. As the conversation turned to my accomplishment, all seven of us confessed to each other that our days of scampering up towers and roofs, and ladders were behind us. Admittedly, with various medical issues, I should not have been on a 10 foot ladder… but I really wanted to be back on the air for VHF and UHF.
I’ll have a full description of my new antenna project, detailed descriptions of what I used, including photographs, on my n8gnj.org blog as soon as the project is complete. Routing the coaxial cable to the radio area in N8GNJ Labs remains to be done.
Once the antenna was in the air, a blinding moment of clarity struck (Part 1) - it was hard work to get that one antenna 30 feet into the air. Keep in mind that in my area, Whatcom County, Washington, 60 mile per hour (MPH) winds occur. I think I’ve done a reasonable job securing this 30 foot antenna pole, but I won’t know until the winds test my installation.
As my attention turned to the next task of routing the coaxial cable, it hit me… what radios will I connect to that coax?My new antenna is a Comet CX-333 "tri-bander" - 144 / 222 / 440 MHz2, so I could connect three different radios to it. But which radios? Here’s my fantasy list of radios that I’d like to have on the air:
Definite
FM radio for data, including BBS, digipeater, APRS, etc. - 144 MHz
FM radio for data, including BBS, digipeater, APRS, etc. - 222 MHz
FM radio for data, including BBS, digipeater, APRS, etc. - 440 MHz
Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) for digital voice - 144 / 440 MHz; can also be used for FM voice.
D-Star for digital voice - 144 / 440 MHz; can also be used for FM voice
Multiple software Defined Receiver(s) - DC to Daylight; will require a dedicated antenna (cannot be shared on a multiband antenna)
Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) (accurate timebase)
Experimental (To Be Determined if feasible)
FM radio for data, including BBS, digipeater, APRS, etc. - 50 MHz
FM radio for voice - 50 MHz
FM radio for voice - 222 MHz
Icom ID-1 for Icom DD mode - 1240 MHz ; can also be used for FM voice
New Packet Radio - 430 MHz
Repeater for data - 222 MHz
Repeater for data - 440 MHz
Microwave
AREDN (directional) - 2.4 GHz
AREDN (omnidirectional) - 2.4 GHz
HamWAN (directional) - 5 GHz
(Keep in mind, this list is highly individualistic and unique to me.)
Then it was time for another blinding moment of clarity (Part 2) - if the decision of what radios to connect to my (currently) one antenna is hard for me, what must such a decision be like for a new or prospective Amateur Radio Operator? Here are some “what radio do I connect to my antenna” decision points:
DMR radio? There are lots of DMR repeaters these days, and all DMR radios can do FM, but DMR radios don’t have “flat audio” (“data”) connections to be able to do interesting higher speed data modes. DMR radios also require “code plugs” to be functional and the learning curve for code plugs and other DMR minutiae is steep.
FM radio? The Yaesu FTM-6000R that does have a “flat audio” connection to be able to do interesting higher speed data modes… but not DMR.
Few Amateur Radios these days are single-band, so your antenna connections have to accommodate both the 144 MHz and 440 MHz outputs of a 144 / 440 MHz radio3. If you use a triplexer to break out antenna connections for 144 / 222 / 440 MHz, you end up having to use a duplexer to take the single 144 / 440 MHz output on the radio into the 144 MHz port and the 440 MHz antenna port of the triplexer. Yes, complicated, and there’s some signal / power loss with all that conversion of the duplexer and triplexer.
And numerous other complicated radio decisions.
There are devices called transmitter combiners, a pair (or more) of narrowly tuned passband cavities for a specific VHF or UHF frequency, allowing two or more transmitters that are close in frequency to use the same antenna. But a transmitter combiner is tuned mechanically (with test equipment), thus it’s only suitable use with on frequencies that don’t change (such as a repeater). Thus, it’s not a reasonable option for use with a frequency agile radio, even if it was affordable for Amateur Radio use… which it isn’t.
Thus it’s completely understandable why new and prospective Amateur Radio Operators focus their initial radio activities on a portable radio. They are buying a single, integrated radio + antenna unit and put their efforts into understanding how to use it. But, inevitably they get frustrated when a portable radio doesn’t work as well as they’d been led to believe - “What am I doing wrong?”. Eventually they’ll start understanding about better antennas and higher power (mobile / base) radios… but then the “paralysis of analysis” kicks in as I discuss above.
In my opinion, we’ll eventually get over this hurdle with software defined radio technology that will “do it all” - whatever mode you want, and to some extent, whatever frequency you want. The best example at the moment, the most usable example that I know of is the FlexRadio Systems 6xxx systems (unfortunately, only for HF). Just select the mode, and the software reconfigures the radio hardware for that mode. Imagine that there is a FlexRadio Systems 7xxx system for 50 / 144 / 222 / 430-440 / 1240 MHz - that would be a great solution to the “which radio” issue.
Another example is Icom’s proposed IC-905 radio - 144 / 430 / 1240 MHz and 2.4 / 5.6 GHz and optionally 10 GHz. The big innovation for the IC-905 is that it puts all of the radio hardware into a unit that’s located near the antennas for minimal feedline loss (and, theoretically, considerable simplification from only a small amount of feedline). The IC-905 doesn’t include the 50 MHz or 222 MHz bands. Unfortunately, Icom doesn’t seem to have learned the lesson of software defined radio - the functions of the IC-905 appear to be solidly fixed in hardware and firmware.
My choice of radios for this new 144 / 222 / 440 MHz antenna at this moment is4:
144 / 440 MHz - Kenwood TM-V71A. The 440 MHz section is mostly used for voice repeaters, and the 144 MHz section is used for data communications.
222 MHz - My venerable Icom IC-38A for voice repeaters.
I have single band 144, 222, and 440 MHz radios for data use that will eventually be installed in place of the above.
Returning to the difficulty of installing antennas… Antenna / tower parties aren’t impossible these days, they’re just tougher to organize, and more expensive. In my case, instead of the cost of hot burgers and cold beers, an antenna / tower party will end up costing a few hundred dollars and will arrive on a trailer from the local equipment rental store in the form of a scissor lift or telescopic boom lift. Heck… with those, perhaps antenna work might even be fun?
Nah, for me installing antennas is still just a necessary evil to experiment with radios.
But, with proper preparation, a scissor lift or telescopic boom lift will make short work of installing at least four more 30 foot antennas along the back of N8GNJ Labs in a day or two.
Footnotes:
Just one of the many things you learn empirically about radio technology as an Amateur Radio Operator.
In my opinion, it’s too much work, tower / pole space is too precious, and in general life is too short to put up single-band antennas. In this era, antennas should work for you as much as possible!
If you don’t do so, even if you intend to use a dual band radio only on one band such as 144 MHz… it’s likely that eventually you’ll accidentally transmit on the other band - 440 MHz at full power (25 or 50 watts) into an antenna input for 144 MHz risks damaging the radio.
I tried to describe the antenna / triplexer / duplexer connections for these two radios in text and it got horribly convoluted. I need a reasonable sketch / diagramming tool.
Zero Retries is an independent newsletter about technological innovation in Amateur Radio. Zero Retries promotes Amateur Radio as (literally) a license to experiment with radio technology.
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Zero Retries has been published weekly since 2021-07-09.
de Steve N8GNJ
About Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Truth be told, to my fellow Amateur Radio Operators, Amateur Packet Radio was my first love. It combined three of my technological passions - radio communications, computers, and data communications. When I moved to the Seattle area in 1987, I fell in with a bad crowd which over the decades has become known as the "WETNET Mafia". That group built a number of Amateur Radio data repeaters (full regeneration) operating at 9600 bps, and operated TCP/IP (concurrent with the opening of the Internet to "civilians"). I wrote about that network in an article The Puget Sound Amateur Radio TCP/IP Network (Circa 1995).
I've sporadically written about Amateur Radio data communications over the years, including periods of writing for (and very briefly, editing) the TAPR Packet Status Register (PSR) newsletter, and a column in CQ Amateur Radio magazine.
As of 2020, I'm semi-retired and living in Bellingham, Washington and devoting much of my time to exploring Amateur Radio Data Communications.
I'm the Editor of Zero Retries Newsletter which discusses technological innovation in Amateur Radio.
N8GNJ Blogs
N8GNJ.org Station notes for N8GNJ in Bellingham, WA, USA
SuperPacket SuperPacket is N8GNJ's "Big Picture of Amateur Radio" blog.