In the late 80ies - early 90ies MTV ran a campaign that said 'Books feed your head'. How true. So what does a ham radio freak feed his brain? Right: antenna books! One of my favorite books is Simple and Fun Antennas for Hams (an ARRL publication). It's a book full of practical antenna designs and ideas. No rocket science formulas or complicated theories. I have those classic reference books as well but I saw this publication on a ham fair years ago and I couldn't resist. Sometimes you need a design plan that simply says "measure that long - cut here - solder there". The book is full of those plans.

Since I have a K3 now thus gaining 6m access, one of the issues that kept my mind busy lately was: "what antenna to make for 6m". It should be very cheap, ultra light, small footprint, easy to construct and even easier to put up. No big yagi or quad. I'm not planning to set 6m records nor work 6m firsts. I just want to see what the 6m fuss is all about. I considered a 2el yagi, a moxon, a vertical, a dipole, a sloping dipole etc. To get some inspiration I sent Google to get me some '6m antenna' ideas. One of the antennas that popped up after a few clicks was the Hentenna. I immediately connected this name to the Simple an Fun book mentioned above. It is described in this book and I remembered the design as a simple antenna with a few interesting aspects for the upper HF bands (small, cheap, light etc). So Thursday night I grabbed the book off the shelf and took it to bed to review the design plan. Friday morning (a day off!) I woke up at 6 AM or so. One hour later I was in my workshop (garage, storage room, dog house, whatever) constructing the 6m hentenna. I collected all parts from my huge collection of junk parts and odd ends. The job got interrupted by the daily life and I resumed building in the evening.

The odd thing was that the ARRL book said to connect the feedpoint 1/6th of the length measured from below while the online article said 1/10th. I esteemed the ARRL book more trustworthy than an obscure web site. After all the book is edited by N6BV - the ARRL's antenna guru. The job was done and I put it up with a rope and pulley on my tower. No resonance. SWR sky high. Dimensions were right and connections were checked. Nothing. I assumed the tower was coupling because it was too close so I moved all the stuff (coax, antenna analyzer, antenna, tools) to the other side of the garden to my 80m elevated radial support with extra free pulley. Same story. It was 9PM local and I was very tired. Note to self: collecting stamps - no fuss!

My last resort was to lower the feedpoint from 1/6th per ARRL instructions to 1/10th as per website (DL1GSJ). You know what? BINGO! DL1GSJ 1 - ARRL 0. Resonance and SWR 2:1 or lower right at the feedpoint which is about flat in the shack due to cable losses. I didn't care to prune any further. I moved everything back again to the main tower and raised it to 8 meter high. I needed to free our cat because one of his paws got entangled in the rope. Always fun, pruning antennas with those four legged rascals playing. The analyzer showed a perfect graph so I ran upstairs into the shack and tuned to 50 MHz. The problem was I only heard the beacon ON0SIX with S4 and QSB... I hope to test it soon during one of those highly touted 6m openings. The book says that the word hentenna comes from the Japanese 'hen' being fantastic or miraculous. I hope the proof of the pudding is in the eating...

My K3 is built. 

My K3 is tested. 

My K3 works. 

My K3 is integrated in my microHAM / N1MMLogger SO2R setup.

Problems encountered:  

• The N1MMLogger voice keyer has problems if the soundcard to play the WAV files is NOT Windows' default sound card. The MK2R+ has two USB sound cards on board. So I need to make the voice codec the Windows' default sound card and disable Windows sounds. That's the reason why it sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. I only do SSB contesting every so often so each time I prepare for a SSB contest...
• Same with RTTY. If I want to play in a RTTY contest, I always need to get it going again. But this time a K3-related issue popped up. It got pinpointed by someone on the Elecraft reflector. It is more or less in the manual which was right next to me and opened on the page that could have solved my problem. But I didn't connect the dots.  

I hope to sell one of my TS-850's next week. I have a possible buyer. Maybe next year sell the second one? I though to replace it with a TenTec Omni VII for the LAN-remote operation but... Why not replace it with a second K3? 

I once read that "stories only happen to those who can tell them". Here's a story to tell about the K3 that got delivered and taken away (twice!) in one smooth walk from the UPS guy...

After waiting for 4 months since ordering I finally received my Elecraft invoice on June 5th. That usually means the K3 is almost underway. I saw my VISA had already been billed by Elecraft so I sent a mail to the sales department. They promptly replied in a kind message that I would get a mail with a UPS tracking number as soon as my box left their premises. Great! I needed to estimate the ETA because I knew UPS was going to charge me the VAT on import. That's to be paid COD so I needed to have quite a lot of cash in the house. Not that much but way more than I carry around on an average day.

In the mean time I ordered some stuff for the shack (switched mode PSU and a hand full of plugs) from a German distributor. Last Wednesday I got a mail with a UPS tracking number (feel it coming?) for that parcel from Germany. I tracked it and assumed that my German parcel would arrive Thursday afternoon (best case). Great, I was at home. Still no tracking or any other sign of life from Elecraft.

At 14.00 local time a UPS van stops and I rush to the front door. The driver was going through all the boxes in his van. It took him at least two minutes to step out and walk to my front door. What was that? Two boxes? For a small PSU and some plugs? Oh no... Could it be that my K3 was here totally unexpected?

The UPS guy walks through the door into the living room and informs me that I need to pay a few hundred Euros. I look at the cargo label. Sure enough: Elecraft. But I didn't know it was coming so my cash flow at that point was a little shy. I tell the guy I'm happy to see him but that the company hadn't updated me and so I wasn't prepared to pay that amount right away. I asked where he was heading to next and learned that he needed to deliver a parcel downtown ('downvillage' would be more appropriate) so I convinced him to meet me there and exchange the goods. The store he needed to go to has an ATM in front so I could withdraw enough cash to pay the bill. He agreed and picked up both boxes and while walking to his van he advises me to grab some small change (2.35 Euro: 2 + 0.20 + 0.10 + 0.05 = 4 coins) to get the exact amount so that he doesn't need to give change - because he doesn't have any.

I lead the way to the center of our little village because his GPS proposed another route. Now you should know that in summer and when I don't need to go to work, I always wear shorts. Shorts with shallow and wide pockets that hold 2.35 Euro (4 coins) for Mister UPS. We arrive on the spot where I park the car and jump out. Uh oh... I recognize that clink-clank sound. As I moved my leg the coins fell out of those shallow pockets. Right between the center console and the driver's seat. If there is a god, he doesn't like me. I kneel down and start digging for those coins, moving back and forth between driver's seat and back seat. UPS Guy watches in amazement and suddenly yells he'll be back later and moves off. I guess he ran out of patience and went on to deliver some more boxes while I was digging for money. That's the second time that transceiver is taken away from me! All coins were stuck in the slide of the seat. Not easy to get to them, and I had no tools at hand. At this point I didn't have a K3 either. Finally I managed to pick all coins and wipe the grease off. Those car mechanics sure put some grease in the seat's slides!

Now off to the ATM on the other side of the road. I envision the dreaded message "This ATM is empty. Alternatively please go to...". Living in a small rural village will yield a short "Go To"-list. But no such message and I can withdraw enough cash. A few minutes later Mister UPS returns and the deal is sealed. I return home and start unpacking the box...

Long story but I'll keep it short. UPS guy brings box to my doorstep. UPS guy delivers box into my living room. Small conversation. UPS guy takes box to his truck and leaves taking my K3 with him...

What happened? What's next? Did the UPS guy survive? Did ON5ZO survive? Stay tuned...

Quote:

Attached is a copy of your K3 invoice for your confirmation. Your order will be shipping within the next one to two weeks.

Yes!

I would love to have typed "This week on the radio" but once again I'm QRT due to a) workload and b) constant threats for thunderstorms. (A) keeps me out of the shack and (B) makes for loose connectors on the coax cables in the garage coming into the house. Having to screw in 4 coaxes, 2 control cables and one rotator control cable does not make for a 'quick listening on the bands' knowing that I'll have to go outside just to unscrew all that again. But I just sent in my CQ WPX CW log, that's as far as 'radio' goes here.

We're June so my K3 should start his trip from W6 to ON. Two weeks ago I received an email from Elecraft to ask if I wanted my K3 to ship together with 2nd receiver option or without and put the KRX3 in back order? The latter option would delay the shipment so I answered to send the K3 ASAP. I never had a second RX before so I'm surely not going to miss it. Send it later. Hurry with that K3! This mail from Elecraft made me feel confident that my order was right on track. When I placed my order (February 2nd) I asked to ship so that the K3 would arrive the second week of June when all my 'civilian' work is done and I can focus on ham radio again. But... I AM STARTING TO PANIC. No mail back in over a week from Elecraft. Their Shipping Status page hasn't been updated in a few weeks. And the reflector shows postings asking if they are in fact still shipping because few people receive shipping notices.

A delayed K3 would absolutely NOT amuse me. The problem is: I found a buyer for one of my TS-850 and I told him to stand by until half of June. I don't want to let my SO2R capabilities go before the IARU contest. So my fear is either having the buyer bailing out of the deal or selling before the K3 is here thus not doing SO2R in the IARU contest. What would be worse, knowing that in a serious contest on average over 16% of my contacts are made on the second radio? That is over 300 QSO in last year's IARU contest...