West Mountain Radio TARGETuner

West Mountain Radio TARGETuner and RigRunner 4004U

Took my first visit to the Orlando HamCation on Saturday 14-Feb and got to check out a few things on my wish list. I also scratched a couple of things off the list: a memory controller for the Tarheel screwdriver, and a PowerPole distribution box for better management of my DC power cabling.

I'd been considering the MFJ controllers ever since I bought the Tarheel. Never pulled the trigger on one, though; my track record with MFJ products has been disappointing and another dice roll wasn't going to happen. The Tarheel's standard rocker switch and the MFJ SWR analyzer (one of their products that actually works well for me) was sufficient despite being a pain to switch from the K3 to the analyzer every time I wanted to QSY to a new band. So I dealt with it for the past six years, but I kept thinking I needed a little more automation in the process of changing bands.

I first heard about the West Mountain Radio TARGETuner a few months ago and it looked like a possibility, so it was one of the first things I sought out at Orlando. After seeing it demonstrated and having my questions asked, I bought one through one of WMR's dealers at the show, Ham World, for $235 -- a fair bit more than a comparable MFJ-1927 controller. The TARGETuner is a two-box deal: a compact controller box and a remote SWR sensor that samples the RF. The two units connect together via Cat 5 ethernet cable. The controller also includes a USB port for connecting to a radio's serial port to read frequency data directly and tune the antenna without transmitting.

Four methods of tuning the antenna are available:

• Auto SWR Tuning -- Samples transmitted RF and adjusts the antenna for lowest SWR match.
• Auto Memory -- Samples RF and tunes the antenna to the nearest frequency stored in memory.
• Manual Memory -- Manually recall and pick a frequency in memory and the antenna is tuned to that frequency.
• Manual Control -- Up and Down buttons raise or lower the antenna, just like in the old rocker switch days.

Hooking everything up is a fairly simple process. The initial settings require the fully extended and fully collapsed positions to be memorized to establish the range of the antenna. I then used the MFJ-259 SWR analyzer to tune the Tarheel on every band from 12m down to 80m, storing the settings into memories.

Setup complete, I began testing. The initial results were mixed. Returning to a stored memory setting would yield wildly different SWR measurements. It seems as though it loses its count, so I reduced both Auto and User Motor Speed settings to Medium-Slow; Motor Ramping was left on. It seemed to work better for a while but would eventually lose the turn count, requiring me to manually tune the antenna after every QSY.

The tuning weirdness continued for about a week as I recalibrated and tried different settings... and suddenly it just started working with all the motor speed settings to Slowest, and the Motor Ramping turned off; I also have the low and high frequency limits set to just below the 40m band rather and just above 15m. I figured the antenna is pretty much a dummy load on 80m, and when I want to work 12m (or 10m with the amp off and ATU on) I just bring the antenna down to Pos:0101 (as low a turn count as I can get) and get a good SWR match. I suspect the really long coil travel between 12m and 80m might be one of the things messing up the turn count. With the 40m-15m configuration it behaved admirably throughout the ARRL International DX CW contest weekend as I bounced around between bands, and a week later and it's still going strong, it is still accurate when returning to stored memory positions.

I've not tried the serial connection to the K3 yet but it is one of the supported transceivers. The instructions are not clear but it seems that the TARGETuner requires a connection to the serial port,. The shack PC is connected already to the K3's RS-232 port, so this is not an option. A support person I spoke with at WMR didn't think it could read band data from the ACC port. No big deal, selecting a memory manually is easy, and the Auto Memory tuning mode works well enough if I really need hands-off band switching -- just tap the key and wait until the controller signals the all clear. Ideally the controller would be able to connect to a second serial port on the PC and read the frequency from Ham Radio Deluxe, N1MM, or whatever logging program is controlling the rig. Maybe a firmware upgrade will address this. Meanwhile, it's working as advertised and making my life a little bit easier when chasing DX all over creation.

January 2015

My first full month back on the air since moving to Cedar Key. My goal of working 100 countries before the end of January fell a wee bit short with 98 worked, many of them on 12 and 10 meters (49 and 17 new band slots respectively). LOTW confirmations are rolling in at a steady clip -- a total of 47 new band slots confirmed in January, 18 of them on 12m. I'm starting to dig this band.

Only two all-time new ones this month. Got 1A0C for DXCC #205; now if only they'd update ClubLog, the last QSO uploaded was from July 2012. JY9FC was strong (S7+) on 12m Saturday morning 31-Jan, in the log as DXCC #206. Damn, new countries are get harder and harder to come across after 150...

Great C5X operation by the Brits, got them on 40, 30, 20, 15, 12, and 10 meters. Super-fast daily LOTW and ClubLog uploads. Just a great operation all around.

No contests for me in January. I really wanted to participate in the NAQP CW test but had other commitments. The North American Sprint is coming in a few weeks, that might be the first of the year. I've never worked this contest before. First I need to upgrade to N1MM+.

I've been thinking a little bit about 6m and VHF/UHF lately. But thinking more about 5BDXCC, so I think an 80m dipole will have to come first since that's the only band for which the Tarheel is really deficient.

The Tarheel is now permanently ground-mounted and working well despite a minimal radial setup. Cedar Key is unbelievably quiet and this antenna is really doing well for its small size. I really shouldn't be wasting this opportunity to put up something bigger, though.

This month I returned to a written log/notebook. Still do the computer log, that's integral to my station and will always be the primary log for counting DXCC points and uploading to LOTW and ClubLog, but I really started to miss the hand-written log and all the notes and comments, the kind of personal thing you can look back at in years ahead and reminisce. I just can't do that with a computer log, too antiseptic.  So I started jotting down notes and QSOs in a spiral notebook, keeping track of my YTD DXCC total, noting propagation conditions, band openings, and whatever else crosses my mind while at the key.

                                       

The end of the month tally:

DXCC Totals
1/31/2015
	Cfd	Wkd		Cfd	Wkd		Cfd	Wkd
Mixed	173	205	80m	12	28	17m	62	92
CW	155	191	40m	117	142	15m	110	145
SSB	105	133	30m	61	93	12m	24	60
Digital	60	82	20m	132	170	10m	49	69

Last 10 New DXCC Worked
206	JORDAN	JY9FC	1/31/2015
205	SOV. MIL. ORDER OF MALTA	1A0C	1/5/2015
204	WESTERN SAHARA	S10WS	9/9/2014
203	SAINT PIERRE & MIQUELON	FP/OH5OHO	7/21/2014
202	GEORGIA	4L8A	7/13/2014
201	WEST MALAYSIA	9M2TO	7/9/2014
200	THE GAMBIA	C5II	7/8/2014
199	AZERBAIJAN	4J0SFR	7/6/2014
198	SINGAPORE	9V1YC	6/22/2014
197	SAUDI ARABIA	7Z1SJ	6/22/2014

WPX (Confirmed)
Award	Total	Award	Total	Award	Total
Mixed	587	80M	23	17M	68
CW	425	40M	266	15M	232
Phone	209	30M	69	12M	26
Digital	135	20M	321	10M	100

Ground-Mounting the Tarheel Screwdriver

I have finally dispatched the tripod! The Tarheel is now mounted at ground level on a 10 ft. galvanized pipe driven about 8 feet into the ground (thankfully the ground is sand...). So now the radials extend horizontally rather than drooping down 3 or 4 feet like before. My SWR on 80m and 10m is still way out of whack -- the antenna will not tune under 1.5:1 below 5 MHz or above 26 MHz or so -- but 40m up to 12m I can tune it to 1.2:1 or better.

There was some very bad RFI on 17m the other day, getting into the upstairs stereo so loud that I could here it downstairs in the shack. This has been greatly improved, and I'm still operating without any sort of RF ground system and only 8 radials @ 9 ft. each. The next items on my To Do list are to increase the number of radials, hopefully longer than 9 ft., and to install some ground rods at each end of the coax to ground the antenna and all the equipment inside.

Shakedown

Everything works, for the most part. I've pretty much concluded that the high SWR on 40m and lower is simply an installation anomaly. While it tuned 40m just fine in Texas, it never could tune above 15m. Now 40m is an issue, but I can get it as low as 1.5:1 on 12m, thus allowing me to turn on the heater if needed.

The plan of attack is:

1. Get the antenna off that stupid tripod! A more permanent ground-mounted installation and more/better/longer radials should help.
2. Move it away from the vehicles. Currently it is sitting a few feet from the Faraway Inn E150 cargo van, which is a lot of metal. Not helping, I wouldn't think.
3. Replace the coax -- this run of RG8X is pushing 15 years, and has been outside the whole time.  When I order supplies for the low-band dipole I will add however much more I need for a good run to the Tarheel. Probably going to go with LM400.
4. Ground the hell out of everything -- radios, antennas, and anything in between. The RFI into the stereos is a problem, I'm sure the neighbors are scratching their heads.

Until I get my SWR issue resolved, I'll be spending a lot more time lurking on 12m and 10m (the latter requiring barefoot power and the K3's ATU), slowly chipping away at whatever I come across. Which is a lot, since damn near everything is needed on those bands; I'm currently sitting at 8 DXCC confirmed on 12m, 42 on 10m, so there's lots of catching up to do.

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In other news...

Kitten discovers the one warm spot in the shack -- my PS-430 12v supply.

HNY!

Hello 2015! 
The Tarheel was brought out of storage and set up, all the cables run, all the pieces of the station unboxed and connected. I'm now QRV from CKFL.

My first Cedar Key QSO at 1848 on December 31 (W100AW, 15m CW); the first of 2015 was with RI1ANR at Novo Airbase, Antarctica (20m CW @ 0330).

I'm currently operating 30m~15m. If band conditions a right I will try 12m and 10m. Hell, maybe even 6m. Just without the amp -- the analyzer shows the Tarheel tunable to SWR 1.2 or lower down to about 8.7 MHz; the upper end of the tuning range is around 22 MHz. That will have to be worked out. Made 24 contacts for 20 countries in the first seven days of 2015, including Order of Malta (1A0C) for all-time #205 worked.

The shack is going to be minimalist for a while. My new office is a lot smaller than the last so I need to keep the radios near the end of the desk in order to have better access to the rear panels of the K3 and KPA500. I'll beaving the NRD-515's and all the rest of the radios boxed. The mic is going to stay packed, too, unless and until I play in a phone contest. Or I may dig out the Heil Proset and get that working again instead. Right now I'm happy making almost every QSO with a straight key.

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Twenty-Fourteen was productive for me even though there were several months that I was QRT. The DXCC totals that I'm starting 2015 with:

DXCC Totals
12/31/2014
	Cfd	Wkd		Cfd	Wkd		Cfd	Wkd
Mixed	170	204	80m	11	26	17m	57	86
CW	149	187	40m	112	135	15m	105	135
SSB	105	133	30m	59	89	12m	6	11
Digital	60	82	20m	130	168	10m	41	52

A big +74 country gain on CW, from 75 confirmed at the beginning of the year to 149 at the end. All that key slappin' paid off! Passed 100 on CW, Phone, 40m, 20m, and 15m. And finishing off Triple Play a few days before moving to Cedar Key was a great way to end my 5-year, off-and-on operating stint in Texas.

My 2015 plans: put some wire in the air for the low bands, at least 80m and 40m; connect the Macbook Air to the K3 so I can finally put the old Dell desktop out to pasture; start chipping away at QRP-DXCC and QRP-WAS; and most importantly, install a good ground system. Like, soon.

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Latest eQSL design for Cedar Key, FL operations:

That is, I believe, the No. 16 channel marker. North Key is in the background, one of our favorite boating spots. I'd really like to operate from one of the little outlying islands here in the Cedar Keys. But when I'm actually setting foot on one of them I'm reminded that they're full of things that make me itch. Still...

Of Triple Play and Antenna Maintenance

About time! I worked 13 Colonies special event station K2C in Rhode Island on phone and their QRZ page promises QSL via LOTW! That will be the last one for the phone portion of Triple Play. Now I just need West Virginia on CW. It kills me, I have QSOs in the log for both RI on phone and WV on CW (even have a card for RI), but the Triple Play award requires LOTW verification. Rules are rules. Unfortunately, West Virginia's second ARRL Centennial operating slot isn't until October 22, so to get this done soon I need to find another CW op in WV that uses LOTW. It could happen, I guess...

And another "about time!" -- almost a year after Tarheel sent me a replacement mounting bracket, I finally got around to swapping it out. The new mount fits perfectly. Now I can send the defective mount back and clear my conscious, as I promised to return it to them 11 months ago.

While I had the antenna broken down I did the recommended maintenance -- removed the plexiglass cover, clean the coil with alcohol and a ScotchBrite pad -- and took to the tripod's mast with some sandpaper to remove the black powder coat that I neglected to fully remove when I first set up the antenna in 2009. Now I know there is a good electrical connection between the mounting bracket and the ground radial plate.

I'm still missing a few radials, lost to the lawnmower no doubt, but I seem to be hearing a little better than I have been of late. Maybe it's just coincidental and the bands have simply improved the day I did antenna maintenance. It could happen, I guess...

Either way, I was able to add a few needed countries to my 17m count -- Romania, Belarus, Samoa, Philippines, Greenland -- as well as a few more of the 13 Colonies stations.

2013 ARRL 10M Contest

My first all-CW effort in a contest that was mixed mode. Also the first test in which I used N1MM Logger to generate the CW. This worked swimmingly. No more pushing buttons on the K3 to send my call and exchange from CW memories!

Bad noise the whole weekend -- not just the usual electrical noise (though that was bad enough) but the neighbor's dog would not shut up. And the train... folks, never buy a house across the street from the railroad tracks. Union Pacific is at the top of my shit list this weekend.

QRV a bit under 12 hours total operating time with lots of short breaks. Since the Tarheel only tunes up to 21 MHz, I had to keep the amp off and use the K3's ATU to match the antenna. Consequently, I could only hear and work the loudest signals on the band.

In the end, 22 states (not incl. KL7 and KH6), 9 CanProvs, and 29 DXCC. No new all-time countries for me, but every one of the 29 is new on 10m, a band for which I have exactly three QSOs in the log in 26+ years. Got 8 of the 24 state I need for the CW portion of Triple Play (five already confirmed on LOTW!).

Top Loading

"It is important to recognize that simply adding a top hat to a vertical of a given physical height may reduce ground losses." -- The ARRL Antenna Book, 21st Ed.

QRV.

Worked UA3 and LY on 20m late Monday (early Tuesday UTC), my first HF QSOs since moving to Texas. Bands were awful but there seemed to be an opening over the pole to Eastern Europe, as I heard a few other stations in there as well; ER4DX was 20 over but didn't hear me. Later on Tuesday & Wednesday I worked TI, XE, KH6, VE and ES. Only 93 to go for DXCC from W5-land!

The Tarheel has been great so far. It's noisy (as verticals tend to be) but it's hearing stations that I'm not hearing at all with my stealth wire on the RX Ant input. I'm thinking now that I should have added the Ameritron SDC-201 controller to facilitate band switching, but for now I'm using the MFJ analyzer to tune the antenna without keying the K3.

Ham Radio Deluxe has become a true extension of my K3, operating without it is like attending a formal without pants. I finally dug out the old Dell (2.0 GHz P4 with 512MB RAM) and got it running, completely dedicated to amateur radio operations. Linda brought home a newer Dell from work with a 15" LCD monitor; not sure what processor is in this one but it isn't important -- what I'm using now is adequate, it's already set up with Wi-Fi card, HRD, and some other ham software, and I dread the thought of having to reconfigure another PC. (As a Mac guy, doing anything with Windows is torture. I think we should make Gitmo detainees administer a Windows network; they'll be begging for waterboarding before the end of the second day.)

So with the PC up and running, I had to clear off a bunch of stuff from my desk to make room for the monitor. Should have done this long ago as most of the stuff is seldom used (if ever). I removed the second '515 along with all the little dust-gathering peripherals to make room for the LCD and moved the mic boom over. Now I can actually see the K3, the HRD display, the power/SWR meter at the same time while speaking into a mic and typing without moving my head from side to side.

Now I need only figure out what to do with all the shit that is scattered all over the shack...

Getting RF into my audio chain, so I have to turn the Multi-RX off when transmitting and use headphones fed directly from the K3. Some sleuthing is in order; methinks it is a station ground issue because... well, there ain't none.

Tarheel 200A-HP Antenna: Installation & Initial Tests

Issue One: How do I mount this thing? My first thought was to hammer a 1" galvanized steel pipe into the ground. Then I remembered this heavy duty speaker stand that I scavenged out of the dumpster at the music store a few years ago. It's one of those stands that is designed to elevate a PA monitor; the handle normally used to raise and lower the cabinet to the desired height was broken off but it was otherwise in good shape. I had no idea what I was going to do with it but I figured someday I would adapt it to one of my hobbies -- maybe a telescope mount or a camera tripod. It sat around in my boiler room in NJ for years, then almost got put in the trash when we moved but at the last minute I threw it into the U-Haul. I'm glad I did.

It never occurred to me to use it as an antenna mount until the HamCom show where I saw a similar setup at the Buddipole booth. That rang a bell in my head, so I dug it out of the garage Saturday night. The upper mast is 1", exactly the size needed for the MT-1 mounting bracket and ground radial plate. And though the mast cannot be raised or lowered from it's broken position, it turned out to be the perfect height to mount the MT-1 with the ground plate just a few inches below. This puts the plate about 3.5" above the ground, which means the ten supplied 9' radials droop down before extending outward.

The antenna stands over 15' tall when fully extended for 75/80m. I'm a little concerned about the top-heaviness of the whole thing; wish the mounting bracket U-bolts would fit around the lower section so I could remove the gear assembly and top mast to get the center of gravity closer to the Earth's core. It's not going to tip over all by itself, it's fairly sturdy, but I fear a good blast of Texas-style sever weather might topple it. I'm considering some sandbags on the tripod legs to hold it in place. At least it's portable enough to move indoors or lay down if the wind picks up. While not an ideal permanent mounting solution, it works quite well as a temporary/emergency/portable/field day antenna mounting system. I may eventually move to the pipe-in-ground method; for now, however, this gets me on the air.

While mounting the antenna to the MT-1 bracket I had a bitch of a time fastening the upper half-bracket. Even threading the lock nut on one side just enough to grab the screw, I could not get the screw on the other side through the bracket enough to fasten the other nut. I tried numerous times until the nut got dropped and went bouncing off into the tall grass. I finally just fully tightened the one side and left it for another day -- it's not going to be going down a highway at 80MPH so it's good enough for now. I'd ultimately like to adapt some sort of cam-lever quick release for this upper bracket to facilitate quick break down.

Assembly completed, I did some initial testing with SWR analyzer and found the 200A to tune well on most of the bands I care about -- 1.2:1 or better on 40m through 17m, about 1.25:1 on 15m, and a hair under 2:1 on 75m. With the inductor fully retracted the antenna was resonant on 22.9 MHz, well under 1.2:1; I'm guessing I will need a shorter whip to tune 12m and 10m, which I'll worry about when the sunspot cycle perks up.

Getting the control cable and coax to shack is going to be my next mission. Right now I have it coming in through the window but despite stuffing bubble wrap into the gap I'm still getting bugs working their way into the house. The MFJ feed-through panel is pricey, so I might try to fabricate something similar as soon as I can get to home depot to buy a 2x4 and a circular saw (I left way too many tools in NJ...).

With the 200A hooked to the K3 I'm hearing many more stations that are weak or inaudible with the RX wire antenna; other stations that are strong with the RX antenna are 10dB or more stronger with the 200A. KH6IB was S9+20dB on 20m but I couldn't break through the small pileup he was working through before he started calling for mobile stations only -- even though others who were most definitely not mobile still called him, I followed his instructions and held off. Finally I shut it down since I'm exhausted and need to hit the sack. First QSO will have to wait...

HamCom 2009

Made the trip as planned to Plano this morning to the HamCom show. After doing the math I deduced that this is the first big ham radio show I've been to since Dayton in 1993. Much has changed in 16 years.

First thing upon arrival I sought out Tarheel Antennas, hell bent on getting an antenna before doing anything else. Had a talk with Gaylon WBØW and settled on the Model 200A-HP package with a ground radial kit and an extra 50' length of control cable. This lightened my net worth by some $600. Stuffed the whole lot into the car then went back to see the rest of the show. Grabbed the adapter cable to mate my Heil Classic 5 with the K3, and found the BNC-to-screw terminal adapter that I needed for the KX1. Shopping spree completed, I did my walkabout; The Best Damn Wife Ever™ parked herself in a chair with her Kindle and waited patiently as I ran around like a 5 year old at Chuck E. Cheese's.

I was happy to finally get my paws on some of the newer rigs like the Icom IC7800/7700/7600 and Yaesu FT-9000/2000 and spin the knobs and push some buttons. All of these radios had front panels that remind me of an instrument panel in a 747 -- lotsa' stuff going on. The K3 by comparison is minimalist and elegant, not that I would mind having any of these rigs in the shack. The 7600 was especially nice as it might be something I could afford someday, though I'd be hard pressed to replace the K3 with anything from Japan.

Elecraft had a booth, showing their new W2 wattmeter and K144XV 2m Module for the K3. Eric WA6HHQ was off giving a presentation so I didn't get to grill him about the lack of AM Synchronous Detection in the K3 as promised. Almost bought a K1 kit, but held off because I already spent way more than I should have already on the above mentioned , and also because I know I'll never use it. But I just have itch to melt some solder and wind some toroids.

K144XV installed in K3

Sadly Ten-Tec was absent from the show. Too bad, I really wanted to have a look at the Omni VII and Orion II.

And then there was Flex Radio. Wow. Just... wow.

Flex Radio Systems. Did I mention, Wow?

I can imagine one of these in the shack someday...