Antenna Building Supplies and Ideas For Antennas

  If the weather ever gets warmer I can get back to working on my 6 meter quad antenna.
  Well enough slacking off for know. So first what things can you build an antenna with. I say anything you can get your hands on. If it is a dipole antenna you will need a certain length of wire and then some. You can buy antenna wire off the internet at places like universal radio, dx engineering, aes electronics or ham radio outlet. If you would prefer to buy something close to home check out lowes or home depot. I would probably suggest to go with solid 14 gauge wire.
  The next thing I would use is grey pvc pipe to make insulators out of. Half inch or three quarter Grey Electrical PVC Conduit would work just fine. The grey pvc pipe is good because it it uv resistant and should hold up pretty good. If you are going with a folded dipole, then the grey pvc would work good for the separators. I am using the grey pvc pipe in my 6 meter antenna I am building.

Grey Electrical PVC Conduit

Looking For A Low Cost Transciever

   Some of today’s ham radios can be very expensive. For example a  Yaesu FT-897D is an awesome radio, but can be a little expensive for the Ham Radio Operator starting out in the hobby. If it is in your ballpark of expenses then I would say to go for it. It has a rating of 4.6 out of 5 at Eham.net and has at present about 358 reviews. Here is a link to the Eham.net website http://www.eham.net/reviews/products/14 .  That's not a bad rating at all. I did read some of the reviews and they were not bad at all. Of course you do get the person that just had a bad experience with and it's normal for that to happen. As with all electronic devices murphy's law always holds true.
  

Kenwood TS-2000 no author

By Jeff Davis (originally posted to Flickr as Kenwood TS-590S) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Advise To My Ham Radio Friends And Readers

  This is just meant to be some helpful advise to anyone out there still using an older windows xp computer. As windows xp comes to a close in April of this year 2014 there will be no more support. The possibility of no updates for security means that you may run the risk of being infected. There will be no protection for any loop holes that someone may find. The virus community is worried that the people who write the viruses may target the xp operating system.
  The best choice is to save your data and go into a new computer running windows 7 or possibly windows 8 or 8.1. My advise is to try and go with a windows 7 operating system. It will be supported into the year 2020 which will give time for windows 8 and 8.1 to get the bugs out. The windows 8 and 8.1 are very different from windows xp and windows 7 so it may be an easier move. The only other problem that may occur is if your older software will function in the newer operating systems. 
 

  Thank You for reading and Have A Nice Day.
  73s from Dan KC2YTI