The Adventures of Every Woman's Sweetheart and the Perverted V

Chapter 1

Picture a TV show, set in the 1960s. It opens with a slinky femme fatale dispatching rogues with expert Kung Fu. She grabs their suspicious looking package, tosses it into the passenger seat of a 350 GT Lamborghini, leaps in, and speeds away. She pulls up at a toll booth. An old man in a soiled hoodie, cigarette dangling from his lips, grumbles, “Fifty cents.” She hands him a couple quarters and steps on the gas. Cue the theme music as the voice over announces, “The Adventures of Ralph J. Spumoni: Toll Collector”.

My life is like that lately. I’ve been living one anticlimactic moment after another since recently passing the exam to get my Amateur Radio license again. My Advanced license expired some thirty years ago.

Before I begin, let me warn you that there's a lot of Amateur radio (commonly called ham radio) lingo here. If you're not an Amateur Radio operator (commonly called a "ham"), you may not understand the details, but you should be able to follow the story.

I have to start fresh to get back on the air. I abandoned my trusty Drake TR-4 transceiver and E.F. Johnson match box for an antenna back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I have limited resources, so I scour the web for affordable replacements. I know I’ll need a power supply for typical 100-watt rigs. I pick up a used Astron RS-20A linear power supply. I figure twenty amps at 13.8v should leave plenty of room for 100 watts CW/SSB. I order a ground stake, wire and an UNUN for an end fed antenna, and an MFJ-4602 window pass-through so I can get my cables to the outside of the house without drilling holes.

I have a nostalgic affinity for the TR-4, but there are better rigs now. I come across a used ICOM IC-7410 for about $500 on eBay. I take a risk that it still works fine and snipe the 7410 for $500 and change. Finally, I grab a used MFJ-949D Deluxe Versa Tuner II for $60, which is a modern equivalent of my old E.F. Johnson match box.

A Callsign of the Times

I set it all up the weekend after getting my call sign, KI5VDI. Yes, that’s right. KI5 Venereal Disease Infection. I didn’t think a call sign could be worse than the call sign I let expire, KB0FU, but there it is. I file for a vanity call sign so I can get something that resembles my old New Jersey call sign, WB2EWS. N2EWS is available. I like it. North 2 East, West, South, or N2 Every Woman’s Sweetheart. (No, I didn’t come up with that; that was suggested by a 6m contact while operating as WB2EWS at the club, Delaware Valley Radio Association, W2ZQ).

Now, we have an HOA that threatened to fine us for leaving a squashed snake in our driveway for more than a day (how it got there and how it was squashed is still a mystery). So, I must make sure the antenna is essentially invisible. Radiant barrier insulation makes the attic a virtual Faraday cage. The antenna must be outside.

I string up a long wire just under the roof overhang of our ranch style house. It’s only 10 ft off the ground and wraps around the back of the house, but it is hidden.

I fire up the ICOM, which works very well, my hands greedily gripping the microphone, ready for QSOs and DX.

There are no answers to my CQ. Am I getting out at all? I’m only running half power, but it’s still more than a QRP rig. I open the https://na5b.com:8901 web based SDR site, find an unused frequency and tune up on that frequency. Nothing. I’m not reaching the SDR receiver. I try web SDRs in other locations. Nothing.

Another cast of a CQ snags a fellow Texan, but he can barely hear me. I crank up the output to 100 watts. I push-to-talk, speak and the lights go out. I run to the garage and reset the circuit breaker. Second try - the lights go out again. Turns out the ICOM needs 23 amps. That’s what I get for buying the power supply before I know what radio rig I’ll be using. I order a new TekPower TP50SW 50 Amp 13.8V power supply from Amazon.

Now, with full power, I try to check into the 40m OMISS net. They can’t hear me. Clearly, I must do something about the antenna. Maybe end-fed so close to the ground is a wash. I order a multi-band off-center dipole fed with a 4:1 balun. I mistakenly order the one that’s 90 ft on one side and 45 ft on the other. It’s a beautiful design, but I don’t have that kind of room. I compensate for the error by folding each side in half for a 45/22.5 ft off center dipole, once again along the lip of the roof. Still, nobody can seem to hear me.

I pull down the off center and string up a 40m half wave dipole under the roof overhang, which sadly still wraps around the back of the house for a few feet. Now, the OMISS 40m net can hear me, but just barely. Clearly, running any antenna 10 ft off the ground along the side of the house isn’t going to work.

I’m afraid to defy the HOA, but so powerful is my maniacal desire to get back on the air that the notion “where there’s a will, there’s a way” burns white hot in my psyche. A magnetic loop, maybe? Perfect for the HOA, but I can’t justify spending hundreds on a vacuum variable capacitor to handle the high voltage in the loop.

Patriotism to the Rescue

Elevation must be the key. Masts are totally out of the question. But… a flagpole! The HOA can’t deny me an American flag, can they? I'm pretty sure HOAs must allow flagpoles. So, I order a 25 ft telescoping flagpole. My antenna in vacation paradise Trenton, NJ, was a dipole 30 ft in the air alongside a brick duplex, fed with 300-ohm twin lead. It could still be there today; I don’t know. Perhaps it’s an historic landmark. Recalling my prior success getting multi-band performance out of twin lead and a tuner, I find a good price on one of the usable lengths of 450-ohm ladder line, 100 ft, from KF7P Metalwerks.

With the help of my better half, we erect what I affectionately dub the “perverted V”, that is, a freakishly disfigured inverted V dipole antenna hung just below old glory, about 20 ft high. The pole is in the corner of the back yard, so the two legs of the dipole are at a 90-degree angle to one another. One side of the dipole is too long for the fence, so I bend it at the fence corner. The remainder of the length runs horizontal along the fence, parallel with the other dipole leg. The paracords for both legs run through pulleys with a 2.5lb weight. That way the pole can move in the wind and the wire will give as needed. A 5lb weight works better but causes the pole to bend too much.

Telescoping poles with twist locks tend to collapse, so I fasten a pipe clamp at each section to prevent that from happening.

The 100 ft of ladder line works almost perfectly to reach my window. The radiation pattern no doubt looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, but it has to be better than what I tried before.

I gaze upon my mutant creation, and if I listen very carefully, I think I can hear the distant typing of a nastygram by the HOA. Nevertheless, I go inside, turn off the lights, and huddle over the microphone, hungrily scanning the bands to log a QSO. I stumble upon the NATA 40m Net and risk a check-in. Net control hears me! He’s 20 over 9, and I’m a measly 5 by 7, but to me, it’s victorious! Look out, this toll collector just got a promotion.

I know I’ll have to entertain the question of what to do if, or more likely when, the HOA tells me to take down my perverted V. But until then, after 40 plus years of silence, I’m on the air again.

Credits

(Credit where credit is due: My best friend from New Jersey, Andrew Lopatin, and I composed a comedy tape when I was a producer at radio station KUNC in Greeley, CO. The tape included a skit, "The adventures of Arthur J. Pendington, Toll Collector", complete with music and sound effects.)

Nicholas Petreley is certainly not every woman’s sweetheart, but he is thankful to be his lovely wife’s sweetheart. He was an award-winning columnist for the computer journal InfoWorld in a former life, a teacher, consultant, and programmer in an even former life, and is currently a technical consulting engineer for Cisco Systems, Inc. You can reach him at [email protected].?