RFI: A Practical Example Of The Effect

A Communicator Reprise: January 2013

At the suggestion of Jim Smith VE7FO, I recently joined an RFI reflector at http://lists.contesting.com/.  Why?  Because I hoped to find some answers to a frustrating Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) problem that I was experiencing.  

I had installed in my bathroom an electrically heated floor and thermostat c/w built-in ground fault interrupter (GFI).  However, whenever I transmitted, even briefly, on 15m or 10m the GFI would trip and the power would go off.  The first time this happened, the thermostat failed to work again even after resetting the GFI.  First call was to the supplier (NuHeat) of the “Solo” thermostat.  

Their customer support team knew nothing about RFI and I had to explain that it was likely a problem with the thermostat and not a problem with my radio transmissions.  Without argument, they replaced the thermostat with a new one (#2).  Not wanting to take further chances with ruining another thermostat, I decided to install some RF protective devices, as I assumed that the 220 v house wiring was picking up RF and passing it through to the thermostat. 

While RF interference is not a new problem, it is most commonly experienced with telephones and audio devices.  However, nowadays the large variety of RF susceptible electronic devices in our houses has greatly increased the likelihood of problems.  The number of devices emitting RF has also increased accordingly.  Plasma TVs, computer monitors, electric fences, touch turn-on lamps, halogen lights, and wall-wart switching power supplies are just some of the items that are reputed to send out wide-spectrum RF, but there are many others.  What to do in this case? 

First, I applied the standard remedy: I clamped split ferrite cores around the power cable near the thermostat.  That appeared to have no effect, however this time the thermostat could be reset and made functional, which was progress of a sort.  Then I ordered an RFI kit from Palomar and when it arrived I added ferrite beads to the individual power leads.  No improvement.  Next I connected .01 uF disc ceramic capacitors between the hot leads and ground.  Also NuHeat had provided me with a “snubber” – a capacitor with a resistor in series – which I connected across the power leads.   However, the problem persisted.  Finally after many emails and telephone back and forth, NuHeat put me in touch with Honeywell, the manufacturer of the thermostat.  

Honeywell responded very quickly first asking me some questions about my power level, frequencies, SWR etc that might suggest a transmitter problem.  After they were satisfied with the answers, Honeywell couriered another thermostat (#3) to me for trial.  No cigar.  When I reported this failure, they promptly sent me yet another thermostat (#4) called “Harmony”.  This is a more expensive device of (apparently) different design.  It worked!  

One by one, I removed the RF chokes and capacitors until they were all gone.  After several days of testing at different frequencies, there has been no effect on the thermostat/GFI, so I mounted it permanently and thanked Honeywell for their efficient service. 

Lesson: if you have an RFI issue, try the standard remedies but when they fail to solve the problem, get the manufacturer on board with device replacement in mind, as with modern radios it is typically not the radio transmissions that are at fault.  This approach may not work with some of the off-shore manufacturers, so bear this in mind when purchasing electronic devices – they may not care about their reputation and customer service the way Honeywell does. 

ARRL publishes several good RFI guides as well as the Radio Amateurs Handbook and more information can be found on the Internet.  For unusual problems that defy the conventional solutions, the RFI reflector website mentioned above is another excellent source of expert advice.

~ John VA7XB

   Now enjoying toasty toes in his remodeled bathroom.

SARC Contest Contender: September-October 2018

The Fall Contest Season

John VA7XB has taken on the job of Contest Manager and is proposing an active schedule for the next year now that SARC has two contest grade radios available for club use at the OTC.

For that purpose John would like to know who would like to be notified about upcoming contests.  If you have an interest in contesting, please contact John at va7xb@rac.ca with your preferred mode(s) and he will put you on the contact list. The objective for this fiscal year will be for SARC to compete in at least one contest a month so that members may acquire comfort with operating our new radios, accurately recording exchange information and using logging software. 

If your main interest is in emergency communication, these contests provide invaluable experience in operating under sometimes chaotic conditions including multi-station pileups, QRM (man-made interference), QRN (natural interference), lids (bad operators), over-the-pole flutter, static crashes and fading. 

If there is sufficient interest, we may even try some of the more exotic digital modes.

We cannot do them all, of course, but listed here are a few of the available contests for the months of September and October.

These and other contests are described at: http://www.contestcalendar.com//index.html

Surrey Basic Amateur Radio Course

Register Now... We Start Tuesday, September 11

The Surrey Amateur Radio Club generally offers two Basic licensing courses per year. Last year we graduated 27 members who attended our classes. These new 'Hams' came from all walks of life, some with technical backgrounds, most without. Many were interested in emergency preparedness and staying in touch if the BIG one hits.

We have set the start for the next class as Tuesday, September 11th at 6:30pm. We use the excellent classroom facilities courtesy of the Surrey Fire Service at their training facility 14901 64th Avenue, Surrey, BC.

Have a look at what Amateur Radio can offer:

An exciting modern hobby

A useful emergency communications skill

Have a look at our Basic Course brochure and poster

The September 2018 Communicator

We're Back! Here is the latest Communicator 

After our Summer recess we have over 50 pages of Amateur Radio News from the South West corner of Canada and elsewhere. You will find Amateur Radio related articles, profiles, news, tips and how-to's. You can download it as a .PDF file directly from 
goo.gl/8Kekuo

http://goo.gl/8Kekuo

As always, thank you to our contributors, and your feedback is always welcome.  My deadline for the October edition is September 14th. If you have news or events from your Vancouver area club or photos, stories, projects or other items of interest from elsewhere, please email them to the communicator@ve7sar.net

Keep visiting this site for regular updates and news.

~ 73,
  John VE7TI
  Communicator Editor

My Screwdriver Antenna Experiences

Even On A Compact SUV

Some of you may be familiar with the Hi-Q line of mobile HF antennas. SEPAR has several, a choice prompted by the need for a relatively compact, portable HF antenna that is quick to set-up in the field, at least until a more robust antenna can he erected. As an RV’er I decided that I needed a usable mobile HF antenna that I could erect quickly, but that would provide me with a worthwhile HF experience. There is nothing worse than spending hours at the radio and not hearing a soul on the air!

In order, my criteria were:

• Performance 
• Size;
• Ease of set-up (not necessarily speed);
• Ruggedness; and
• Solid mount

I researched a number of mobile HF antennas including the Buddipole and Tarheel products. Not to bad-mouth these other products, but I tried both and was not satisfied that they would meet my expectations. I was impressed by the quality of construction and military spec components of the Hi-Q. Performance reports were good (provided it is properly installed) and it met my needs for ease of transport and mounting.

Hi-Q antennas are made in the workshop of Charlie Gyenes, W6HIQ, VA7HIQ in Wildomar, CA about 150 Km SE of Los Angeles. Charlie has been supplying these antennas for over 20 years and is a supplier to the US military and NASA. I visited Charlie to pick up my Hi-Q  and he is an interesting, though opinionated fellow who came to the US from Hungary via Canada during the 1956 revolution. Charlie worked for Boeing before setting out on his own.

Charlies’s workshop is modest, consisting of a medium sized building beside his home. When I visited, he had about 20 Hi-Q’s ready to go. He also showed me several military antennas—ruggedized versions of the Hi-Q, and a huge VLF antenna which was to be installed aboard a US Navy submarine. His test equipment is impressive and his greatest joy is in developing new concepts which can be incorporated into his antenna designs. I mentioned Charlie was opinionated… he pulls no punches when describing his competition and he is obviously very proud of his product. 

Before we left, Charlie’s wife, a lovely lady, insisted on preparing lunch before we headed out with the antenna. 

Some Mis-steps

Arriving at our Palm Springs RV Resort, I set up the antenna on a satellite stand, a setup we had used with SEPAR at community displays. This antenna is a typical screwdriver design, the coil being contained in a 20cm diameter plastic housing. A rotor moves up or down the inside of the coil to decrease or increase the virtual length of the antenna, thereby tuning it to the appropriate frequency. To complete that process, the user can use something as simple as a toggle switch, a turns counter, or a third party automatic antenna tuner. I had opted to purchase Charlie’s turns counter, basically a switch box with an LED numeric display that shows how many turns are in the antenna circuit. This worked but I found it less precise and it was easy to under or overshoot the target frequency with just one rotation. 

Palm Springs is in a ‘bowl’, surrounded by tall mountains, I found that the antenna performed well for strong stations within 1000 Km, but was not stellar for DX.

The ‘Right’ Set-up

This year we sold the RV but I still wanted to be able to travel with the Hi-Q to operate mobile. We stay in an RV Resort with antenna restrictions, but they do not cover antennas on vehicles. We often travel with bicycles and my wife suggested I find a way to mount it on the car’s bike carrier (see photo below). This also permitted me to easily remove either just the antenna or the rack and antenna. I added a ground strap to the frame and also added a current balun to the feedline. Additionally, I extend about 20ft of plain hookup wire directly out from the rear of the vehicle... kind of a counterpoise. With this revised setup and my Icom 7000 (100 Watts max.) I worked the CQ WW DX contest. What a difference! Granted the conditions were excellent and even the high bands were open but the results were immediate and surpassed any previous use of the Hi-Q. I worked stations throughout the US, Canada and the Caribbean. I also worked Portugal, Mexico, Japan and added two new countries, Curacao and Cape Verde—the latter my first African contact. On all bands I got an SWR less than 1.6 and as low as 1.1 on 20m.

I’ve  now purchased the automatic tuner for use with my Icom, a purchase that I hope will ease tuning and further improve my portable station. Given my recent experience, I’d recommend this set-up for anyone with strata restrictions wishing to operate HF.

More info at: http://www.hiqantennas.com/

The Hi-Q with whip is 12' high

The bicycle mount provides enough height to
work HF, even on the low bands

Brett - Where to start?

Jim Smith VE7FO Also Remembers Brett

My own involvement with SARC started when I was recruited by John VE7TI, as a Field Day operator. 

There are many enjoyable ways of conducting FD which range from everyone sitting around the BBQ, telling stories and making a few contacts to the hard core contest style where everybody goes all out to WIN.

I was told that it would be a hard core, win for Canada, situation.  Being a hard core contester myself I took the bait.

Well, it turned out that the operators, while enthusiastic, didn't have the HF contest experience necessary to achieve the goal.  Nonetheless, it was obvious that the potential was there so, once FD was over, I joined the Club and made a FD training proposal to the Exec with the goal of winning for Canada, which was accepted. 

This training started in October (I think) and ran until next year's FD.  It consisted of many formal training sessions including class room style and participation in the major contests, during which the ops received coaching on the operating techniques for maximizing the number of contacts per hour.

This would be a very significant investment of time for the trainees.  Brett realized that many people might be worried about this so he started a "Get Your Feet Wet" program to provide a low commitment introduction to contesting so that they could see whether or not they liked it. 

Here's how it worked.

A potential trainee would sign up for an hour or two of operating time during a major contest.

The trainee would operate the contest while being mentored by one of the experienced members, with no requirement that he sticks to it for his entire shift. 

If, after 15 minutes or whatever, the trainee says, "This is not for me" and ends his session then it will be obvious that attending the formal training would not be a good use of his time.

Conversely, if he really enjoyed the experience then he was more disposed to make the time commitment required by the formal training.

Brett managed the whole thing.

Altogether, a stroke of genius on his part.

Some trainees enjoyed the Get Your Feet Wet program so much that they repeated it three times!

Brett was also very involved in the formal training and was a great help to me.

Did the training achieve the #1 Canada goal?  No, but we did move up to #2.  After a 2nd year of training we made it to #1.

Brett was both persuasive and persistent.  Over the course of several years on the FD Committee he kept pointing out that some QRP FD operations did VERY well using only 5 watts of power, making better scores than us with 100W.  (QRP is ham lingo for operating at 5W or less.)  The way that the FD scoring is set up, a CW contact using more than 100 watts is worth 1 point, one using 5 to 100 watts is worth 2 points and one made using less than 5W is worth a big 5 points.    Sounds like a no-brainer.  You want to maximize the points?  Go QRP.  Just one problem.  People find it hard to hear you so you get fewer contacts per hour.

Finally, the FD Committee started paying attention to his point of view and consulted propagation predictions to see what we might be able to do with just 5W.  Hoo boy!!  With some adjustment to the antenna lineup we could do very well indeed.

Did we?  We sure did.

 

Shattered the Canadian record for all categories.

Out of 2,719 FD stations in the US and Canada in 2015, some with more than 10 transmitters and most running 100W, we ranked #91 with our 3 transmitters and 5W.

Altogether a VERY significant achievement which any club would be proud of.

Wouldn't have happened without Brett.

We were very fortunate to have had Brett as a member.

Brett's gone

Damn!

~ Jim Smith VE7FO

Remembering Brett Garrett VE7GM - SK

One of the 20%

They often say that 20% of a given membership do 80% of the work... Brett was one of the 20%, no, more like 5%. An active member of both the Surrey Amateur Radio Club (SARC) and Surrey Emergency Program Amateur Radio (SEPAR), Brett freely shared his knowledge and led Surrey Amateurs to two very successful Field Days.

Brett VE7GM Silent Key

Brett first got his ham license around 1967, and enjoyed doing a little youthful operating before life got in the way.  

In 2012, John Brodie shared a memory of an early encounter with Brett:

"I was licensed in 1960 when I was in 10th grade at Prince of Wales High School.  After graduating in 1962 I put ham radio aside as I began my Engineering education.  My ham radio gear in those days consisted of mostly post WW2 vintage odds and ends of the “low budget” variety, scrounged, donated by ham friends or purchased with paper route earnings.  
Before retirement, my father worked at C Gardner Johnson, ships agents in Vancouver for the Swedish Johnson Line and Japanese Mitsui OSK.  One of his colleagues was a man which we children only knew as “Mr. Garrett”.   Since I knew that there would be no ham radio in my life for a few years, I disposed of all my gear.  The receiver, a military version RCA ACR-3 behemoth weighing about 100 lb, went to an aspiring ham in the neighbourhood named Bill Coltart who, through research on the RAC registry, I find is VE7BMM.  The remainder went to my father’s colleague, “Mr. Garrett” whose son, I was told, was interested in ham radio. 

At the time I never met the son, and wondered if he had gone on to get licensed and involved in the hobby.  Now I know.  He is our Brett Garrett VE7GM, a relatively new member of SARC and now a Director, who, like me, came back to the hobby after several decades away and was featured in last month’s “RadioActive”.  Garrett is an enthusiastic participant in club activities, including the CW subgroup of the “Operator Skills Training” and contesting program started last Fall. The photo shows Brett returning the “junk”, including a Harvey Wells TBS-50 transmitter to its former owner."

Brett first became intrigued with ham radio as a sixth grader.  His interest in electronics began when his father bought him a radio kit.   A school administrator discovered his intense interest in electronics, and suggested to his mother that perhaps he should consider getting a ham license.  Brett soon began attending ham classes run by the Vancouver Club in a member's basement, and succeeded in getting his license.  

'Back in the day' when VE7GM got licensed, Morse code was a requirement for a Basic license, and operators had to show proficiency at 10 w.p.m.   After assembling some equipment, Brett began operating HF on 80 and 40 meters using code.

Move forward several decades and Brett refreshed his Basic with Honours, Morse and Advanced qualifications. SARC was pleased to have this long-time ham join the club after he became active again. He went on to become a Director, Vice-President in fact, and also became active in SEPAR. It was Brett's interest on the emergency communications side of Amateur Radio that sparked his renewed interest in the hobby.  Having taken early retirement from his career as a Power Systems engineer for BC Hydro, Brett became more concerned with community level emergency preparedness after the Japanese quake and tsunami.  He ran into then SEPAR Coordinator Kelvin Hall VA7KPH at a local swap meet, and decided to get back into the hobby, and get involved. 

Brett trains SARC Members Nell and Ralph for contesting

For the 2012 BC QSO Party, he operated from his home station, which he'd just gotten operational the day before.  While not much of a 'rag chewer', Brett found the contest environment to be an enjoyable and satisfying operating environment.

Brett looked forward to refreshing his CW skills, advancing from his 15 to his target of a solid 30 w.p.m.  Towards that end, Brett became actively involved in the SARC Contesting/Operating Skills training program led by Fred Orsetti VE7IO and Jim Smith VE7FO. That program, with Brett's capable help, brought forth many of the skilled contesters we now have at SARC. Describing the experience as 'just terrific', Brett reported that he'd learned a great deal, while having lots of fun in the process. 

Living in the Crescent Beach area until recently, with somewhat limited antenna space, Brett operated an IC-7000 on a 20 meter dipole at about 4.5 meters high. After his mother passed a couple of years ago, Brett decided to move to some property he had on Green Lake with the intention of building his dream station. As a result we saw less of him, although he was occasionally available in town for coffee and the annual SARC Christmas Party.

Brett said more than once that he was very happy to have become active in the Surrey-White Rock Amateur Radio community, and was grateful that hams, who have so much capability and knowledge, are so generous in sharing their time and experience.  Having seasoned operators willing to sit down and really help you made all the difference.  For him, the club experience and the high caliber people who were there to help, was a recipe for enthusiasm and inspiration that pushed him to go further and try harder.  

We will miss Brett.

Brett is presented with a certificate by Jim VE7FO
for his tireless work training SARC members in contesting