Thursday, March 12, 2009

I have a long...

antenna.

What? You thought I was going to say something else? Puh-leeze! Penguins don't even have a, err, whatever. What is it about "cloaca" that you don't understand?!

No, that is my Yaesu VX-8 transceiver, currently set up to scan the air bands to listen to conversations between pilots and air traffic control and the tower. A small radio with a long antenna, the Diamond SRH940. So get your mind out of the gutter, people!

--Badtux the Well-Radio'ed Penguin

4 comments:

  1. If my mind wasn't in the gutter, it would be lost.

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  2. That IS a mighty big antenna there son . Remember : There's a pointy end on that thing , be carefull with it !
    a cautious w3ski

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nope, no pointy end, that's a load coil for the matching network up at the top end of the antenna, it's more a knob than a point. This thing has two sets of load coils, one at the base and one at the top, to give it multi-band transmission capability (i.e., convert otherwise-reflected radio waves into heat due to the fact that the antenna isn't really well matched to any particular frequency). Of course, this means that the antenna is as much a dummy load as it is an antenna, but the shorter antennas are even worse -- talking to a repeater 20 miles from here I get a '2' (on scale of 1-10) with the stock antenna, and '3' with this long antenna. With a half-wave antenna on my car, I get a '4' (4 watts output, the output of this radio, just isn't much power to talk 20 miles in an urban environment).

    ReplyDelete

Ground rules: Comments that consist solely of insults, fact-free talking points, are off-topic, or simply spam the same argument over and over will be deleted. The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here. All viewpoints, however, are welcomed, even if I disagree vehemently with you.

WARNING: You are entitled to create your own arguments, but you are NOT entitled to create your own facts. If you spew scientific denialism, or insist that the sky is purple, or otherwise insist that your made-up universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees is "real", well -- expect the banhammer.

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