1625 "Free Mandela" Kenny Garrett, SIO 444
1629 Shout out to me, antenna story about finding an ant colony in part of the system - thanks for the story! This year has been particularly bad here in MD for ant colonies turning up where you don't want them. Back to the music.
1635 Brief pause in the music to ask about my crossed parallel loop antenna. It's still occasionally in use, as a passive loop now connected via a homebrew matching/isolation transformer, after the preamp board failed due to water ingress. And probably ants also
It is connected directly to an Airspy HF+ Discovery which has sufficient sensitivity that no preamp is needed. I don't use it too often, but now and then.
1638 Another loop comment - I forget the exact details on the turns ratio of the transformer, I may have written it down in my notebook. One thing I did do was encapsulate it in epoxy resin, the same stuff I use in the Cyclops transformers I sell. I wanted to make sure water ingress wouldn't be a problem again. I did the same for my homebrew T2FD transformers. No matter how much I tried to seal plastic enclosures with gaskets and such, water *always* got in. With a purely passive matching transformer, I figured once it was encapsulated there would never be a reason to get back inside again.
Topic: 77LJS 6930 USB 1620 UTC 25 AUG 2025 (Read 808 times)
