University of Iowa Football / Another radio project

I am ecstatic tonight!!!!!  My school, The University of Iowa beat Penn State again this year in football.  They were rated number 5, and we were not rated in the top twenty five.  We stopped them from going for a national championship last year, and I was sure they would extract large amounts of revenge this year as the game was in Happy Valley, PA.

I know not all of you are football fans, and won't share my love for the school of my graduation, but for this week, I am overjoyed.  Lets hope coach Joe Paterno can continue his coaching career and has another shot at the Hawkeyes next year.  He's 84 for those that are not up on these things.

Beyond that, we had another calm day here with our grand daughter  and I rode more motor scooter out searching for rear dual tire valve extenders.  I found some but they were the cheaper rubber kind that are not reinforced with stainless webbing.  I give up, and will order from the internet.

This afternoon was another electronics job, as I am assembling a HF station to go in the rig.  I have an older FT 900 Yaesu radio, and the antenna parts on hand to do the job.  Since the antenna is over eight feet long, it will only be mounted when the rig is parked.

Late in the aftenoon, I headed over to storage once again and mounted the antenna bracket on the roof ladder, at the very top.  I thought the wire was in the locker compartments under the floor, but was not able to find it.  Tomorrow I will have to decide which wire I will use from the inventory on hand here at the house.

So yet another communication mode will be added to the rig for the winter.  This is called HF for high frequency. Two meters is Vhf for very high frequency, and Uhf is Ultra high frequency.  Way back in the day, low frequency was used for ship to shore, and was under 500 kilocycles.  Mid band was what is now AM radio, from 500 kc to about 2 megacycles.

So high frequency was considered high in the 1920's, and went up to 30 megacycles.  Oh by the way the cycle was renamed the Hertz in honor of Mr Hertz that discovered all this stuff.   Our modern FM radio is between 88 and 108 mhz in the VHF band.  Vhf is from 30 to about 300 mhz.  Uhf goes from 300 to about a gigahz.  That's a thousand million cycles.  After that its called microwave.  Clear as mud?

Anyway, the HF is really a old fashoned mode on the lower frequencies that our grandfathers used, but it goes a really long way.  We also do the morse code on these bands.  Though it is no longer required to get a license.

I will probably leave the radio loose, and on the floor under the driver's seat, since it is too complicated to run while driving.

So I didn't get this project finished today but tomorrow is another day

Retired Rod