The world according to Riff.

Well I finally got off my butt and did something about my atrocious ham radio system. I have a radio capable of talking on 13 different bands, and antennas to cover 3.....Nice use of over two thousand in equipment.....Well last night in the wee hours of the morning, I while freezing my butt off decided to lay down more of a ground plane for my 80 meter shunt feed....with it being so danged dry the ground has dried out and makes a shitty ground without radials....so after over a year of procrastinating and being grouchy about not having a working antenna , I got of my butt and stripped a few hundred feet of romex house  wire and layed it out in starburst pattern, with about 8 legs of about 40 to 60 feet.  My 80 meter vertical is back in the game....It tunes out flat with a 1:1 SWR at 3.8 mhz.....I annoyed some old timers in Florida with only 50 watts...and I live in south Texas.  My next goal is to climb my fat butt up my 65 foot tower and attach my 160meter shunt feed......Great more f-ing radials.....The problem with shunt feeds though is the narrow bandwidth. Although they will tune the entire target band and cover all of 80 meters or 160 meters depending on your setup, the have to be re-tuned when you move a significant amount in frequency. Next step is to fabricate some remote tuning motors to attached to the air variables capicitors that tune the antenna....The problem with that is ypou have to spin it reallllllllll slow, as the adjustment to re-tune is very narrow, and that requires gear motors....try finding gear motors that spin less than 30 rpm's with good torque....but thats the fun of the hobby.....riff