South Texas Weather

We arrived in the Valley the day before yesterday and the weather is gorgeous! Our trip down was uneventful except for filling this motorhome up with gasoline! I find myself just kind of holding my breath to see how much it takes.

We are actually located in La Feria, Texas, a small town between Harlingen and McAllen. If you aren't familiar with this part of the World, it's called "the Valley" because it is part of the Rio Grande River valley. There is no scenery here to speak of except that South Padre Island and the Gulf of Mexico is about 30 miles away. Since we are only about 10 miles from the Mexican border, a lot of the "Winter Texans" go over there to shop and sightsee. We used to but, because of the drug wars, don't any more.

Yesterday I got my HF antenna up and it works fine on 20 meters. I think that's probably the only band I'll work while we are here. The antenna is a Buddipole and I have it mounted on a painter's pole about 16' high. I'd like to have it higher, of course, but it ain't gonna happen!

Back to the weather, it was about 75 degrees yesterday and supposed to be near 80 today. I can live with that.

160 Meter (Skywire) Antenna

After listening to several people who had loops, I decided that I had to have one. I got it up about a year ago and it has been a wonderful antenna, so good that I took down my modified G5RV.

A short description: it is 536 feet long and is about 25 feet high.It has five sides and one of the corners is attached to my tower. The feedline from it to the house is 450 ohm ladderline, which is very similar to the old television flat wire we used when I was a kid. It runs through a 4:1 balun which is mounted just outside the window and then uses coax to connect to the tuner.

There is only one problem with this antenna: it is very difficult to tune on 160 meters. It works great on 80, 40, and 20 but the band it is designed to work best on is a flop! I'm not smart enough to figure out what is going on but I'm gonna start changing parts till it gets better. This is also the way I work on cars, by the way.

Here is a copy of the antenna performance from 0.5 to 8.0 mHz. You can see that there are "lobes" at about 3.8, 5.5, and 7.2mHz, but none in the 1.8 to 2.0mHz range (160 meters). I gotta learn more about antenna design and performance.

Winter in South Texas

We got down here on Monday and the weather really is much nicer than at home. The high yesterday was about 70 degrees, compared to about 20 at home. Today, however, a cold front is coming through and the lows here are expected to drop to the upper 20's.

We went to Progreso, Mexico yesterday and ate and drank too much but we had a good time. I need to get the wire antenna up today so that I can talk on 20 and 40 meters. Maybe I'll get that done. I'm already adopting the "manana" attitude. I'll get done some day.

Digging Ditches

Well, today will be exciting. I'm gonna finish digging the ditch for the new antenna tower base. The hole is 4 feet square and 5 feet deep. It will take 3 1/2 yards of concrete to fill it. If I get the hole finished, I'm gonna start working on the rebar "cage" which will go into the hole.

At 63, I should be done with hard physical labor. If this wasn't for a hobby, I wouldn't be doing it! Believe it or not, I am digging the hole by hand. I'm just using the backhoe to clean out the dirt. You can't use one of these in a very small hole.