Merry Christmas from KB9VBR J-Pole antennas. I hope your holidays where Merry and Bright and that Santa Claus brought what you wished for. Maybe your Christmas wish was to contact rare DX, peace on earth, or to receive a bright new  shiny rig under the tree. I can’t help much with the 2nd wish, but if you received a new VHF/UHF radio for Christmas, this is the place to come for a new antenna.

The KB9VBR 2 meter J-Pole antenna is a great choice for your new VHF 2 meter rig. If you received a handheld radio, read my post about how to connect your handheld radio to an external antenna. New hams often start out with HTs but find the range limiting. A good antenna makes all the difference between making the contact and getting lost in the noise.

Merry Christmas once again, spend some time with people you love. After that, if you need a diversion, head on down to the ham shack.

Are the hams in your family naughty or nice? Are you or a loved one expecting a radio under the Christmas Tree. A KB9VBR J-Pole Antenna makes a great Christmas gift for your loved or ham buddy across town or across the country. I’ll ship your antenna to any US address for no extra charge. Buy your gift here and don’t worry about getting it delivered.

But, you gotta hurry. Christmas day is Sunday December 25, 2011 so today, Wednesday December 21, 2011 is the last day I can take orders and still get them under the tree.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I often receive inquiries if my antennas can be used with handheld or HT radios. The simple answer is that if your radio has a detachable antenna, then yes you can connect it to my J-Pole antennas or another style of antenna.

Connecting your HT to an external antenna is a great way to extend your range of the handheld, especially if you are using your handheld in a remote location. The duck antennas that come with most handheld radios are not very efficient, most have none or even a negative gain. They are designed for portability and not efficiency. If you wanted to set up a field station at a public service event, or even use your HT as a base radio, then you will need a better quality antenna, such as the 2 meter J-Pole antenna.

Handheld radios these days usually have an SMA or a BNC antenna connector on them. The J-Pole antenna uses an SO-239 connector on it, which mates to a PL-259 connector. The PL-259 is the standard connector for 50 ohm coax cable. You will need an adapter to connect your HT to the coax cable. Radio Shack does sell a BNC to SO-239 adapter. The part number is 278-120 and this should be a stocked item for most stores.  I know they also have an SMA to SO-239 adapter, but I was unable to find it in their online catalog. Radio Shack employees are not often well versed in the little components that they carry, so if you have the part number, your shopping experience will go better.

My favorite go to place for adapters and connectors is Tower Electronics. This online retailer can also be found at many hamfests in the the Midwest. When I run into them at a hamfest I’ll often pick up a variety of connectors and adapters that I may need for a future situation. They have both an SMA to So-239 adapter and an SMA to SO-239 adapter with a three foot jumper. For the SMA connector, I recommend getting the adapter with the jumper. This will take the stress off your HT’s connector and prolong it’s life.

These adapters and connectors will let you connect your handheld radio to standard 50 ohm coax cable so that you can use the J-Pole antenna with your handheld radio. This will not only increase the range of your HT, but also give you solid communications when using your handheld as part of a field station at a public service event. Start collecting adapters and keep them as part of your EMCOMM, emergency communications go-bag kit.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! My antennas make great Christmas gifts and I will drop ship them to any US address.  Wouldn’t you love to see a KB9VBR J-Pole Antenna under your Christmas tree? If you want your antenna shipped as a gift to a friend, just leave  me a note during the checkout process of who and where you want the antenna to go. I’ll even include a nice little card wishing the recipient a Happy Holidays.

Christmas day is Sunday, December 25th. The last day to order one of my antennas for guaranteed Christmas delivery is Wednesday, December 21 by 11:59pm central time.

Thanks again for your support, I greatly appreciate your referrals of my antennas to your friends. Have a most excellent Holiday season this year.

Michael, KB9VBR

I recently received a Kenwood TM-281A two meter amateur radio transceiver as a door prize at last month’s state ARES/RACES conference. Well, last week I finally got the radio hooked up and put a few frequencies into it. General impressions: this is a very nice rig with clear audio, easy to use functions, and sensitive receive.

I’ve owned quite a few 2 meter and 2/440 rigs over the years from all three of the major manufacturers: Icom, Kenwood, and Yaesu. Each has their peculiarities and differences, but with everyone putting out quality products, it really all boils down to features and capabilities. With that being said, the Kenwood TM-281 delivers and easy to use, quality product. The radio is ruggedly constructed with a large heat sink along the back and bottom. I like the fact that the heat sink isn’t on the top of the rig. My Icom 2100 has a top mounted heat sink and that think filled up with dust and gunk after a couple of years of mobile use. Buttons on the rig are lit and big enough to push while on the road. The radio also has a very nice volume control and channel selector with detent clicks. Pushing the channel knob also access the setup menus.

Setting it up in my basement shack, I had it connected, programmed with one frequency and on the air in less than 10 minutes. The instructions are well laid out and the index quickly brought me to the section on where to program memories. But you can just as easy us it in the VFO mode as it has automatic repeater offset shift and enabling tone control was straightforward. The only thing I found a little cumbersome was using the direct entry keypad on the microphone, but it seems like this is a downfall on all the radios these days.

Audio on the Kenwood TM-281 is excellent, although compared to the audio on my primary base rig, the Kenwood TM-V7A, it seems a little tinny. The TM-V7a has a larger, top mounted speaker that give a fuller, richer sound. The TM-281′s speaker is smaller and front mounted, which is an advantage when the radio is mounted in a vehicle. Since I didn’t mount it in my car, I don’t know how the smaller speaker fares when up against the vehicle noise while on the road.

Out of the box, the Kenwood Tm-281 puts out 65 watts of power on high and 25 watts on low. This is great for mobile use as we usually run our mobiles on high power anyways. I’d love to see a more energy conserving 10 watt mode for low power base station use. I hooked the radio up to my 2 meter J-Pole antenna that I use for my secondary VHF and digital station. This antenna is mounted on a mast at about 10 feet. I had no problem picking out other mobile signals within at 10 mile radius on the repeater’s reverse frequency. The radio also has a built in weather alert function, and I scanned the weather band, picking up about 4 transmitters in a 60 mile radius. This rig definitely has a very sensitive receive. It also wasn’t bothered by my other rig while transmitting on a second 2 meter frequency.

The radio has up to 200 memories, but if you use the 6 character alpha tags for your memories, you will be limited to only 100 memory channels. 100 memory channels seems a little small for a radio in this day and age, especially if you travel a lot. My first 2 meter rig, an Icom 2100a, offered that many channels 10 years ago and I had it filled pretty quick.

All in all, I’m impressed with the Kenwood TM-281. It’s a highly capable, affordable amateur radio rig, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a starter radio or second rig for the shack or vehicle. I have  a feeling this one will eventually wind up in the wife’s car.

Kathy Schramm, KB9UAZ opens this year's ARES/RACES conference

I had the privilege of once again attending the annual Wisconsin State ARES/RACES Conference. I can’t believe that this annual event has been going on for 13 years now, and of those 13 years, I’ve only missed two conferences, the first one, held in 1999 and again in 2004.  Being licensed since 1999, I’ve been an active participant in emergency communications and really look forward to these conferences as a place to learn and network.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Mutual Aid, being there for each other.” We often think of mutual aid as providing coverage for our neighboring county if they have a communications event or incident and need more operators. But we should also think of our providing support for our served agencies as a form of mutual aid. They are looking for communications resources, and as ARES/RACES operators, we have the unique skill of providing support for when the served agency’s systems may be overwhelmed.

I think the best presentation of the conference came towards the end of the day when Dan Lenz, KB9IME gave a report on what was observed at this year’s Simulated Emergency Test (SET).  In Wisconsin, this year’s scenario was to test the efficiency of local and district nets in funneling information to the State’s HF net. For the most part, limitations and deficiencies were found, but as the Wisconsin Emergency Mangement hamshack operator observed; a lack of traffic making its way to the state hamshack didn’t necessarily mean there was a failure in the system, but instead local nets where funneling information to the districts and district nets where handling traffic properly.

Lenz’s comments on why we train are telling of his attitudes towards training in the State. We need to drill and train in the field, so we are comfortable with field operations. Checking in from home won’t improve our communication abilities when we are called to provide emergency communications in the event of a disaster or other incident.

Finally, according to Lenz in approaching the reason we drill: SETS and drills are not contests, they are not supposed to be ‘successful’. If you found that your plan didn’t work, that is a success. if everything goes right, it’s time to worry.

I can’t wait for next year’s conference.

A frequent question that is asked about my antennas is how much power can they handle. This is a common concern as there are many different styles and construction methods of J-Pole antennas. Depending on what materials are used to build your antenna, its power rating could be vastly different.

The KB9VBR 2 meter J-Pole antenna is constructed out of 1/2 inch Type M copper tubing. Copper is a highly efficient conductor and radiator. The thicker copper tubing, as opposed to copper wire, can also handle a large amount of heat energy. I’ve tested the antenna with transmitter and amplifier feeding it up to 250 watts of power. But there is no reason it could go higher, over 500 watts or more with an antenna carefully tuned to a resonant frequency.

J-Pole antennas built out of wire like 300 Ohm tv twinlead or 450 Ohm ladder line are more limited in their power handling capabilities. I wouldn’t want to put more than 10-20 watts into a twinlead J-Pole for fear that the resistance in the wire will cause it to burn up. 450 Ohm ladder line is made of thicker wire and could handle 50 watts with careful construction methods. Twinlead and ladder line are designed to be a transmission line and not for rf radiation. The wire resistance is low when they are carrying a signal, but once they are put in a situation of radiating a signal, resistance increased. With increased resistance comes heat and the possibility of the insulation, or worse, the wire itself burning up.

If you are looking for an antenna for a VHF base station radio, consider the antenna’s power handling capability and know that you can trust the KB9VBR 2 meter J-Pole antenna to deliver when connected to your high power rig.

Once again the KB9VBR J-Pole Antennas played an important role in the Marathon County ARES/RACES Simulated Emergency Test. This year we decided to set up a fully functioning incident command post and operate five net control stations during the SET. At the same time as the drill, we greeted passers by at the village of Kronenwetter’s fall festival who where interested in what we where doing. The entire exercise was an experiment in controlled chaos. The sheriffs department lent us their command trailer to set up in and we deployed the local amateur radio club’s pneumatic mast and beam antenna to contact the more distant stations.

The J-Pole antennas where used for local communications. Since the local ARES repeater was not very far away, a J-Pole antenna planted in the ground was more than adequate for the drill. In fact we used two J-Poles; one for the voice net and another for the Winlink node. Everything worked flawlessly. Our only problem was getting enough manpower on the scene to get everything ready in time for the drill to begin and the other problem was the noise level in the trailer. A good pair of headphones would solve the second issue.

The J-Poles served us well and are an integral part of our ARES/RACES group’s emergency communications kit.

When I’m not busy building J-Pole antennas I’m usually wearing my other amateur radio hat as Emergency Coordinator for Marathon County, WI ARES/RACES. This Saturday, October 2nd is the annual ARRL Simulated Emergency test, so our group decided to do something a little bit different.

This year we are setting up a fully operation Incident Command Post and will operate up to six ARES nets during the three hour drill. To top it off, we will do this in the parking lot of one of our served agencies during the community’s annual fall festival. This is a great  opportunity for our group; we will be able to drill and stretch our emcomm muscles while at the same time be visible in the community.

After the SET the ICP will turn into special event station W9K, celebrating the Village of Kronenwetter’s annual fall festival and antique tractor show. W9K will be on the air from 12:00noon to 5:00pm central time on Saturday, October 2nd, 2010. The special event will run on 20, 40, and  75 meters in the voice and digital portions of the band.  Listen for w9K and make a contact, it should be a great day and we’d love to have lots of activity on the air to show of amateur radio.

QSL via KB9VBR. Send a SASE to: Michael Martens, 1228 Arthur St, Wausau, WI 54403 for a full color commemorative QSL card from the event.

KB9VBR UHF J-Pole antenna

The 2 meter works great on the 70cm band, but sometimes you may want a 440MHz dedicated antenna. This is the one for you. Short, lightweight, and always more gain than a 1/4 wave groundplane; only 30 inches overall with an 11 inch mounting stub.

Price: $19.00 + 6.50 shipping