- Today we're gonna have some fun on 10 meters,
and I'm gonna show you a simple way we can have some fun
on this somewhat mysterious band.
So stick around.
(upbeat music)
Hi, I'm Michael KB9VBR.
I'm on a mission to inspire and educate
the amateur radio community.
And you know what?
The 10 meter band has been really hot the last few months.
In fact, all of the upper bands have been,
I've seen this a lot of increased activity,
we're climbing in the solar cycle and we're just seeing
more and more of those upper bands opening up,
which is great, which means we're gonna hear
more stuff happening on the 10 meter band.
And what's notable about the 10 meter band
is it's one of the HF bands
that's open for technicians to use
and it's the only HF band that technicians can use
with phone or voice operations.
So I thought, hey, you know, it'd be kind of neat
to show you a real simple way to get on the air
with 10 meters and you know, let's have some fun with it.
So what I'm doing here today is
I built a 10 meter dipole antenna.
All I did was take a piece of, this is heavy plastic,
quarter eighth inch HPDE plastic.
I drilled a couple holes in here
5/8 inch hole for the antenna connector.
And then a smaller hole that I'm gonna put my rope in,
and then two for the elements.
Now what size do we need for our antenna elements?
Well there's a real easy way to find out
and to see you can use the formula
468 divided by your frequency in megahertz
and that will give you the length of a half wave antenna
in feet.
Now if you're in one of those other countries
that hasn't landed on the moon,
you can use 133 divided by your frequency in megahertz
to get the length in meters for a halfway of antenna.
So 468 divided by 28.3 megahertz
gave me a length of 16 and a half feet.
So that would be the overall length of my dipole antenna.
Split that in half, that's eight and a quarter feet
or eight feet, three inches per leg,
so for my dipole antenna,
16 feet, six inches for the overall leg.
Now when I cut this antenna,
I left a little bit of extra space on the end,
you know about four inches because what I'm gonna need to do
is I'll use these insulators on the end to tie it off.
These are just standard electric fence insulators.
I bought a big bag of them at the farm and ranch store.
They work great for antennas, very inexpensive for this.
They're nothing special.
I probably could've used the same chunk of plastic
I used for my center connector as I did for these.
But I went with this.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to put
my end insulators on.
I got a tree here I kind of figured out
that's going to get me up into the air.
A neat thing about the 10 meter band is if you wanna do DX
you should hang your dipole up a half wave from ground
and that's 16 and a half feet.
So it doesn't have to be very high in the air
to get a nice low takeoff angle.
So we're gonna put this antenna on the air
and then we're gonna see if we can get some DX with it.
(upbeat music)
There we go.
(upbeat music)
For the moment of truth here,
I hooked the antenna up to the analyzer.
I got it sort of in an inverted V formation.
It's easiest to set up.
Flat top would be best for DX, but inverted V will work.
Looks like it's a little bit on the long side.
It's resonant 1.3 to one at about 27 megahertz.
So (laughs) oh, it'd be great for the CB band
but not so much for 10 meters.
At a 28.3 it was about two to one.
So what I need to do is shorten it.
The easiest way to shorten in an antenna like this
is to just go to the end insulators
and just pull in a little bit of that wire.
And that should fix it.
I had some extra wire on the end
because I just added some for adding the insulators.
And you always wanna put a little bit
of extra wire on your dipole and antenna,
see 'cause you can always trim down,
but it's tougher to add more.
So reduce it about six inches on both sides
put it back under the meter,
and what I get is an SWR
of about 1.3 to one
in the 10 meter band.
That's really good actually
because if you look at the other readings,
you'll see that my impedance is about 65 ohms,
reactance is very low, which is great to see.
You got to remember that with dipole antennas,
if they're properly tuned
they're gonna have an impedance of about 70 ohms
and your SWR is going to be about,
yeah, 1.3 or so, 1.5 to one.
So this is perfectly normal.
This is great actually
I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my coax
get it snaked into the house, hook it up,
and get the antenna on the air.
(indistinct radio chatter)
Kilo Bravo Niner Victor Bravo Romeo.
(indistinct radio chatter)
Five Nine Wisconsin Whiskey India.
(indistinct radio chatter)
Kilo Bravo Niner Victor Bravo Romeo.
(indistinct radio chatter)
Kilo Bravo niner Victor Bravo Romeo.
- [Radio Operator] (indistinct) Bravo Nine Victor
Bravo Romeo. Is that Roger?
- QSL, QSL, five nine Whiskey India.
- [Radio Operator] (indistinct) Wisconsin (indistinct).
- 73.
- [Radio Operator] 73, November seven Alpha (indistinct).
- So how will I know when the 10 meter bands open
and what can I expect for propagation
when I do get on the air?
This is probably the most challenging part of the band,
as propagation can vary dramatically with the solar cycle.
As we are currently climbing towards the peak of cycle 25,
the propagation and frequency of bands opening
will increase.
But as the solar cycle wanes, the band will close up
and with few random exemptions, not offer much activity.
That's because propagation for 10 meters relies heavily
on the F2 layer of the ionosphere.
This layer is the one that is the most affected
by sunspots and solar activity.
As solar radiation hits the layer, it becomes energized
and shorter wavelength signals bounce off it.
For this reason, the best time to work 10 meters
is during the day.
As the earth rotates early to midday
it will give you the best chances
for European and East Asian contacts.
In late afternoon westerly contacts
like Japan and Australia and Asia will dominate.
Late evenings and into the night the band will shorten
until the F2 layer loses its energy and the band closes.
10 meters does have a wild card though
and it's the sporadic E propagation.
The E layer, which is comprised primarily
of ionized metallic particles,
can reflect shorter wavelength signals.
Sporadic E propagation happens most often
in the late spring and early summer around the solstice,
but it also shows up in the wintertime during that solstice.
VHF signals like two and six meter bands
are the most receptive to sporadic E
but it can also happen with the 10 meter band.
Since sporadic E is not dependent on sunspots
this effect can happen even
at the bottom of the solar cycle.
It's also a good reminder that if you're hearing E skip
on the 10 meter band
to also check out six meters for openings.
And if you see activity on six meters
10 is probably open too.
So what should we look for in propagation?
The solar flux index or SFI is a good start.
Higher numbers mean more solar activity
and a greater chance that the maximum usable frequency
will rise.
An SFI of 150 is a good start and when it rises over 200
the upper band should really be alive.
Increased solar activity charges the F2 layer.
So it may take a few days of consistently high
solar flux indexes in order to really charge the F2 layer
and get that band hopping.
Now it's commonly accepted that during the summer months
with longer days and better chance of sporadic E propagation
you'll hear more 10 meter band openings.
But that's actually not the case,
and the winter months can deliver some of the best
10 meter activity.
I kind of wondered why that was the case
and I found the answer in the ARRL handbook on page 19.17,
propagation of radio signals,
daytime ionization in the winter F2 layer
averages four times the level of the summer
at the same period of the solar cycle
doubling the maximum usable frequency.
This so-called winter anomaly is caused
by a seasonal increase in the ratio of atoms to molecules
at F2 layer heights.
Atoms are instrumental in the creation of electrons
whereas molecules are instrumental in the loss of electrons.
Winter F2 conditions are much superior
to those in the summer because the maximum usable frequency
is much higher.
(indistinct radio chatter)
- Kilo Bravo Niner Victor Bravo Romeo.
- [Radio Operator] Bravo Nine Victor Bravo Radio
five nine, Arizona.
- Five Nine Wisconsin Whiskey India.
(indistinct radio chatter)
- [Radio Operator] Papa Tango (indistinct) Zulu.
Papa Tango (indistinct) Zulu.
Papa Tango (indistinct) Zulu. Papa Tango (indistinct) Zulu.
- Kilo Bravo Niner Victor Bravo Romeo.
- [Radio Operator] Kilo Bravo Niner Victor Bravo Romeo,
59, 415.
- Roger, 415, 59 into Whiskey India.
- [Radio Operator] Whiskey India, thank you,
Papa Tango (indistinct) Zulu.
(indistinct radio chatter)
Thank you, Tango India One Tango.
- [Michael] Kilo Bravo Niner Victor Bravo Romeo.
- [Radio Operator] Kilo Bravo Niner Victor Bravo Radio,
you five niner 13, 88.
- [Michael] QSL one, three, eight, eight, five, nine,
Whiskey India.
- [Radio Operator] Thank you Tango India One tango.
- By now, as you could probably surmise,
the reason why I put this 10 meter antenna up
was to work the ARRL's 10 meter contest
which always happens in early December.
Didn't do too bad for the contest this year.
I'm not a real big contester, I like my QSO parties
and other types of special events, but you know,
contesting is usually not something I'm going to commit
an entire weekend to.
So it was a little bit more of a casual kind of operation,
just hunt and pounce, up and down the band,
picking out stations as I could.
And for that, I think I did pretty good.
65 contacts over the weekend.
Let's see, 20 multipliers, about 2,600 points
which is decent, not outstanding, but it's decent.
So west coast into the south was really good.
Saturday afternoon gangbusters, South and Central America,
the west coast, California, Oregon, Washington, etcetera.
So yeah, the antenna really was performing quite well,
and I'm pleased with its performance,
definitely better than my main antenna which is a G5 RV,
and for some reason the G5 just doesn't work well
on 10 meters for me.
So I think maybe what I'll do is I'm gonna leave
this antenna up for the winter and I'll weatherproof it
so it's just a little more semi-permanent
and we'll continue to play with it for the winter,
and then the spring, you know
when there's more activity in the backyard
I'll probably have to pack it up for a little bit,
or who knows, you know, maybe I'll reorient the cable
and we'll use it for those summer 10 meter band openings.
But I'm definitely gonna spend more time
on the 10 meter band and I hope this little exploration
of 10 meters in this video,
you found really, really helpful.
It's a fun band.
It's a little bit of a mysterious band, you know,
because it just kind of opens and closes
when you least expect it.
So I think it's kind of, you know, maybe
a little bit misunderstood.
If you're not really familiar with band conditions
and propagation, you might miss out on it.
But hey, let's get active on the 10 meter band.
It's definitely going to be heating up again
in the coming months and, you know
over the next few years too, as we peak the solar cycle.
So if you got any questions about 10 meters,
the 10 meter dipole, things like that,
drop them into comments below.
If you like this kind of content, you know,
give me that thumbs up, hit the like and subscribe.
That really helps out a whole lot.
Lets me know that this is the kind of stuff
people are looking for.
So, I'm Michael KB9VBR.
You have a great day, and 73.
- [Michael] Kilo Bravo Niner Victor Bravo Romeo.
- [Radio Operator] Kilo Bravo Niner Victor Bravo Romeo,
(indistinct) five nine, oh, in Florida.
I'm done, I just need to get outta here.
- [Michael] QSL, QSL, I know what you mean.
Five nine Whiskey India.
- [Radio Operator] (indistinct) Whiskey India.
I need some whiskey.