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On Tuesday, August 14, 2001 the "Charlie" Repeater- 147.855 -/PL 100 - the round-table was discussing HF nets when Lloyd, AA6NX, told us about 'QRO Nights' when he and his friends on Whidbey Island would work each other at max power with their beams pointed in various directions in hopes of having some DX check in. Some of us decided to give it a try the next evening, and on 08/15/2001 at 0400UTC on 28.350 Mhz, K6MKF called CQ for our very first "Charlie on 10 at 9" net.

Charlie Repeater, WA6TEM, sign-up form is available for download here: WA6TEM_SIGNUP.pdf

Update: 8/13/03 - The "Charlie on 10 at 9" Net is now two years old! Congratulations to all the Net Participants for continuing to make C-10-9 a success.

The Charlie Repeater Group has been very supportive of the "Charlie on 10 at 9" Weekly HF Net. We have had a net in one form or another each Wednesday evening since the first net. If K6MKF is unable to perform his Net Control duties, there has always been someone willing to take Net Control duties and run the net.

We invite all Amateurs to join us for our weekly 10 meter net:

"Caught in the Net"

Here is the latest stuff "caught in the Net" on 7/15/05:

After finding a suitable design and putting it off way too long, I now have a 40M/80M/160M Trap Inverted VeeZee here at K6MKF.  The design called for it to be a trap dipole, but my postage-stamp sized lot dictated otherwise!  So an Inverted Vee was the best I could manage - but even that was too long - the antenna is 120 ft long, so I had to take the last 16 feet of each leg off at a 45 deg. angle.  An so it's an inverted VeeZee.  The apex is at the top of my 40 ft. mast.

I wound the two 7 Mhz coils on sections of 3" PVC pipe unions, and the two 3.85 Mhz coils on sections of 2" PVC pipe union.  The coils were wound with the insulation and inner conductor stripped out of sections of old RG-58U.  I made a neat jig out of a scrap piece of the PVC pipe which enabled me to strip the outer jacket and shield off nearly 60 ft. of coax.  My old Heathkit GDO got a workout, and I got reacquainted with Mr. PI and associated equations figuring out the necessary turns required for each of the traps.  Each trap was fitted with a center structural insulator fabricated from 1" PVC pipe surrounded by stiff plastic foam.   Here's a couple of shots of the 3.85 Mhz trap:

I already had my 40M inverted Vee in place, so I constructed the rest of the antenna as extentions to the existing antenna.  The 7 Mhz trap, an 11 ft wire section, the 3.85 Mhz trap and the remaining 18 ft wire section added about exactly 30 ft to each leg of the existing antenna.  I lowered the ends of the inverted vee, and with Grandson James applying the solder, we soldered the extension on each leg.  I spent the rest of the day planning how to deal with the extra 16 ft of antenna I now had on each end.

The following day I used two 5 ft. TV mast sections to further elevate the ends of the antenna, then was able to take each remaining 16 ft. end off to a 45 deg. angle.  Each end of the antenna is about 10 ft. above the ground.  I put my old home-brew boat-anchor matching network in line with the antenna and the 756Pro2.  Between the home-brew matching network, and the automatic matching network in the rig, I get a consistent 1:1 - 1.5:1 match on all three bands.  Who can tell how it will radiate, but it shows the rig a decent match, so that's a start.

I'll experiment in the coming days and see how this antenna performs for me.