The Antenna club has been working diligently on a bulb antenna for a QSO contest later this month. Although delayed largely due to COVID, the group was able to meet on Saturday, August 1st to begin assembly. During this stage, the team used schematics from other bulb antenna projects to design and build a basic antenna from PVC pipe, a metal plate, a coil, and wire. Although the bulb had not arrived, the team did some initial testing and resonance on 20m is promising.
If you would like to join in on the fun, the antenna group will be meeting again from 10:00 till noon Saturday, August 8 to finish tuning, testing with FT8, and get our bulb antenna ready for the Lightbulb QSO party.
The final build of the project to build a light bulb antenna was fine-tuned by Glen. At first, I mentioned at a club meeting and on the club net that I didn’t believe that such an antenna would actually work. My thought was that if the bulb would light up, then it would dissipate all the power, and the signal out would be NIL. Also, the final size of this antenna was under 3 feet. The antenna appeared to have no physical presence to radiate any kind of signal that could be heard anywhere. Boy, was I wrong. Not only did the antenna work great, there were some DX stations worked, including St. Lucia located in the southern Caribbean just to the north of South America. Yes, all the contacts made were using the mode of FT8, but just the idea that ANYONE could hear this signal to me was just amazing. And yes, the light-bulb did light up.