Saturday - Garlock to Lone Pine

A place to stretch the truth a little...
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JD
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Saturday - Garlock to Lone Pine

Post by JD »

Garlock was really mediocre and both Tony (Diablo) and John (Southside) sank out and landed in front. Like a masochist I hung in there for 90 minutes before it barely turned on and headed for Black at 6,400' which also wasn't working either. However, I had two things going for me there:
1) Tony warned me not to go out front and not to give up the high ground, and I heeded that advice;
2) John had found a pulsating and repeating thermal early on in his flight that I went back to numerous times and was always able to get up at least a few hundred above launch.
Eventually this thermal got me high enough to slip over to Black. Winds on launch were SW 10-15 and I went off right after John at 12:27 PM then headed for Black at 1:56 PM. At 2:15 PM I went over the backside of Black at 5,600' and got trashed real bad. At 2:30 PM I headed for the valley floor and got up to 9200' while I headed for Boomer Ridge, arriving at 7,200' and just drove straight in to the last bowl where I arrived at 7,700' at 3 PM. I worked up 11,200' as I drifted over the back of Morris Peak and slowly sank out to 8,200' by the time I arrived at Saw tooth Peak by Pearsonville. I worked a lee-side thermal there and came around the SW face just below the crest and caught something that eventually got me to 14,800' as I drifted to Little Lake and kissed the cloud wisps. At Coso Junction I got a bit grayed out at 14,800' and went on a climbing glide until I got to Haiwee where I hit sink until I arrived at the South end of Owens Lake with 11,600' which now felt low. During the high glide I got good and cold and hypoxic. My 5030 was showing 35F internal temperature which means it was likely below 30F outside. at 4:50 PM, I made my first major error by not taking a fork in the cloud street that pointed toward Cerro Gordo while at 13,200'. Had I gone that route I would have likely gotten up on the Inyos and blasted through 100 miles. Instead I ambled down the Sierras past Walt's while Eddy was telling me on the radio that it was breaking off the deck at Lone Pine airport, By this point in the flight I was so fatigued and somewhat hypoxic that my judgment was poor and instead I worked a weak thermal over the green patch to the West of the airport and drifted a few miles as I climbed from 5500' to 6200' before it dissipated. From that point on I was really on final glide and landed at the turn-around 6 miles North of Lone Pine for 88.6 miles in 4 hours 55 minutes at 5:22 PM.

Tracklog: http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/268578
Photos: http://imageevent.com/aero92/20090912

The good news is that in spite of the turbulence I was able to truly enjoy a spectacular view of the Sierras in the late afternoon sunlight and worked in very close of some gorgeous mountain landscapes. In retrospect, we'd have likely all had much longer flight from Walt's but hindsight is often 20/20, as they say. Tony and Eddy were great and gave me a great deal of invaluable feedback for future XC endeavors during the drive back. Note: I flew with a Davis Straub 1/4 wave co-axial antenna in my harness and was able to have clear communication with several of my fellow pilots who were at the Crestline fly-in from 85 to 125 miles away.

Cheers, Jonathan
Last edited by JD on Mon Sep 14, 2009 8:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by OSCAR »

Good going Jonathan,Is this flight a personal best for you :?: BTW you missed a great fly-in.of course you were doing some great fly- in of your own pun intended. :lol:
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JD
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Post by JD »

OSCAR wrote:Good going Jonathan,Is this flight a personal best for you :?: BTW you missed a great fly-in.of course you were doing some great fly- in of your own pun intended. :lol:
Oscar, I didn't totally miss the fly-in. Even though I was initially 85 miles away in the air, I was on radio with Dave Aldrich who was soaring over Crestline. Later I had several conversations with Ron Wiener, and even though I was now over 115 miles away, I told him how to identify Strawberry Peak and later I explained where the best thermal triggers were, while he was flying near the high school by Lake Arrowhead. Then, while I was 125 miles away somewhere up the Sierras, I had a short radio exchange with Greg Angsten who was airborne somewhere over Crestline. The flight was my longest distance and duration to date and probably my most difficult too.
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Post by OSCAR »

That's awesome Jonathan I thought this flight might have been your personal best good going but I know you will do better.did you have your radio set to transmit on high to get that kind of range or was it the antenna?.I tried to talk to max in Lynwood from Long Beach and he couldn't hear me I was on low power. :?I got to see the track log :D
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JD
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Post by JD »

OSCAR wrote:..............did you have your radio set to transmit on high to get that kind of range or was it the antenna?............
I have a VX-150 set for TX high but it's the antenna that was doing the real work: http://ozreport.com/goodies.php & http://ozreport.com/antenna.php
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Post by OSCAR »

Thanks just what I wanted to know.
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stebbins
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Post by stebbins »

Within reason, the antenna makes more difference than increasing the power output. A good antenna makes a mediocre radio look good. A good radio doesn't make a mediocre antenna look good. ;-)

I've had a conversation with someone 90+ miles away when my radio was set on low power. But that was with a good antenna. (Home-made, but similar to the Davis Straub version. Extremely simple to make, actually.)

According to theory, to double your transmission range, you need to increase your power by a factor of four. (Assuming you aren't "beaming", but using broadcast.) And increasing power will do nothing for your reception range. A good antenna will do more than double both transmission and reception range. Of course, if the driver has a good antenna and lots of power, reception shouldn't be an issue for the pilot. ;-)

Also note that "rubber ducky" antennas aren't very good, although some are better than others.
Fly High; Fly Far; Fly Safe -- George
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JD
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Coax Antennas

Post by JD »

stebbins wrote:........a good antenna. (Home-made, but similar to the Davis Straub version. Extremely simple to make, actually.)........
Got any suggestions for which coax cable and connector? Since I fly with a Vertex w/ SMA male receptacle I was thinking of making some spares using these:
https://www.hamcity.com/store/pc/viewPr ... oduct=1760
&
https://www.hamcity.com/store/pc/viewPr ... roduct=738
I drive by this shop often too.
BTW - Greg Angsten was loud and clear from 125 miles and Ronaldo from 100. I was actually giving him direction for flying past Strawberry Peak while I was working a thermal along the Sierra. Never imagined I'd be doing that. It had my ground crew perplexed as to what the heck I was doing. I actually made friends with a ham operator in the Lucerne Valley during another, short XC flight a month ago. That was using a Smiley rubber duck.

And while we're on the topic I sure wish more pilots would follow the rules and ID themselves every 10 minutes.
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stebbins
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Re: Coax Antennas

Post by stebbins »

NMERider wrote:
stebbins wrote:........a good antenna. (Home-made, but similar to the Davis Straub version. Extremely simple to make, actually.)........
Got any suggestions for which coax cable and connector? ..........

And while we're on the topic I sure wish more pilots would follow the rules and ID themselves every 10 minutes.
I did it the very simple way. I went to Radio Shack and bought an RG-58 cable that had the correct connector on both ends and was 12 feet long. (Or maybe it was 10 feet long?) I cut it in half. Then I made two antennae out of it. That way, no connector building, no messing with stuff, and it was all very cheap. (I think about $10-15.)

Then just remove insulation from the correct length of the coax, and pull the center core out through the shield so that you have two separate wires. Put the cable in your harness, running the core up your harness main and the shield down the back of your harness. Or something similar. 90 degrees works best, but anything that keeps them apart works.

If anyone wants to know how to calculate the length of wire to strip and separate, let me know and I'll post it. (My recollection is that it is 19" or so, but please don't trust my memory! I always forget and have to recalculate it from first principles.)

And I agree about IDing yourself! It isn't that hard, and it is the law.
Fly High; Fly Far; Fly Safe -- George
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Post by OSCAR »

I tried to find an SMA To BMC adapter today locally ,and had no luck at Radio Shack :o .guess I'll use The source Jonathan posted. and yes we should comply with the FCC regulation's .The technicians test is not that hard and it only costs around $15 to test ,takes about an hour, that is nothing compared to the fine for illegally broadcasting if you get caught.go for it ,it's easy. today I had a conversation with a ham broadcasting out of San Diego using my 50 foot vertical mast antenna hooked up to my VX-150 it was sweet until my batteries started running low .he told me he was using his blue tooth ear piece from his cell phone to talk through and that he was about 23 feet away from his station mic.I didn't know that was possible. that is cool to be able to walk around the house Instead of being at Your station mic .8) You were close George ,It's 19.5 inches of unshielded center conductor for 144MHz.the formula is 2808 divided by Frequency in MHz= length of unshielded center conductor in inches .Higher the freq shorter the conductor lower the freq longer the whip.
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Post by JD »

OSCAR wrote:I tried to find an SMA To BMC adapter today locally ,and had no luck at Radio Shack :o .guess I'll use The source Jonathan posted............
Don't. The coax is way too stiff. I just ordered 2, RG174/U Cable, SMA Male/Male, 10ft from Cables on Demand. Let's wait until it arrives and I strip a section and see how it looks. If it's good we can get antennas for about $6-7 each this way.
http://www.cablesondemand.com/product/C ... NCRBNC.htm
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Post by stebbins »

Yea, I mentioned 19" from memory. Every time I actually make one, I use the formula for wavelength vs frequency based on the speed of light and the 0.97 offset required because the EMF moves somewhat slower in a wire.

And it matters which frequency you optimize for. I usually optimize for a bit high in the HAM band, then it still works ok for the USHPA frequencies. The differences are very small, and stretch in the shielding may override any tiny "fine tuning" that you do.

Of course, you can get an SWR meter and really fine tune it if you want. ;-)

Buying a cable and cutting it in half is probably as cheap as you can get, and you don't have to trust your "build-it-yourself" skills with connectors. Plus, you can share with a buddy, or have a spare. (They can eventually wear inside the harness.)

Good luck! I'll be curious to hear the results.

-----------------------------
For any interested:

f * lambda(wavelength) = c or
lambda = c / f

c = 299,792.458 km/sec = 299,792,458 m/sec
f = 147,555,000 cycles/sec (Hz) Assuming you want it tuned for Kagel ;-)

Then multiply the final length by 0.97 (because the speed of light is a bit slower in metal, and other minor adjustments based on electrical properties.)

Then multiply by 1/4, since you want a quarter wave antenna.

Thus: (299,792,458 / 147,555,000) * 0.97 * 0.25 = 0.49 meters

Finally, convert to English Units:

0.49 meters * 39.37 inches/meter = 19.40 inches

Higher frequency = shorter antenna
Lower frequency = longer antenna


By the way, the above works for any wave:

Frequency * Wavelength = Speed of the wave
Fly High; Fly Far; Fly Safe -- George
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Post by lswendt »

I have gotten parts locally at Pacific Radio http://www.pacrad.com/index.php in Burbank. They may have what you're looking for.

lw
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JD
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Post by JD »

lswendt wrote:I have gotten parts locally at Pacific Radio http://www.pacrad.com/index.php in Burbank. They may have what you're looking for.

lw
Cool! Let's bug Ken to set up a 2-meter radio wiki on the club web site. I have had too many flights compromised by radio SNAFUs and others that went better than planned because of good radio contact.
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Post by OSCAR »

NMERider wrote:
OSCAR wrote:I tried to find an SMA To BMC adapter today locally ,and had no luck at Radio Shack :o .guess I'll use The source Jonathan posted............
Don't. The coax is way too stiff. I just ordered 2, RG174/U Cable, SMA Male/Male, 10ft from Cables on Demand. Let's wait until it arrives and I strip a section and see how it looks. If it's good we can get antennas for about $6-7 each this way.
http://www.cablesondemand.com/product/C ... NCRBNC.htm
Sure let's try it , It will be better than the rubber duck antenna.
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Post by OSCAR »

lswendt wrote:I have gotten parts locally at Pacific Radio http://www.pacrad.com/index.php in Burbank. They may have what you're looking for.

lw


Thanks for the new parts source they seem to have everything.
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Post by OSCAR »

Wow George that is quite a formula you got there ,thanks for the information .I can use it since I'm working on antenna projects at the moment .But I'll have to ask Surfer Bob about it working on any wave :lol: :P :wink:
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Post by JD »

OSCAR wrote:.............But I'll have to ask Surfer Bob about it working on any wave :lol: :P :wink:
That'll be swell! The two of you can tidey up. I think I better make a break for it. :P
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Post by stebbins »

OSCAR wrote:Wow George that is quite a formula you got there ,thanks for the information .I can use it since I'm working on antenna projects at the moment .But I'll have to ask Surfer Bob about it working on any wave :lol: :P :wink:
Sorry, I was a Physics major the first time I went to College (and didn't quite finish.) They made me figure that out multiple times with different waves. Even after all these years, it stuck. The key is that you have to know the wave speed. For light, that's easy. Not so much with Ocean waves. I suppose someone knows, but I sure don't. It's not anywhere close to 300,000 km/sec, though! ;-)
Fly High; Fly Far; Fly Safe -- George
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