Foundations Of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio One topic that is longer than all other topics combined is that of antennas. Designing, planning, sourcing, building, tuning, using, you name it, all of this is regular fare in the day of a radio amateur. I've discussed the topic here regularly and no doubt I'll revisit that when the mood or necessity takes me. One topic that is rarely discussed is that of failure. About six months ago I moved house. I've been rebuilding my shack, doing all manner of fancy shuffling of gear and yesterday I finally got to the point of getting some HF activity happening. During that process I went through boxes and boxes of stuff, with coax, connectors, wire, nuts, bolts, heat shrink and all the other necessities of being a member of an experimental hobby like ours. One box contained wire. You know the adage, only two types of wire required in our hobby, cheap wire or free wire with a preference for free. This box was stuffed with wire. Bits with connectors, bits wound around spools, bits in zip