Screwdriver Discoveries

Since my last post, I made a simple - yet unknown discovery... that there is in fact, a motor in the antenna. 

Having watched a few homebrew videos, I noted what people were doing, so I took to it with a 12V battery. Low and behold, it moved. 

I took a quick look at the controllers and decided it's probably not viable at this stage. 

 What I have decided on however is a bit of a rig setup for going portable.

I have a smallish hardcase floating around that I've never put to good use. It's big enough to throw a radio in. 

My thought is simple enough. A pair of Anderson 30A sockets on the side. One an input, the other an output for the antenna. Shove another pair of Andersons on the battery box in the car to handle the other end.

I'll make up a plate for the case - as narrow as possible, with a fuse block underneath. The plate itself will have a momentary DTDP rocker that will handle the antenna power, and a couple of Andersons there for connecting the radio. If I stick with the G90 plan, I keep everything fairly low current and don't need to carry much else. 

I looked up the pricing and location of replacement power plugs for the G90 and decided that was just stupid. I'll attach the existing plug to a set of Andersons and put another set on the existing wiring, effectively making myself an adapter. Simplicity. 

A controller would be really awesome - and might happen one day, but right now I can't justify spending a couple hundred dollars on a controller for a $30 antenna as someone who's been away from home for a some total of 5 days in the past 2 years. Yet. 

In the mean time, I might just have to use the NanoVNA to handle getting it where I need it. 

That thought process led me toward making a case for the NanoVNA. I hate handling it. So, I've fired up the 3D printer for the first time in a few weeks (I actually ran out of things to print). 

So far we have:

I'm in the process of printing a cover now for the side that will hold the calibration standards. It won't however fit the patch leads. Hardly the end of the world as it'll need to live in something bigger anyway as I want to hold an SO239 adapter. What I'd like to do ultimately is carry it with the adapter attached so I can hook it up to the antenna lead and see where I'm at from the comfort of wherever my rump is most comfortable. 

It's worth noting that the G90 is quite capable of doing its own SWR sweeps. I really need to compare the NanoVNA against it and see what I like better for field work. Either way, I have the tool, so making something to protect it is worthwhile.