Almost a year has passed since I was able to put the theoretical description of raising the mast into practice. http://dxerscorner.tikishop.de/archives/170-Aldi-Supermarket-antenna-mast-how-useful-is-it.html

The conclusion: the flagpole segments of the discounter are excellently suited to erect a pole with a height of 10 m quickly. A little preparation time is necessary.

First, the discs for the guy lines were sawn and drilled. I chose sturdy round plastic covers with a diameter of about 15 cm as the material. The length of the guy lines could not be determined in advance. They were laid out so that they could be extended at any time. A total of three guy lines are attached to the mast. The plastic covers were attached to the somewhat narrower connecting pieces on the mast segment. The diameter of these connecting pieces fits exactly for commercially available hole saws. The base of a swivel office chair was used as the foundation for the mast. This also fitted perfectly and coincidentally exactly into the lower mast segment. For additional security, the lower section was weighted down with washed concrete slabs. The guy lines (UV-resistant, tear-proof material from DX-Wire) were attached to nearby fruit trees with ring insulators.

Mast structure: The mast top consists of a round black plastic element with a U-shaped feed-through. The antenna wire is fed through here first. I use 1,6 mm galvanised woven wire. This is on a large 1000 m roll, which has been attached to a small garden trolley so that it can be unrolled. The wire can be threaded through the top of the mast without any problems and can be pulled on even at great heights.

I started with 3 mast segments inserted into each other and gradually worked them upwards. At some point you reach a point where the mast is no longer secure without guy lines. Therefore, the guy lines were then lashed tight, the mast aligned plumb and then the lines loosened by about a metre to insert another segment.

After 8 m a critical point is reached. Here you have to make sure that there is hardly any wind, you also have to be able to lift the mast plumb upwards with your hands and have a helper place another segment at the base and connect it. This procedure is repeated until all mast segments have been inserted. Since the guy ropes are loosened by 1 metre at a time, the mast can practically never sway more than 1 metre and is protected from swaying by exactly this metre. This tolerance meter has never been used by me or by the mast.

Connecting to a new mast element takes no more than 1 minute. I used 2 flagpoles to get to a height of 10 metres. Practically, another metre would also be possible, but I did without. The higher you go, the more wobbly the top can become. At the end of the construction you have to be able to lift 9 m and hold it plumb. That was enough for me, and the experiment succeeded. If someone manages to work in the 11th metre, I would be pleased to hear from you.

This mast replaces the old mast of the DDA, which is only 4.50 m high. As this antenna shape still requires a second mast top - it has a height of 9 m at the moment - I will also replace this mast with a higher one when the opportunity arises. At the moment, however, the flagpoles of the discounter are not available.

In June 2021, Aldi put a 6-piece flagpole from Gardenline on the shelf. The aluminum elements, which can be plugged together, have a diameter of 51 mm, the wall thickness is 1 mm. One element has a length of 980 mm. At the end of the flagpole is a large plastic head with grommet for a rope. Two of these poles put together gives a length of 11.76 m with 11 elements. One of the terminating elements can no longer be used in relation to this length.

At first glance, the poles are suitable for the construction of an antenna. The material is sufficiently strong enough. In order to reach a length of almost 12 m and also to erect it, 2 suitable guy sleeves should be used. Erecting the mast in its entire length will probably not work. There is a risk of breakage. Therefore, the elements should be inserted individually from the bottom to the top. During erection, the guy lines must be gradually lashed tight. So you need a few helpers for this.

At the plastic head should already be a long line to pull through so that you can later pull te antenna wire through. The mast comes with a construction manual for a concrete foundation.

The following building instructions use recycled material where available.

Assembly instructions

---

• Guy ring: how a lid became a ring.

The screw cap lid of a pesto jar is the appropriate size. A 50mm hole is drilled into the lid with a hole saw. Then the thread of the lid is slightly lifted so that it can be slid over the pole. The resulting metal ring is attached to the mast with 3 small screws. To do this, first drill holes in the ring on the mast until the holes are also visible on the mast. Then continue drilling the drilled holes on the mast. The screws are fixed with superglue. The bracket for the guy ring is now complete.

Cut a 50mm hole out of the lid of an espresso coffee can (86mm). A 50mm hole is also cut out of the lid of a standard twist-off glass (85mm). The lids are placed flat together. This gives more stability. In the protruding part of the lids 3 to 4 holes are drilled, which are to take the fastenings for the guy ropes. A correspondingly long piece is then cut from a bicycle shift cable, fed through the holes and screwed on at the end with a duplex clamp. The remaining end of the clamp is also provided with a shift cable. Here comes the carabiner as a terminating element to it, which takes the guy lines. The covers are pulled over the tapered end of a mast tube. Finished is the guy line.

• Assembling and erecting the mast

5-legged bases of discarded office chairs have proven to be quite adequate for many of my mast designs. The tube of the chair should be slightly wider than the base of the mast. Two guy wires at 5 and 10 meters provide the stability needed by a mast of this height.

The mast segments are placed next to each other and the brackets for the guy lines are slipped over them.

Start with the top segment and the mast head. Here it is a good idea to either pull a rope through, which will later fetch the wire, or to pull the wire through already. I suggest the last, less experimental, variant.

The prerequisite is that the attachment points of the guy lines on the ground are already fixed. This determines the length of the lines. If the antenna wire is already pulled through, the ends should be long enough to reach them after erecting the mast! After the first or second element has been inserted, the mast must be set plumb with a spirit level. Even a few degrees of deviation are enough to make the mast stand crooked!

After 6m the mast reaches a height where it starts to sway. This is where the first guy point should be set. When inserting the remaining segments, the lines of this guy point should gradually be lashed tight. The lines of the 2nd guy point should already be loosely tensioned before the last segments are inserted. Then the guy lines are lashed and fixed so tightly that nothing can wobble.

This completes the construction of a 12 m high antenna tip. The construction of a loop antenna can begin.
 

***Thanks to Wolfgang Büschel from Germany for the Aldi-Tip in a-dx@groups.io***

 

 

Another possibility is to start and stop the SDR console script-controlled. In this case, the SDR console is started after the idle state. When the recording is finished, the programme is terminated and the PC is put into hibernation mode. I use this option to protect the SDR console from possible errors. They can occur if the console is opened and taken into hibernation mode.

Script for exiting:

@echo
cls
taskkill /IM "SDR Console.exe" /T /F
exit

I integrated the script into the WOSB software with a "bat to exe converter". This software can also be used to initialise the start of the console.

The script technique works flawlessly and also in operation with 2 SDRs, which record at two antennas at different times.

The situation: I operate a remote station in the garden with only 12 V as an MW DXer. Unattended recordings are the basic requirement for this. The station switches on or off in several time intervals. That was hardly a problem with the S2, but the S3 refused to work after the restart.

The NUC is put to sleep by means of the WOSB software and started from there. An example:

xx45h: the NUC is woken up, the SDR console starts or has already started
xx50h: the S3, which was previously de-energized, is supplied with energy by means of a timer
xx55h: the recording starts

After the end of the recording, the NUC is first put to sleep. Only then is the S3 disconnected from the power. After restarting at a different time, the S3 is switched on again and connects smoothly to the SDR console.

If you stick to this guideline, nothing can really go wrong.

And before I forget: only one USB3 port of the USB3 controller may be occupied by the S3. So check your controller.

Tested on two differently equipped win8.1 systems

■ The short story of a long birth

History

Two shacks, one SDR. I intended to order nearly an RX-888 as second SDR after reading Nils Schiffhauer "32 KHz/16bit, 200 US-$ – pricks up your ears" on Sept 4, 2020. Also the swling post was involved in this hobby-related "marketing". Nils posted the first impressions of the S3 in October 2019 "Looking at Things: Elad FDM-S3 [beta]". But then came concerns about warranty about a exported RX-888 from China. There wouldn't be any support, was my thought, if anything works bad or is not operating at all. I didn't want to wait any more for the S3 either and was undecided until the next day ELAD announced the S3 as ripe for production. Did they think their profit swim away when the RX-888 was announced just before production of the S3 could start? Nevertheless, they acted quick in this situation and brought me to wait even longer for this device. After reading some comments on Nil's site I was convinced to do the right decision with this. The receivers are not the same. My decision was not the sales price but support. The opportunity to run an integrated GPS module was then crucial. It could help further "prick up the ears" for decades. On mediumwave.

After several years of preview on the ELAD website it came to the time the S3 could be preordered. On Oct 12 I placed my pre-order. It took several weeks to get a reply on the order. On Nov 25 2020 came the confirmation and payment request. I should pay immediately because ELAD reserved the pre-order for only 2 days. So, quick money transfer via paypal, and waiting again for the announced tracking number for 5 days. But: problems arose when transferring the purchase amount. A new payment request came. I had to retransfer. It can hardly get more chaotic in this business, isn't it?

As a DXer, ELAD sale strategy looks acceptable. One likes to forgive something for hobby reasons. For a normal consumer it is not. Customer friendliness looks different, but ELAD is sure to know that too. Hopefully later support is better und reliable as I was used to before. Sensitive customers might get confused by this.

In the meantime I found a place for the device that has to be more than two times bigger than the previous model S2 allows. 1.790 kg more technic were built in. He has the size of a slightly shrinked SONY ICF-2100. A transportable radio which I used when travelling Asia backpacked in the eighties of the last century.

Spedizione Ritirata from Trieste announces delivery in just one day. Isn't that a little too fast now, after all the long wait? The S3 came as predicted, in 1 day from Italy, flown by DHL over the alps to Leipzig and Cologne, brrr. Not because of the cold, because of the global heating and dirty emissions I always want to avoid.


■ How compatible is the new hardware?

Test environment

The FDM-S3 is a Direct Sampling Wideband Receiver which features up to 24MHz of bandwidth. It embeds a Reference Clock Manager Module which allows to choose between two reference clocks, a GnssDO (Global navigation satellite system Disciplined Oscillator) or a 10MHz external signal (optional). The recommended minimum configuration is: 5th/6th/7th generation Intel Core i5/i7 (or equivalent) processor and 8GB of RAM. To record 24MHz of bandwidth a SSD with at least 250MB/s write speed is recommended. This matches my test configuration, SSD except. Other than @home I am running a i7 7th generation with 8 GB RAM and SSD in the remote station. The suggested configuration is a 8th generation or higher Intel Core i5/i7 (or equivalent) processor and 16GB of RAM.

(1) Notebook in this environment: CPU Haswell | i5-4210H 2.9 GHz / 3,5 GHz / 3 MB Cache | NVIDIA GeForce 2GB VRAM | DDR3 L 8 GB | USB 3.0 | HDD | ext. HDD |

(2) NUC in this environment:
CPU Haswell | i7 4500U 1.8 / 2.4 GHz | DDR3 L 8GB | USB 3.0 | HDD | ext. HDD |

Antenna: ALA 1530 S+ Imperium
Software: ELAD FDM-SW2 | SDR-Console | GNSS Modul |
Manual:


■ Connect the whole thing and bring it to a common denominator

Installation

(1) Notebook in this environment:

The S3 comes with a GNSS antenna, adhesive pad for it, Allan Deviation Plot, 3 SMA connectors, 1 USB 3.0 cable and a USB stick with FDM-S2_v3_043 software and manual. As with the predecessor S2, the manual is limited to the most necessary knowledge. The S3 requires an external 13.8 V (12V) voltage source. A cable is included for the connection. A power supply is not provided. Some ideas from EladSDR @ groups.io

After the voltage source, USB cable and GNSS antenna are connected, a look at Windows devices and printers is thrown. There are 3 new devices registered: FT230X Basic UART, u-blox GNSS Receiver (COM20) and WestBridge. The 'ELAD FX3 USB BootLoader Device' can be found in the device manager under ELAD Samplers. Maybe it's the same device as Westbridge because both entries are marked with a disfunction (yellow exclamation mark).



This is why the S3 could not be operated.

I contacted ELAD about this issue and waited for a reply. The next morning trouble shooting by ELAD started via @. Vianney suspects an issue with the win8.1 driver. A Teamviewer-Session started the next day. A win7 driver was installed, whereby the device was switched on / off twice. The test with the ELAD-FDM-SW2 software was successful. The device was recognized. The driver seems to be a beta version, the download source at ELAD was removed a little later. It is unacceptable to maintain a non-system driver whose system-wide impact is not foreseeable.

(2) NUC in this environment:

The win7 driver also had to be used on the NUC with the same win8.1 installation. In addition, u-blox driver software and FT230x basic UART had to be installed.

■ Anomalies and standards during operation

USB3

After successful installation, restart the system and check functionality. Again problems arose. S3 only runs on one of the two USB3 ports. The external HDD is not recognized at the other port. I attribute this to the win7 driver. Plug & Play is not possible when changing ports. The S3 must be switched off for this.

The problem appeared after installing the win7 driver. Sometimes both ports work. Sometimes the data transfer from the S3 to the software is interrupted when the HD is connected. To verify that it really is the driver, I deactivated the S3 and then checked the functionality of both ports. It turned out that the HD is still only recognized irregularly at the USB3 port. It remains undetected, especially after a system restart. So the problem is not with the win7 driver. A hub on the functioning USB3 port could help here.


Bandwidth

(1) Notebook in this environment:

Operating the S3 with the console at a bandwidth of 24576 or 12288 MHz overloads the test system. Changes in bandwidth during operation can result in no signal being forwarded from the S3. Console and SW2 are running but receiving nothing. If you switch S3 off for up to three minutes, everything works again. No problems arose during operation with bandwidths below 12 MHz. Operation with bandwidths above 12 MHz therefore requires hardware in accordance with the FDM-S3 specifications in the manual.


Reception

(1) Notebook in this environment:

FDM-SW2: stutters @ 24 MHz | ok @ 12 MHz | ok @ 6 MHz |
SDR-Console v3.0.25: stutters @ 24 MHz | stutters @ 12 MHz |
Reception with 2 different receivers (S2/S3) and programs on lower bandwidth work.

(2) NUC in this environment:

FDM-SW2: ok @ 24 MHz | ok @ 12 MHz | ok @ 6 MHz |
SDR-Console v3.0.23: 24 MHz | 12 MHz | | not working


Recording

(1) Notebook in this environment:

So far I have not discovered any irregularities when recording within the recommended bandwidth.

To record with the S3 you need a total of 2 USB 3.0 ports with individual controllers! Only one internal Hub cannot handle the speed. The operation of an HD on the USB 2.0 port as a recording medium is possible, but not on the USB 3.0 port!

FDM-SW2: stutters @ 24 MHz | stutters @ 12 MHz | stutters @ 6 MHz |
SDR-Console v3.0.25: stutters @ 24 MHz | stutters @ 12 MHz |

Files recorded with FDM-SW2 can be played with SDR-Console v.3.0.25.
It is not possible to run both programs in parallel.

(2) NUC in this environment:

FDM-SW2: ok @ 24 MHz | ok @ 12 MHz | ok @ 6 MHz |
SDR-Console v3.0.23: 24 MHz | 12 MHz || not working



Time-controlled start of the OS and the software

I use WOSB for time-controlled management of the notebook.

A simple start of the WOSB software works. The external HD on the USB3 port is not initialized. The automatic start of the recording with the SDR Console v3.0.25 went smoothly. The recording was set up for the internal HD.


OCXO | GPS

Works perfectly. No more readjustment as with the S2, briefly warmed up and stable until the end. The GPS antenna is operated inside.

to be continued

This section displays the status of my logged USA & Canada states. It will be updated.



List of abbreviations for states

Pin board at Google Maps

Status 27 October 2020

Heard states/green (USA): 27
Confirmed states/red: 5
Latest heard or confirmed:

Heard states/green (Canada): 6
Confirmed states/red: 2
Latest heard or confirmed:

1140 CHRB High River (AB)


840 CFCW Camrose (AB)


1060 CKMX Calgary (AB)


960 CFAC Calgary (AB)


Map source: Free Software Foundation. The source has been changed.

Guyana is a small country on the northern flank of South America, on the Atlantic Ocean. The studios are located near the city of Georgetown, in Vreed en Hoop, at the mouth of the Demerara River. NCN runs three government controlled radio services: Fresh 100.1 FM, Voice of Guyana 560 AM and an 102.1 FM, and Hot FM, 98.1 FM.

On September 26, 2020, the BBC Worldservice was broadcast between 0500z and 0530z via VoG. IDs were heard at the beginning and end of the period.



A Screenshot from SDR Console V.3.0.23. To the left on 558 kHz is RNE from Spain which dominantes the frequency, and most of the time the area around. So, Guyana was a good catch on this September morning. The station was audible up from 0400z first under heavy QRM from Spain .

Antenna was the 78 m Double Delta Loop pointing 325°. Receiver ELAD FDM-S2. And booster RPA-2 from DX-Engineering.

The DT 770 replaces Sennheiser's HD 465. @home I'm still using the old Staxx Flat membrane headphone.

These days I had the opportunity to test an Intona USB 2 high speed isolator on the SDR. Since I use the FDM-S2 at different locations, I decided for a disturbing reception area at home.

Unscreened USB cables were used for the first test setup. The antenna is the ALA 1530 S +. In Figs. 1 and 2 it can be seen that the intona increases the interference level in the medium wave range by an estimated 30 dBm. That was sufficient to put the galvanic isolator of the USB cable back into the original packaging.



Shielded USB cables were used days later. Here the isolator behaved as intended: it reduced the interference by 6-10 dBm. In my setup, a wound ferrite core was used, which was connected with and without an insulator. Fig. 3 shows the setup without isolator, Fig. 4 with isolator. The crackling noise level was not reduced but appeared as a chopped noise level on the screen and in the headphones. No faults were eliminated here, but an attempt was made to output them modulated differently.



The USB isolator behaves - without a measuring device - like a ferrite core for troubleshooting or like a standing wave barrier. For the proud price of 250 € you can buy 100 Amidon FT-140-43 ferrite cores. They are definitely a better alternative than the USB isolator from Intona.