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Thanks Hamilton…I kind of thought the wire was a bad idea. I will look for the line at DX Engineering. The Antenna is up so I’m not in that big a hurry but thanks for the offer, I appreciate it.
Tony
I found this article on the High-Q design for a Yagi (they also mention that Crushcraft has such a design).
http://ve3vn.blogspot.com/2016/03/3-element-coil-loaded-yagi-for-40-meters.html
His conclusion is that they may not be worth trouble and that the learning curve is high.
Kind of makes it seem more interesting! 🙂
Tony
Ok, Feeling a little better…I made a contact in Austria who at the start said I was 5-4 to 5-5 but then I moved the mic a little further away and he gave me a 5-7. He was able to understand me and we had a nice conversation.
I guess the bands are just really bad at night.
Thanks to Hamilton for helping me out and offering me assistance.
Tony
Hi Hamilton,
I did verify that the transmit power was at 100%, Comp 5% (but off I turned it on) and I kicked in the pre amp.
Still not sure if things are actually working. For example when I came on 7:00 when I got home there was activity on 20m/40m. Now I’m on at 1:40AM and very little activity. I also found 2 people chatting on 40m and they seemed to be chatting then for some reason I wasn’t receiving them anymore. I did play with the squelch but the perhaps I don’t understand what its doing because if I turn it far to the left eventually I get no signal just like if I turn it all the way to the right.
Not sure if I’m around this weekend but wouldn’t mind taking the rig to someones house and seeing if I can get better results on a different antenna there or perhaps they can look at my settings and find what I did wrong. Was going to try to do it at the Youth outreach setup today, but looks like that was postponed. Unless of course this is normal for the bands at this hour but the monitor claims that the bands 20/40m are Fair right now.
Thanks for any responses. I am around Friday during the day so if something would work then it would be great.
Thanks,
Tony
Hi Hamilton,
I did do the Partial Reset of the radio that you suggested and that seems to have cleared up the receive issue. The spectrum and power scopes look clean for the most part now. When I transmit the power output meter doesn’t look like it is going that high, sometimes just a 1, 3 at max, not sure if that is normal or if it should be in the 9’s.
Still not sure about transmit though. I did try to make one contact but I think I was in the middle of a pile up which I don’t always do will at. I will see if I can find a net or someone that will give me a radio check or perhaps a NET that I can join. When I got on tonight most of them were already in progress so I didn’t want to cut in.
By the way if you do get to a NET late, is it acceptable to ask to join in. Do I do this by just giving my call sign, I’m always loathe to do that since normally the net control asks for a specific call sign to respond.
Once again thanks for all the help, hopefully when I do get in touch with someone they don’t tell me my power is weak still.
Tony
Hi Hamilton,
I did finally get through on one of the Nets this morning and they claimed that the signal was very weak even at 2.20 Hz of Bandwidth. The one gentleman was able to hear me but until I put the bandwidth down to around 1.85 the net control who was in Altanta, MI couldn’t really hear me.
Not sure if that is the norm or not but at least I was heard.
Well have a nice day, I’m headed into the office and thanks for your help.
Tony
Thanks Hamilton…It might have been the BW cause I think I did change that on Saturday. I have it set to 2.2 Hz and the QRN seems to be better and I’m not seeing the OVF indicator anymore.
The noise seems to be clear if I disconnect the antenna as in not much on the scope.
When I did transmit earlier I got someone to give me a radio check they said they could hear that I was there but they couldn’t understand me last night which I guess could be caused by too wide a bandwidth.
I did try to tune through the bands after bringing the BW to 2.20 and I didn’t seem to see anyone on 20m/40m at 4:08 but perhaps that is just the bands.
Let me see tonight or maybe later this morning if I get on if I can actually hear anyone.
Oh, I did transmit with the Antenna after the bandwidth was set to 2.20 and on and the S/Po meter was still a little in the red but perhaps I am too close to the microphone. Unfortunately I never saw were the meter was before.
Thanks for the response and I will let you know what I find out. I suppose if I can’t get it straight either I might take you up and borrow your spare 7300 and see if its the rig or not so thanks for the offer. The other thing would be to take my rig to someone elss shack and see if the problem moves with it so which ever is easier we can do.
Thanks,
Tony
Another data point there was an electrical storm I think on Sunday. The Antenna wire was disconnected from the radio but connected to the lightning arrestor outside, could that be the problem?
.
Thank You Greg, David and Fred…I will check out those posts…
Fred, I assume that I want the actual rod as close to the house as possible so the there is not that much length or is 3-4 ft away a good distance. By well away from the house are we talking a couple of feet? Also, what keeps the lightning from hitting the ground rod and going through the wire that is still coming into the house or can that just not happen…
I’ll probably try to get this in the next couple of weeks…I have all the pieces now (the grounding rod from Home Depot and the lightning arrestor and clamp from HRO so its just a matter of find the time to install it.
Thanks to everyone for all the comments and sorry it took so long for me to get back to the forum to respond.
Anthony