Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Goals for the evening:
Our CQP wall paper arrived as did three CQP tee-shirts. They're very PURPLE!
Time for bed and hopes for a better tomorrow.
- Practice CW, either on the air or with Morse Runner.
- Get AL-80a wired back in and running
- Swap Bencher and Begali paddles
- Get amp wired back in. Discover that it is STILL sick. Mope dejectedly for 20 minutes.
- Swap Bencher and Begali paddles. Rejoice in low expectations.
- Decide to work over dejection by installing the new DX Engineering 1:1 balun for my doublet. Installs OK. But gives the MFJ-998 tuner kittens. Mope dejectedly for a while longer.
- Listen to on-the-air CW while moping.
- Do two runs of Morse Runner. Rates: 95 Q/hour and 60 Q/hour. Sulk off to bed.
Our CQP wall paper arrived as did three CQP tee-shirts. They're very PURPLE!
Time for bed and hopes for a better tomorrow.
Labels: al-80a, Begali, CQP, cw
Sunday, September 23, 2007
My SB-201 has stopped working twice since I've had it. Essentially the the transmit/receive relay would stop working.
Greg suggested that I clean the contacts with a piece of paper. That worked, but about 6-8 hours of operation later the same thing happened. Clean the contacts again, good to go.
Now, I REALLY like the amp. It gets all sorts of "very clean signal, very nice sound" comments on CW. But I really couldn't trust it for contesting. Besides, it gets pretty warm when "doing" RTTY. Plus Greg blew his up doing RTTY.
For the short term I put my AL-80a into service. It it a bit more modern than the SB-201 and runs a bit more power. However it too has its "issues." For some reason it doesn't want to tune on 80m. But I digress.
So... I wanted to get an AL-600S, light-weight, solid-state 600W amp for the California QSO Party. But Ameritron has back ordered them until forever...
The AL-80a weighs a ton, so I ain't taking it on the road. The SB-201 weighs a lot, but not enough to totally preclude taking it on the road.
The solution? Fix the SB-201. So I ordered a new relay from Harbaugh (sp?). It arrived on Friday.
Today I tore into the amp. Now I am not a "tear into your equipment and replace critical parts" sort of guy... But with help from my good friend Bill (who was a ham 'once upon a time' but let his license lapse. That hasn't stopped him from building a KX-1... Just got to get him to take the darn test...) we got the relay out, and the new one in.
We lugged it down stairs and tried it out. It worked for a minute or two then stopped. After some thrashing around we discovered that the Amp Keyer had died. Fortunately, due to mis-placing the Amp Keyer a couple of weeks ago, I just happened to have a brand new spare, just sitting in the box ready to go.
Wired everything back up again, and lo and behold... The amp works swell.
Made a quick QSO with Bob, W7AYN who gave me yet another "nice and clean signal through the amp" report.
VICTORY!
Greg suggested that I clean the contacts with a piece of paper. That worked, but about 6-8 hours of operation later the same thing happened. Clean the contacts again, good to go.
Now, I REALLY like the amp. It gets all sorts of "very clean signal, very nice sound" comments on CW. But I really couldn't trust it for contesting. Besides, it gets pretty warm when "doing" RTTY. Plus Greg blew his up doing RTTY.
For the short term I put my AL-80a into service. It it a bit more modern than the SB-201 and runs a bit more power. However it too has its "issues." For some reason it doesn't want to tune on 80m. But I digress.
So... I wanted to get an AL-600S, light-weight, solid-state 600W amp for the California QSO Party. But Ameritron has back ordered them until forever...
The AL-80a weighs a ton, so I ain't taking it on the road. The SB-201 weighs a lot, but not enough to totally preclude taking it on the road.
The solution? Fix the SB-201. So I ordered a new relay from Harbaugh (sp?). It arrived on Friday.
Today I tore into the amp. Now I am not a "tear into your equipment and replace critical parts" sort of guy... But with help from my good friend Bill (who was a ham 'once upon a time' but let his license lapse. That hasn't stopped him from building a KX-1... Just got to get him to take the darn test...) we got the relay out, and the new one in.
We lugged it down stairs and tried it out. It worked for a minute or two then stopped. After some thrashing around we discovered that the Amp Keyer had died. Fortunately, due to mis-placing the Amp Keyer a couple of weeks ago, I just happened to have a brand new spare, just sitting in the box ready to go.
Wired everything back up again, and lo and behold... The amp works swell.
Made a quick QSO with Bob, W7AYN who gave me yet another "nice and clean signal through the amp" report.
VICTORY!
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
So, after a somewhat traumatic day, I plopped myself down in front of the radio.
Nobody home on 20m and 30m so I start at the low end of 40m and work my way up.
7.0029 MHz. KE3/?V ??? Huh?
Nope... CE3/VE7SV. Weak, but copyable.
Try working him using the paddles a couple of times. Nope.
Set up the internal memory keyer in the Icom. Nope.
Finally decide I'm going to need more gun.
Find a RCA/RCA cable and hook the Icom up the AL-80a.
Try it into the MFJ dummy load that I have. RF feedback all over the place. Not good.
Find a "quiet" out of the way spot on 40m to tune up. DRAT, with the microKeyer down I don't have an easy CW tune mode. Oh well, kick it over to RTTY. Seems to tune OK. Clearing 500W easy. Does dim things a bit when I key...
Tune back down to 7.0029 Mhz.
He's not there anymore.
Tune back up to 7042 kHz or so and try a couple CQs. No takers.
Not my night. I'm gonna go eat worms.
Oh well, at least I have some cycles into the AL-80a now.
Nobody home on 20m and 30m so I start at the low end of 40m and work my way up.
7.0029 MHz. KE3/?V ??? Huh?
Nope... CE3/VE7SV. Weak, but copyable.
Try working him using the paddles a couple of times. Nope.
Set up the internal memory keyer in the Icom. Nope.
Finally decide I'm going to need more gun.
Find a RCA/RCA cable and hook the Icom up the AL-80a.
Try it into the MFJ dummy load that I have. RF feedback all over the place. Not good.
Find a "quiet" out of the way spot on 40m to tune up. DRAT, with the microKeyer down I don't have an easy CW tune mode. Oh well, kick it over to RTTY. Seems to tune OK. Clearing 500W easy. Does dim things a bit when I key...
Tune back down to 7.0029 Mhz.
He's not there anymore.
Tune back up to 7042 kHz or so and try a couple CQs. No takers.
Not my night. I'm gonna go eat worms.
Oh well, at least I have some cycles into the AL-80a now.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Took some time and characterized the G5RV with the Ten Tec 238B tuner.
Got 80-15m to under 1.5:1 SWR. Most everything down to 1.0:1.
Recorded the results in Excel so I don't have to futz too much redoing them.
Really doesn't like 10m for some reason. IIRC the tuner isn't as good there. No worries.
Following their instructions it was occasionally iffy about which LowZ/HiZ side I wound up on. Sometimes it just wouldn't "tune down" on the side that their algorithm said it should be, so I tried the other side and got a better match.
Go figure.
Next step... One of the amps. I'm tempted to start with the SB-201 first because it seems a bit "friendlier." I think it is the blue paint vs black paint. How's that for hard science? Chuckle.
Or it could be that the SB-201 is already on the same level of the house as the shack and the AL-80A requires schlepping?
Nah...
Got 80-15m to under 1.5:1 SWR. Most everything down to 1.0:1.
Recorded the results in Excel so I don't have to futz too much redoing them.
Really doesn't like 10m for some reason. IIRC the tuner isn't as good there. No worries.
Following their instructions it was occasionally iffy about which LowZ/HiZ side I wound up on. Sometimes it just wouldn't "tune down" on the side that their algorithm said it should be, so I tried the other side and got a better match.
Go figure.
Next step... One of the amps. I'm tempted to start with the SB-201 first because it seems a bit "friendlier." I think it is the blue paint vs black paint. How's that for hard science? Chuckle.
Or it could be that the SB-201 is already on the same level of the house as the shack and the AL-80A requires schlepping?
Nah...
Labels: al-80a, g5rv, sb-201, ten tec
