[CW] Worn Out Keys?

cod947 k1vv at comcast.net
Sat Nov 13 17:18:08 EST 2010


Dave ....

Most of the time we were mobile we drove smaller cars ... Dodge colt ... etc  ...120,000 miles or more in 3 years ..burned up...
No special grounding .. although we do remember one vehicle required grounding of the tail pipe to clear up the ignition hash ... 
I don't know how to explain that .....

At one time we were running a Yaesu FT-7 ... about 10 watts .. driving a home brew solid state amp ...
I think it was a pair of MRF 421 transistors.... the amp was from an article in QST .... 
Output was 200+ watts ...  we tried all kinds of mobile antennas ... helical wound monoband whips ... 
even and old Webster Bandspanner .... finally settled on Hustler resonators ... ran three at a time ... 40/20/ and 15 or 17 ... 
We found a piece of scrap aluminum flat bar.. bent the ends down 30 degrees ... drilled holes ... attached bolts for the resonators ...

The resonators were tuned for the phone part of the bands ..  to work CW I made a short copper wire loop ... like a woman's hair pin ..
One end had an alligator clip on it ...the other end a twisted loop ... we attached this on the whip just above the resonator ...
By trial and error we got it to the correct length .... if the 20 meter resonator was tuned for 14.250 ... when the wire loop was 
attached it would tune it down to 14.030 or so ..  that way we did not have to screw around with adjusting and re-adjusting the 
whip when we changed modes ...  did the same on 40 and 15/17 ...  KISS ....

Worked a lot of DX when the bands were hot ...Over 200 DX countries .... learned a lot about propagation because
we were on the bands so much .... 

One of the most memorable was on 20 phone in the morning ... there was an H44 in Guadalcanal ... we called him for 
45 minutes with a great pile up ...  the next we wondered if he would be there again ...  he was ... and there was 
a pile up calling him again ... I called him ONCE ... and he came right back .. he would believe me when I told him
I was mobile ... he said I was the strongest signal calling him ... We had the happen a number of times ... 
We called it "spot light" propagation ... Worked an ST0 the same way ....

73  Whitey K1VV ...  Dave calls me Bob ...


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: D.J.J. Ring, Jr. 
  To: CW Reflector 
  Sent: Saturday, November 13, 2010 1:13 PM
  Subject: Re: [CW] Worn Out Keys?


  And what a beautiful mobile signal K1VV had - I used to hear him working the DX on the low end of 40 meters - and he frequently snag the DX before the fixed stations.

  Maybe Bob, K1VV would let us know the secret of his big mobile signal.  Was it grounding of the car with copper straps?  Was it some matching transformer to that Hustler whip?  Was it an extra long whip?

  I remember another fellow who had an excellent signal on 40 meter from his mobile, K1WGM, Bob.  He had a big signal and he used to have either a 12 or 16 foot whip which he made by adding a straight piece (MO3 or something like that) from the Hustler parts line.  Big signal always.

  73


  David J. Ring, Jr., N1EA
  SOWP, VWOA, OOTC, FISTS, CW-Ops, JARL-A1, A1-OP, ex-FOC 1271 ARRL-LM
  Chat Skype: djringjr MSN: djringjr at msn.com AIM: N1EA icq: 27380609
  Radio-Officers Google Group -- Marine Morse Historic Recordings Page







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