[Elecraft] Great day for short whips & /PM operation

[Jan Timmers]

OK Wayne, you've piqued my curiosity.  Is this the first day of the
Elecraft marketing campaign for their own branded version of a portable
loaded whip?  You discreetly use "a couple different" in your comment, but
as I'm a keen-eyed observer to this sort of phrase-ology, I'm taking the
bait.

Spill it Wayne - there's not many people reading this list now, so it's not
like you're telling company secrets to everybody.  When's the new product
launch?

73 de VE7JBT - John

On 24 March 2018 at 15:41, Wayne Burdick <n6kr at elecraft.com> wrote:

> I was out walking around in a local park with the KX2 today, using a
> couple of different 48” loaded whips. (/PM = pedestrian mobile, closely
> related to “HF Pack,” though I prefer an ultralight version of it, with a
> “pack” weighing only 2 pounds.) There were quite a few stations on 20 and
> 15 meters, and I had no trouble working everyone I called using 5 or 10
> watts. Oh, and the sun finally came out...it’s been wet up here.
>
> Just a reminder to those of you who want to try this: You really do have
> to use at least one radial (counterpoise wire) if you plan to transmit.
> While receive works pretty well even without the radial, your transmitted
> signal will be 15-20 dB down, and you may have problems with RFI. This
> differential effect between RX and TX performance without a radial becomes
> more pronounced as you go down in frequency.
>
> Short whips usually come with instructions that suggest adjusting the
> length of the radial wire and/or the length of the telescoping part in
> order to obtain a low SWR. While that is certainly possible, it’s far
> easier to let an ATU do the fine tuning. The ATU can compensate for
> variations in counterpoise length, bends in the wire, ground conditions,
> how high off the ground the antenna is, etc. If the SWR goes up for any of
> these reasons, just tap the ATU tune button.
>
> (This is one reason that all Elecraft radios have internal ATU options,
> BTW.)
>
> Please report back on your own success with /PM operation.
>
> 73,
> Wayne
> N6KR
>
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-- 
Regards;
John Timmers