[Lowfer] Watering hole and EAR
Ralph W5JGV
w5jgv at spectrotek.com
Sat Oct 16 19:31:37 EDT 2010
> The W5JGV grabber only
> showed hints of signals whereas last year it regularly copied MP at
> great distance regularly. Perhaps the e-probe has degraded.
Hello folks,
While it's entirely possible that the front-end JFET may have been damaged
by thunderstorms, I suspect the real problem us that the new 600 Meter
vertical antenna for WD2XSH/7 is radiating about four times the field
strength as the temporary antenna did. The result is that is pretty well
crushes the amplifier in the E-probe antenna when the transmitter is in the
air.
Previously, the TX was running on a 5 minute on/off cycle, so the E-probe
antenna had a chance to capture weak signals during the off time in the
cycle. Now, however, the TX is running on a 24/7 basis using QRSS10, which
does not allow enough receive time for the E-probe and ARGO to function
properly in the QRSS30 mode.
I'm looking at the possibility of installing a new E-probe antenna on the
other side of my property, but that involves running a coax cable across the
road and about 1500 feet away through dense brush and woods. Not
impossible, just difficult and somewhat expensive.
73,
Ralph W5JGV - WD2XSH/7
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