[MRCA] Saturday Morning nets

[Ray Fantini]

Today's goals were to operate the MMRCG net at10:00 local and MRCA Moose & Squirrel at Noon with the M151/GRC-106. Have done the M&S Net a number of times so that's not that big a deal but this would be the first time for MMRCG on 7.296
The first problem was did not get out of bed until after nine this morning and did not get the mutt out from the shed until a quarter of. Set up the push up mast and cranked out a dipole for 7.3 but ran out of time to do a tuning solution for the 106, did not want to be transmitting on top the net trying to get it to work. So I went into the shop and fired up the URC-94 and selected the 40 meter dipole that's orientated north south and used that to check into the net. After doing that took a fifty ohm load out to the mutt and tuned the amplifier for 7.296 into a load and for the second go around just connected the dipole and ran with that. It was not a perfect match but sometimes you got to go with what you got.
Interesting that I was able to hear most stations without issue except for the closest to me being K4CHE, imagine his ground wave don't make it and his sky wave jumps too far for me to copy?
Had plenty of time after that net to lower the mast, remove the crank  dipole and replace it with a simple cut dipole for 5.357 and ran that back up the mast and set the legs of the antenna east west with the idea that it would favor north south. With time on hand was able to check everything and find a good tuning solution for the 106 and had everything ready for the net.
On the morning net on 40 KK1K had a strong signal down here in Maryland although it appears that many of the southerners and westerners did not hear him, but by noon his PRC-47 was just above noise level at my QTH so I only did one go around.
Went back in the shop to do a couple things and turned on the Harris RF-350 to monitor the rest of the net that had a little better copy then the mutt out in the yard, may have to do with my fixed 60 meter antenna being a bit higher? Thought I head someone ask if I was still around and went to answer on the 350K but it did what that radio dose best and failed to transmit. Who ever designed that god awful filter board with it suckey relays should be taken out and shot. Thought about gong back to the URC-94 but lost interest by then.
Attached are a couple pictures of the mutt in operation.

Ray F/KA3EKH


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