[MRCA] Saturdays M&S Net

[Ray Fantini]

Some pictures of the field operation up in Port Clinton this last Saturday. The PRC-108 is a twenty watt AM/USB transceiver that was built for the USCG by Sunair back in the seventies and although crystal control it uses the same crystal for both receive and transmit and has provisions for up to six channels.  I do not have the whip antenna but am planning on building up something with an eight foot whip that I have. The radio has an internal antenna tuner section that compensates for the short antenna and a convenient jumper on the front that allows you to use the 50 Ohm output direct or go thru its internal tuner.
I used a dipole that's cut for 5.357 that was attached to two trees at around eight to ten feet at its highest point and maybe five feet in the middle held up with a stick that I obtained locally.
Worked the Net fairly well but after the net found that had a hard time talking with W3LP just down the road about fifteen miles away, I copied them strong but they tell me that I had a week signal on their end, also KB3SBC had the same issue being close in. Going to assume that the low dipole had no vertical component and no real ground wave to speak of and that was the problem. Think If I can get the short vertical antenna together it may be the solution to that sort of problem but cannot see a short vertical working for long range net operations.
Another question would be once I get the vertical together assume that I can do the tuning by inserting a SWR meter between the RF Output and Antenna input to the tuner jack but in order to correctly tune the radio would I have to take it outside and do the antenna tuning in the clear or can I set it up in the shop and do the coil taps and all that sort of stuff there? The manual has a chart for setting what coil tap you use for the whip antenna but being I don't have the factory whip going to assume it's about useless.

Ray F/KA3EKH
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