[MRCA] Saturdays M&S Net

[Steve Gajkowski kd3ht]

Ray,
I think Don was much further away than 15 miles if you're talking about net
time.   They were in Mansfield PA, which is rough a hundred miles NNE of
Port Clinton..
You were q5 here near Stroudsburg. 
 
Steve, kd3ht
 
From: mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On
Behalf Of Ray Fantini
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 6:07 AM
To: mrca at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [MRCA] Saturdays M&S Net
 
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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