[SixClub] Finally back on six...sort of.

[Richard J. Fiero II W5TFW]

Roger,

 Welcome back I had 2 RTTY contacts and 10 PSK Contacts on 6 meters today,

                                            Regards, Joey
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger (K8RI)" <50MHz at rogerhalstead.com>
To: "50 MHz Club" <sixclub at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2007 2:37 PM
Subject: [SixClub] Finally back on six...sort of.


> After nearly 4 months I'm at least back on the air. The main antennas are
> still not up and running, but from the house I do have the half wave 
> slopers
> on 75 and 40 with a half sloper on 160 running. I've repaired the rotator 
> so
> it's ready to go back in the tower. The 7L 6-meter C3i needs the boom 
> truss
> reattached and the whole works needs to be raised back up into position 
> from
> resting on top of the tower. Actually the whole works needs to be
> repositioned with the 7L C3i at 12' above the tribander and the 144/440
> array 10' above that. This requires making a new boom to mast clamp for 
> the
> 6-meter yagi.   I hope to be able to get back to climbing before summer's
> end. I'm still not to the point where I am willing to trust that left foot
> on the tower although it has reached the point where I can do a set 10 
> reps
> at 200# on the leg press, one leg at a time. Still,  that's not quite the
> same as climbing a 100' tower let alone working up there for a couple of
> hours.
>
> Out in the shop I'm currently running a little Yaesu FT897D into a new 
> Tokyo
> HL-1.5KFX to a HyGain Patriot 40 through 6 neter vertical with the base at
> 32 feet. It  seems to work well on 40 and six while doing a good 
> simulation
> of a dummy load on 20 with high SWR on the other bands.  When I first put 
> it
> up the SWR was low on all bands so I have a feeling that big tower hasn't
> caught all the lightning strikes.  On 40 it's only good for about the 
> bottom
> 50 KHz so I can  at least get my CW practice.   Looks like all of my
> antennas still need work.
>
> At-any-rate, on six I never seemed to be able to make other than the
> occasional contact (rare actually) with the 897D and the vertical, but the
> HL-1.5K has changed that. Now, if I can hear them, I can work them 
> (usually)
> and the past three afternoons have provided quite a few contacts. I didn't
> get to the shop until late yesterday and the band appeared to be going out
> with only a few weak signals with lots of QSB. So I moved up the band and
> called CQ.  I actually had a small pile-up going, and managed to work 
> three
> of them before the band folded. It did come back for a few minutes for
> another couple of contacts about a half hour later.
>
> I've been hearing all three coasts with the East coast being mainly New
> England, but it did get as far South as Virginia.
> I'm currently running the HL-1.5K without the auto-band change feature as
> the Yaesu cable is for the "big" sets (FT1000 and such) with the 8 pin DIN
> connector with the keying line seperate while the 897D uses a mini 8 pin 
> DIN
> with the keying line included. Actually the other sets have a keying line 
> in
> the 8 pin DIN connector as well, but the supplied cable doesn't use it. So
> I'm currently trying to figure out the pin-out of the socket on the back 
> of
> the FL-1.5K so I can construct a cable. Unfortunately they didn't bother 
> to
> include pinouts in the manual for the rear connectors. They provide the
> cables and expect you to use those.
>
> It is good to be back on six,
>
> 73
>
> Roger (K8RI - EN73)
>
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