The rain gutter antenna is up and running.
A-B testing against the attic dipole shows that it is best on 40M and 80M. It is quieter and the signals are stronger. On 20M, both the signal and the noise are both down, but the noise is down more than the signal.
I’m tuning it using an SG-230 SmartTuner and it’s fun to watch the SWR-meter as it is working. When I go key-down the SWR-Meter needle dances around for a second or two and then BAM! the SWR goes to almost 1:1.
I’m considering installing some sort of low-noise receiving antenna. The static on 20M here is sometimes S9. The past few days I’ve heard some European stations but they were too far buried in the noise for me to pull them out. Even my TS-590’s DSP NR circuits are not enough.
My house is at the back of my subdivision and there is a vacant area behind me that extends eastward for 5-6 houses, or approximately 240 feet – enough for a beverage antenna. My TS-590 has a separate jack on the rear panel for a RX antenna.
Time to order some magnet wire.
I recently bought a Kenwood TM-D710A to use at the VHF/UHF radio here at the home QTH, I’m slowly dipping my toes in the APRS pond.
GEtting it to receive and display APRS packets was a no-brainer:
Today I decided to take the next step and see of I could get it to ‘beacon’. I configured the settings (NOTE: I do not claim these to be optimal settings. This is simply what I used initially that worked):
Basic Settings (Menu 600)
Position (Menu 605)
Beacon Information (Menu 606)
Position Comment (Menu 607)
Status Text (Menu 608)
Station Icon (Menu 610)
Beacon TX Algorithm (Menu 611)
To verify that I was actually transmitting something intelligible, I went to:
and entered my callsign in the ‘Track Callsign’ field and clicked search. Shazam! There I was!
