Subj : I finally got my license To : Daryl Stout From : DaiTengu Date : Wed Oct 07 2020 15:33:38 Re: I finally got my license By: Daryl Stout to DaiTengu on Wed Oct 07 2020 09:16 am DS> Glad you dodged the COVID-19 bullet. Been there, done that, with putting DS> down a pet. Our dachshund became diabetic, resistant to the insulin, then DS> went blind from glaucoma and cataracts...but he had a working nose, a full DS> set of teeth, and an attitude, until he died. I cried like a baby for 15 DS> minutes in the car afterwards. Yeah, I had an hour to drive home, I struggled to keep it together. Heck, 2 weeks later and sometimes I still struggle to keep it together.... Unfortunately I now live in the COVID Hot-zone. My metro area is #3 on the "cases per capita" list right now, The area directly to the south of me is #1, and Green Bay, which is just to the North, is #4. At least I have this shiny new radio to play with, while I stay inside! Da>> Until I was on the radio about 7pm last night, and suddenly my band Da>> went dead, then came back, then went dead, then came back ... my SWR Da>> would go from 1:1 to off the scale. I went outside and adjusted the Da>> coax coming off the antenna, and that fixed things for a little Da>> while, but it got windy and it started again. DS> We're all at the mercy of the weather...never mind sunspots. I've been dragging my feet on going outside to fix my issues. All day yesterday I had no issues, until around 9pm, when the whole thing started again. I have to untie ropes, grab my 15ft extension pole, and work the coax and transformer out of the tree and back down to the ground. Then I have to pull on the rope and work it back up into the tree. It's a pain in the ass, but I don't have a better solution that covers 80-10m. (It also tunes on 160m, but I really haven't messed with that, yet. The manufacturer doesn't say anything about 160m. I mean, it makes sense, since it's 1/4 wave on that band... My next project, after I sort out the antenna, is to sort out the RFI stuff. I had a constant S7-S9 background noise on all bands. I added in a choke (Mix 31 toroid with 15 wraps of rg58 coax), and that helped lower it to S3-S5 on everything under 20m, but I still have some RFI anomalies, including a random sweep that will run across my 40m band from time to time. I picked up a TinySA to see if I can track down the worst offenders. So far I haven't found anything super outstanding other than the monitors in my office, but that interference goes away if I back off a foot or two. I'm probably going to grab a battery and cut power to my house, then slowly turn everything back on to see if I can isolate the issues. DaiTengu .... A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer. --- þ Synchronet þ War Ensemble BBS - The sport is war, total war - warensemble.com .