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Re: [TenTec] ARRL Contest

To: <tentec@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TenTec] ARRL Contest
From: "Tommy" <aldermant@alltel.net>
Reply-to: tentec@contesting.com
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 11:57:05 -0500
List-post: <mailto:tentec@contesting.com>

> I would back up Tom's claims,
>
> Some things learned,
>
> I think for me the next step is to put up some loop and sheilded loop
> antennas in the attic to see if I can overcome the low band noise
problems.

For receiving, a loop of almost any size, be it shielded or just a loop of
wire thrown up in a tree, seems to me to always reduced low band noise.
>
> Leave the sweep off,  Had problems earlier in the week with it locking up
> the transmit and messing up the Antenna/VFO settings.
>
> One time, I noticed the noise on 20M get out of hand,  tried 15M and was
the
> same.  AGC and other things looked right, so Did a master reset,  to my
> surprise, the noise dissappeard,  Something got hosed in side the
radio....
> ( Had been playing with the NR,  maybee it took over the AGC...)

Yep, that happens to me sometimes too, especially if I'm sitting in PROG
AGC. Sometimes it's a big signal, but most of the time it occurs when I
transmit and the frustrating part is it happens randomly. Rather than doing
a power-down cycle, I've found that if I switch through the AGC menu cycle,
i.e., OFF/SLOW, etc., the rcvr recovers. I can't force this to happen
regularily, it just does it randomly.
>
> By the way, this might be a reason why other stations call off frequency,
> Many have to use their ear to zero beat,  For me being a little tone deaf,
> that would always put me off Frequency. That is why I use the PC
> Spectrograph,  It nails it instantly reguardless of the radio I use.

I too, am almost tone deaf and matching tones is OK if I have time to
carefully do it. I would agree others have the same problem, but during a
contest, more often than not, the guys calling you will get very close in
freq. (Funny, but QRP'ers are the worst at this). One other thing that I did
try and really did like was setting the Audio menu to BinRX - MAIN. With
stereo headphones, when you get the signal to 'sit on your nose', you have
zero beat the other station.
>
> 73's
> Rich
> K5SF
>
What Bill posted about KC1XX is very interesting. The 'big guns' are
impressed, you can be pretty sure it's as they say...they are NOT easily
impressed. When I operated at W3LPL and my partner  and I set the current
record for LPL's 80m position for CQWW-CW, LPL was impressed with his
station's 80m performance, but would not consider the Omni 6 because he
claimed Ten Tec rigs did not have contest SSB capability. LPL has stayed, as
far as I know, with the MP's and I don't think they have won a major contest
since!

Tom/W4BQF


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