The Scout does not have an ALC meter but does have an ALC light that blinks
on and off when the ALC is working properly.
The ALC light does not blink on 15 meters with one of my antennas. The ALC
does work properly when connected to my car's mobile whip so I assume the
problem is in the station set up rather than in the rig.
The problem situation is a 25.5 ft ladderline fed attic antenna (an open
wire G5RV mini sort of) up 45 feet tuned by the little 200 watt MFJ tuner.
Ground is the cold water pipe. The antenna tunes up with some dificulty but
I do get better than 1.5 to 1 SWR. The ALC does not light no matter how
high the gain is. I set the gain at the normal position and tried to
contact a couple of contesters (no pileup so it should have been easy
contacts) but either no one heard me or I sound terible so I stopped using
15 meters on that antenna (works good enough on mobile whip).
Do I have an antenna problem, ground problem or Scout problem? Should I
adjust the length of the antenna first or look at the ground system first?
Or is the problem something else that I'm not considering ?
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