Bill nice post and you have more or less summed up my current thoughts re
roving and transvetrers.
I'll just mention that in my experience I have found it is helpful to have
radios dedicated to 50 (and if possible 144 MHz) on a full time basis while
roving. As much as I would like to use my IC 7300 as an IF radio I like using
it full time for 50 MHz.
I do like the remote control head feature of my ICOM 706 MkiiG's but not
unsurprisingly the 7300 does seem to work better on 50 MHz. I'm hoping I
will see a similar improvement on 144 and 432 if I switch to a 9700 for those
bands.
I'm still flip flopping between carrying the 7300 in a transit case while
driving and setting it up when I stop driving or shelf mounting in the cab of
my truck. A 9700 will present a similar dilemma. The price point of those
radios doesn't allow me to rationalize breaking one of them on a roving outing
and the lack of remote control head makes them more vulnerable to catastrophic
damage in my view.
I still have the 706's to use for monitoring while driving and in some
circumstances I may still use them as my main radios and leave the more
expensive radios at home.
73
Mark S
VE7AFZ
mark@alignedsolutions.com
604 762 4099
> On Dec 17, 2018, at 11:03 AM, Bill Olson <callbill@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all, Here's my take on all this. The nice thing about transverters,
> especially ones with high dynamic range mixers, is that they preserve the
> good features of the IF rig. If the IF rig is an HF transceiver which
> (because it's meant to be used on the crowded HF bands) has great
> selectivity, low phase noise, and other state of the art features like modern
> noise blankers, well you know, all the bells and whistles, etc, then you have
> a VHF/UHF rig that will really perform for weak signals on a crowded band on
> VHF. The down side is extra complexity, more cables, more boxes, more stuff
> to go wrong etc. Many of the new HF/VHF/UHF rigs are pretty good on
> selectivity and dynamic range, maybe not that great on sensitivity. But for
> roving on 6,2,432, even 1296, these rigs are probably the way to go. Add PA's
> and preamps if needed. Using the same rig as an IF for a 222 transverter
> makes sense (certainly better than an HTX100!). On the higher "microwave"
> bands a separate IF rig might make se
ns
> e as long as it's stable and low in self-generated noise. being able to run
> "liaison" on a lower band while working the microwave bands is a plus. I
> think FT290's are probably less than ideal these days. But if that's all you
> have, it's more important to be "out there" than to worry about the ultimate
> in performance.
>
> my $.02 - bill K1DY (in snowy Maine)
> ________________________________
> From: VHFcontesting <vhfcontesting-bounces@contesting.com> on behalf of Sean
> Waite <waisean@gmail.com>
> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2018 6:09 PM
> To: aduhawk@comcast.net
> Cc: VHF Contesting; Patrick Thomas
> Subject: Re: [VHFcontesting] Transverters (was: Icom IC-9700 Release Date)
>
> The K1SIG rover uses transverters on everything but 6,2 and 70. Depending
> on the configuration for the particular contest, we have an IC-746, IC-910,
> IC-7000 and a TS-590 pulling duty on the native bands. One of those cheapo
> Ukrainian transverters on 222, previously with an HTX100 as IF but next
> time will be an FT-818. We've got SG Labs transverters on 33,23 and 13cm,
> and if I actually get the rest of the pieces I need I have a homebrew (not
> my homebrew, purchased homebrew) transverter on 5 gig and a DEMI 10 gig
> module. We had been using a FT290rII and an FT790rII as IFs on the
> microwaves, but will be moving to an FT817.
>
> I've debated getting the 1.2 module for the 910. For the price I'll
> probably end up with the SG Labs amp, 25W vs 10W and half the price. I see
> one on ebay at the moment for $750, which is 3/4 what I paid for the radio
> itself. The IC-9100 and IC-9700 are both out of my price range for now.
>
> 73, Sean WA1TE
>
>> On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 9:05 AM <aduhawk@comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> We started roving seriously 20+ years ago using Xvrtrs for 222, 900, 1.2
>> and 2304. We used 706MKii and an IC820 which doubled as an IF for 1.2 and
>> the primary for 432. We have TE Systems higher power amps for the bottom
>> four. There are beams for all bands. There are two of us in the vehicle
>> (K9ILT shotgun) and our weekend gear.
>>
>> The release of the TS2000X simplified life dramatically. It became the
>> primary rig for 6, 2, 432 and 1.2. The 706 became the IF for 900 and 2304
>> (with an attenuator). The second SO239 for HF became the IF port for 222.
>> The remote head meant that we had control of everything right in front of
>
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
|