Well, Murphy was against me this year.
I went to my favorite hilltop in EN50rl for CQWW VHF, managed to get the 6
and 2 meter Yagi antennas set up in the hot sun (the 6 meter Yagi is BIG),
hooked everything up and it seemed to be doing fine. Antennas were working
and SWR was good. I called several people over about a half an hour on 6
meters with my FT857D. None of them seemed to hear me. I was only running
10 watts as a QRP Portable Hilltopper. Then I saw smoke come out of the rig
and then no power came out. It still received OK. I checked both 50 and 144
MHz and had no power output on either band. So I took everything down and
went home (a 45 minute drive).
The rig did quite well up till now. I used it in the June VHF contest. I
dug into it a little last night and it appears the finals are all OK. They
have proper voltage on the collectors and proper bias on the bases when in
transmit. The relays in the rig switch properly on all HF bands. There is
just no power out on any band, HF or VHF. Since the finals for HF/50 MHz
and VHF/UHF are different, with different paths, the problem has to be in a
path that is common to both. My next step is to see if there is RF power
coming from the drivers to the finals.
I only had Saturday from about 1 to 6 pm CDT to participate. I couldn't be
on on Sunday. But I'm sad that I didn't make even one QSO.
73, Zack W9SZ
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