W3GR, the Historical Electronics Museum ARC, operated
a Jupiter as the 40/80/160m station and on 20CW, and an
Omni V as part of the satellite station. Both worked FB.
The Jupiter loaded a 160m full-wave loop at 50 feet. Loop
was fed by 75 feet of window wire, a 4:1 balun, and RG8X
coax. We had one 4-foot ground rod. We experienced a
little RF into the rig as a result, which caused the keyer to
go into steady dashes when we worked at 30wpm. Slowing
the keyer down helped, but putting an LDG antenna tuner
in the circuit wiped out the problem. We ran all our rigs at
100 watts from 12v batteries. The Jupiter's battery measured
11.7 volts at 0800, after 18 hours of operating and about
600 CW and SSB Q's. Operating time was about evenly split
between hunt-and-pounce and CQing. The Omni V used the same
battery throughout, since it wasn't doing much transmitting.
At the 40/80/160 station we used a Heil Pro HC-4 with VOX on.
We found we had to turn the mike gain up from 30% (usual
setting with Ten Tec mikes) to 45%. Then we were heard.
We will use this set-up for next FD, as it worked so well. We also
run an Omni V as our home station's main HF rig. We use both
Heil elements and slightly higher-than-normal mike gain settings,
processor off. We run several special events each year, and have
been getting complimentary reports on our audio.
73
Nick K3NY
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