After reading this newsgroup for quite a while, I ordered an ATX
last weekend from Great Britain. There was a knock at the door Sunday
(!) afternoon- the postman delivering my ATX! I was heading over to
my YL's soon, so I grabbed my 817 (preprogrammed with loads of freqs
via FTBasic), packed up everything into my $5 carrying case, and took
it over to the YL's house. In her loft computer room, I plugged in my
$3 power supply, and used a 90 degree connector to plug the ATX into
the SO-239 on the back of the rig. I set out the whip length for 20
meters and the Radio Shack counterpoise length per Julian's
recommendations, and was happy to see a flat SWR.
I then checked into the Maritime Mobile Service Net freq (14.300) on
first call. NCS at the time was in Alabama, I'm in Dallas. Later I
worked a Colo Springs ham on 20. Nicely built whip; will try it on
the other bands today.
Two points: the radio and antenna are loads of fun, and most, if not
all, of the info I needed to make this work was received through this
newsgroup. It is a GREAT resource for the 817 operator.
73
Rich/n5csu
Dallas TX
PS: Check the Bookmarks list on this newsgroup for all links to the
items mentioned in this e-mail.
