Rich,
I'm glad that you and a couple of others have found the settings I
posted useful. On 10 - 17m I now use a 5m lockable steel measuring
tape. I went through the same procedure as before, noting down the
reading on the tape that gave best results. I didn't publish the
settings because I guess they might vary from one make of tape
measure to another.
Contrast this with the trouble I have had getting the MP-1 to work.
In view of the comments by others on this list that the MP-1 is the
best thing since sliced bread I have put in many more hours trying to
discover the secret but I have still not observed anything to suggest
it works more efficiently than the ATX in practice, and the best SWR
I can get on several bands is no better than 2.5:1.
Before anyone starts shouting at me for being obsessed with this SWR
issue let me share with you the results of some tests I did to
determine how the FT-817 reacts to high SWR.
On the 2.5W setting "L)))" the transceiver appears to put out the
full 2.5W regardless of SWR.
On the 5W setting full power is output up to three bars of SWR. As
soon as the fourth bar appears power is reduced by about 20%. When
the fifth bar appears power is reduced to about half.
So if you are running off the battery and accepting the default 2.5W
maximum power setting, and have a short co-ax feed, the SWR probably
doesn't matter very much and you can just tune by ear. On 5W however,
you should try to get 3 bars or less.
Julian, G4ILO
www.qsl.net/g4ilo
--- In FT817@y..., "Rich Casey (N5CSU)" <n5csu@y...> wrote:
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.
