Greetings FT-817 aficionados.
I have been playing with a FT-817 for a couple of months now and have
enjoyed the traffic in this very active egroup. Kudos to the
moderators and contributors.
I purchased my FT-817 with the optional NiCad Pac and wall wart.
These have worked well for me. I picked up a portable 12 Volt power
source with 8 amp-hr 12 SLA cells for $5 at a local hamfest. $25
later for a couple of new cells it is working nicely to.
I have a 20 foot telescopic fishing pole that collapses down to 4
feet. After a trip to the local home depot and $3.25 later, I came
home with a 12" twisted gutter spike and a couple of plastic plumbing
fittins that will clamp over the lower end of the fishing pole.
I have tried a ground plane antenna useing the 20 foot pole with a 20
foot vertical wire and 4 20 foot radials and fed the thing with 300
ohm twin lead. Tried loading it up with my Dentron Monitor Jr. Tuner
and could not hear anything near what I expected to hear. The twin
lead was cheap TV stuff and might have been defective. I pulled
the vertical wire and radials down and used the pole to support a 44
foot end feed wire inverted vee with a 44 foot counterpoise. Loaded
it up with the Dentron Tuner and heard lots of sigs coming in. Did
not have lots of time for contacts, but did have a couple of short
QSOs on 20 meters. I will probably used the 20 foot pole and the 2
44 foot wires for my portable operations.
The little Dentron Monitor Jr. tuner is some taller than the LZ-11
and is not automatic, but it does have the same size foot print as
the FT-817 and is a nice tee match tuner. Usually goes for about $35-
40 on ebay.
I flew out of New England a few weeks ago and took the FT-817, a four
mag base and my ham sticks along. I was about to make many contacts
on 20 meters and 17 meters using 5 watts SSB as long as the QRM was
down. In general though, I have much better results with the 50
watts from my Ten Tec Argosy.
I also recently picked up a little Outbacker JR. whip at a hamfest
complete with comet adjustable hatch back mount and coax. Not a bad
a bay for $100 for the works. The Outbacker Jr. is only about 4 foot
long and performance is pretty acceptable for mobile, although not as
good as my ham sticks (aobut 7 foot long) I might try it on a bicycle
mobile setup.
TNX ES 73
Jim Zellmer, KA0VSL
Des Moines, IA
