“Roving” in April
Written by: Dave N9AIG
April 20, 2023
If you perform a search on this website and look for “To Go” cases, you will find an article that I wrote in November of 2022 and published here in February 2023. That case, as photographed, has been revised.
I found that every switch, jumper, or fitting that I added contributed to SWR back to the radios. I used Amphenol connectors, LMR 400 factory coax jumpers, but UHF frequencies don’t appear to like going through switches and around 90-degree fittings. So, I removed all of them; I went back to basics. That is, each radio has a coax that goes directly to a resonant antenna without fittings, jumpers, or switches.
The performance result was significant, but it did result in a portable antenna farm.
The top antenna is a Dimond X-6000 that tunes 2 meters, 440 MHz, and 1.2 GHz (O.K. there is a Dimond triplexer connected, but the IC-9700 seems to be happy with it). The next antenna down the mast is a M2 900-5 for the GTX radio and finally a M2-220-5 for the TYT 220 MHz radio. LMR 400 coax was used throughout the installation.
The drive to Government Peak is about 50 minutes from Eagle River and setup time on the Red Rover is about 75 minutes. Take down time is about 45 minutes.During the South Central Simplex Net it was to hear call signs that I could not receive at my home QTH. I was also able to perform a service to the net by relaying in signals that could not be heard at the RSOC.
Because of the nice weather, I plan to rove on Wednesday evening as weather permits and the availability of my XYL to assist in setting up the portable antenna farm.
The next step is to add an IC-7610 to the mix. I have a trapped dipole by Dimond that should fit on the mast, but I may be going to a taller mast and a few guy ropes.
73s N9AIG
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