Hi All,
Thanks for the QSO during my few mobile ops the past couple days – and for your patience. We had three small road trips planned for various reasons Wednesday-Friday, so it provided a great opportunity to try the mobile equipment out, find out what combinations work better than others, etc., etc., so I can perhaps get on the air a little more while mobile during vacations and such. I will be uploading all QSOs to LoTW within a day or so, and if anyone wants a card just email me the QSO details. I did have a question:
One consistent issue I found while operating is that I could just barely hear a bird from AOS-TCA, but from TCA-LOS I could hear fine, even down to 10-5 degrees. I am not understanding why I can’t hear one side of the pass, but I can hear the other fine – almost full quieting with the preamp. I should also mention that I experienced this issue on AO27 and SO50, not AO51. I would thinnk it would be a polarization issue, but that still doesn’t make sense to me. My main setup consisted of:
Uplink: TH-D7A (7w plugged into 12VDC), Comet CA-2x4SR mag for uplink.
Downlink: FTM-350AR, ARR SP432VDG preamp on battery or 12v, Arrow duplexer (440 side hooked up which solved my desense issues so I could work full duplex), and a 19” quarter wave mag.
I had posted here about a month or so ago wondering if intermod would be an issue using a preamp while mobile. I monitored about 7-8 passes over the past three days while mobile and intermod was never an issue. I did have a little bit of alternator whine on the FTM-350AR’s receive, but it was very minimal. That could be solved by running the cables directly to the battery. Since we were in the family vehicle I just used the cig lighter (I know that’s not a good idea, but it was only for a couple days).
73!
Zack KD8KSN