On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 4:17 PM, Bill Dzurilla billdz.geo@yahoo.com wrote:
If you do go omni, get it high enough to be in the clear. And unless you get a preamp, use very good coax and keep the line as short as possible. You can get a 70cm receive-only preamp from Ramsey Electronics for $17, but with that you'll need a separate coax line for the 2m uplink, or a duplexer.
You can get such a preamp from Ramsey, but as one who has built their preamps in hopes that they will suffice for satellite operations, I do not recommend it. Remember that the improvement that a preamp makes (for a given position in the receiving system) is related to the gain and inversely to the noise figure. Gain is easy, low noise figure is not; but without the latter you will receive more noise on 70cm, not more signal. I would strongly recommend a ARR or SSBUSA preamp for any beginner. Since the marginal expense is not that great, you are much better off getting a switching model appropriate for out-of-doors use. Get switching also because you will want to diversify into mode-B operations, using VO-52 in particular.
I have enjoyed many Ramsey kits in the past, but my experience is that their preamps are not designed for improving weak-signal reception on either the VHF or UHF satellite bands.
73, Bruce VE9QRP