On Friday I rec'd my 160BX (transcieve model) preamp from I.C.E. I
bought this to use with my short rx ant, its short because my property
is 120 ft long. I am using a Beverage type rx ant, but it is only 110 ft
long or so. It works well at times but thought the preamp would help on
the weaker signals. This weekend during the contest I didn't hear any
EU sigs on SSB. Seemed like condx weren't the greatest. Most of what I
worked was South America, Canada and the Carribean. V26B and HC0E were
two new ones for me.
On this rx ant I used a 9:1 xfmr as described in ON4UN's ant book. The
wire is 10 ft above ground. I terminated it looking west and used a
1.2k resistor to a ground rod, the wire drops down vertical at this end,
its not sloped. There is also a ground rod at the feed end. I notice
when the noise is S-9 on the Inv-L the noise on this rx ant is S-3 to
4, and sumtimes lower. Even though it is terminated looking west I also
notice that it hears EU and SA sigs also. Is it because it is so short
that it doesn't have the directivity like a normal Beverage? It doesn't
really bother me that it has no directivity because I don't have room to
put out anymore, just thought someone might be able to tell me why it
has no directivity.
The preamp seems to be doing the job. I even used it on my G5RV which I
use for 80/40. I've noticed that it seems to cut the noise way down,
and with the preamp it seems to do the job. I guess we all have our ant
stories to tell, whatever works use it I guess.
One last thing on the preamp. The only thing I don't like about it is
that it has a 400 millisecond delay when you go to xmit. I have it
mounted under a shelf right above the Bencher paddle so I just been
turning it off when I xmit to get around the delay.
Anyone else have one of these I.C.E. preamps? Whats your experience?
Scott AA8SM
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