I do not have a scout....I work MANY scouts on CW, and considered
buying one....I won't buy one because of the lack of bandswitching...
I've owned many solid state rigs...they all do something a little
wacky below about 12.5V....either VERY low power out (a benign problem
for me, 25W is fine) or they "FM" on SSB, or some such wierdness...
As for the CW frequency drift, it's there....like it or not, from
a non-scout owner (implies objectivity, but I doubt it --HI)
THEY all drift...>VERY< slowly down (on 40) then >VERY< slowly
back up....
What my post is about, as I don't own a Scout, is that I work
HW-16s with weak rocks, Globe scouts, homebrew/kit QRP junk,
God-knows-what vintage junk (Amecos, Knights,......) and I
don't mind the chirps/drift/hard-soft keying/etc....BUT !!!!
Some folks do....I have a transmitter that has a very SLIGHT
chirp, on the first 'dit-dah-......nine times out of ten no
one mentions it....but about one in ten ops gets obsessed with
MY keying/stability, and dwells on it......
The Scout sounds fine....it DOES drift, and no amount of dogma
is going to change that....it's cute, cheap, small, etc....
but don't let anybody tell you that they don't drift...and I'll
tell you that occasionally some op is going to get "stuck" on
your drift....HI.....
I have a love-hate relationship with T-T....the best damn qsk in
the world....no commercial station (when they existed!) could
touch the qsk unless they had split sites MILES apart....
Other ten-tec
advantages...............................................................................
Did I mention the QSK?................lets see, they're not cheap,
they drift, the VFOs are/were the worst I've ever seen (until they
bought optical shaft encoders from SOMEONE ELSE) The construction
resembles my daughter's science fair projects (she's 8, BTW) the
power supplies used to blow up the radios, now they just quit, without
damaging the radio, The knobs break, the silkscreening used to
rub of immediately, now it just fades gradually,,,,............
Did I mention GREAT QSK? Yeah, the receivers are quiet.......
so's a hallicrafters S40 on 20/15/10, it's deaf, too....
And they're American made....I'll get off here now and go
buy another one...........they DO work nicely on CW, might
have mentioned that.........
Walt
On
Tue,
16 Mar 1999, Lynn D Stolz wrote:
>
>
> Folks,
>
> I'm considering getting a scout. I'm sure a lot has been hashed over
> before, but I'd like to hear what folks who have them feel about the
> following two issues:
>
> 1. The 13.8V vs 12.5V debate. It seems that there is some agument
> over whether the scout goes wacky or not at the lower voltage. What is
> the empirical evidence? Do they ALL have the problem or not? There is a
> ham that jumps at every opportunity to bad mouth the scout everytime someone
> asks the question. Is this true or is it a vendetta against T-T because
> they did not resolve this issue to his satisfaction?
>
> 2. The CW transmit jump. My understanding is that when using the
> built-in keyer the transmit frequency may jump a bit because the
> microprocessor is busy with keying instead of frequency sampling. That I
> understand well. Question is--does the scout exhibit this IF I USE AN
> EXTERNAL KEYER?
>
> Lynn, N8AJ
>
> -
> Lynn Stolz N8AJ -- lstolz@gcfn.org
> -
>
>
>
> --
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>
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