[Fourlanders] More 432 Stuff

[Jim Worsham]

I got to spend some more time looking at the 432 situation this afternoon.
You guys will love this.  I disconnected the brick and put it back in the
box (project for another day).  I put a Bird Wattmeter between the FT897 and
the antenna.  The Bird shows almost no reflected power, not zero but barely
enough to make the needle move when the forward power is full scale BUT the
FT897 indicates that there is significant SWR and is dropping the TX power
to 10 Watts.  I then replace the antenna with a dummy load and the Bird as
well as the FT897 indicates no reflected power.  I then replace the dummy
load with the antenna and the Bird shows almost no reflected power and the
FT897 shows significant reflected power as before.  What the...  At that
point I had a sched with W4ZRZ in EM63 so I went with what I had.  I worked
Jimmy no problem so I seem to be getting out.  He said I was weak but
perfectly copyable so that is one more grid on 432.  Any of you guys have
any ideas on the SWR weirdness?  Oh, one more thing.  When I tried to swing
the antennas back around to the north when I was finished it wouldn't go any
further than due east.  I walked outside and sure enough, a tree that was
not much higher than the house when I moved in has now grown to where it is
hitting the bottom 2 meter antenna and preventing rotation beyond that
point.  Sigh...  When it rains it pours.  At least that is easy enough to
fix by cutting the tree down.

 

73

Jim, W4KXY