[TenTec] 526

Cliff csegar@mindspring.com
Fri, 04 Oct 2002 18:55:05 -0400


Nice unit. Too bad they skimped on the front-end of the rig but the powers
that be on the Parkway really thought the repeater crowd was their target
market. I tried to tell them different every time I stopped in but ...
that's history. I have one anyway!
As a surprise to many of you, this isn't really about its lack of frequency
stability or accuracy or even about its nasty habbit of totally loosing its
real frequency (hope there's a F/W chip update for that glitch sometime)
but about its extended 2m Rx and something to do with it. (Still wish the
front-end was better though!) Check out <http://members.aol.com/homingin/>
and listen to birdies. Ok. So they're not the ones generated internally to
the rig nor are they the ones us weirdo VHFers deal with but are real,
hopefully live, Burrowing Owls fitted with low power transmitters in the
150MHz range.
Your EME array is probably going to have its pattern fall apart 6~7MHz up
from 144.010 but maybe that CrunchKraft 13B2 or J-Pole will be close. If
you get real serious you might even build a seperate antenna to listen for
the weak signals. Give it a try. It's might be something to do on those
nights when you can't sleep worrying if that 6+ will ever have the 0.005ppm
accuracy. ;-)
73 de KD4GT