[TenTec] Really bad noise with Peg on PTT

[Jody Levine]

I'm fairly new to ham radio and today was my first Field Day. I was
operating for VE3MIS on 15 m (propagation stank big smelly turds, but I had
fun) with the Pegasus into a two-element beam constructed of wires taped to
Shakespeare Wonderpoles with a TV rotor propped up on about 35 feet of
aluminum pipe. Went up in a snap!

I've had the Peg for a couple of months, but I don't have a proper antenna
at home, just some speaker wire stapled to the inside of my roof for a kind
of 15 m dipole. I have an LDG AT-11 tuner. I can't really get out with it
though, though I can hear quite a bit, so I've done a lot of listening in
the last couple of months, a few local QSOs on 40.

At field day I was working with headphones with the monitor on, something I
hadn`t really tried at home. I was always at full power. Something weird is
happening.

Sometimes, not always, when I'd hit the PTT (not saying anything yet), I'd
get an earful of garbage. Like really really bad and really loud static. Not
a fairly pure tone like PA system feedback, but more broadband junk, and
loud. Since it was intermittent, I thought it might be the wind in the
microphone or something (I have the regular TenTec desk mike).

I just slapped everything together here at home now, and I tried things with
the headphones and the monitor. I could hear someone in Algeria on 20, and
inspired from having talked to Puerto Rico on 15, I decided to tune up and
give it a try. Sure enough, every time I hit the PTT and I'm set above, say,
30 watts, I get this mess in the monitor. Ah ha, maybe that's why nobody can
hear me. I get this junk the instant I hit the PTT. I don'T get the junk at
20 watts and below.

Any ideas? Is this something in my setup or could there be something wrong
with my radio? I get the impression that I'm overdriving somehow, as even
when it's OK I have to have the mic gain set to zero and talk from several
inches away, or the ALC light comes on and I get a similar sounding mess in
the monitor. I'm using the N4PY software, though I didn`t install last
week's upgrade yet.

Any advice, suggestions and rampant speculation appreciated.

Jody
ve3ion
Toronto, Canada