[TenTec] ORION BCI

[Eric Scace K3NA]

Hi Eric --

    We have an AM station about 2 miles from the W1KM site.  It's small 
but runs 5 kW during the day on 1420... enough to mess up antenna 
analyzers hooked to the low band verticals... and enough to trash receivers.

    Fortunately at night it drops to a 1 kW directional pattern and we 
don't see it.  But we've been thinking about a filter anyhow so that we 
can chase DX near sunset/sunrise on 160m.  I would be curious to learn 
more about the BCI filter you are using.

73,
    -- Eric

on 05 May 28 21:21 Eric Rosenberg said the following:
> I've been following the thread on BCI to the Orion with both interest 
> and amusement.
> 
> I live in Washington, DC proper, 5.5 miles from a 50kw AM station 
> operating at 1500 kHz (signal measured a -10 dBm with a lab-grade 
> spectrum analyzer on my inverted-L), and another relatively high power 
> AMer at 1260 kHz.
> 
>  From my roof I can see (and have photos of) all of Washington's TV 
> (NTSC and HD) and FM broadcast towers, not to mention the plethora of 
> US and foreign government, commercial and other  point-to-point 
> transmitters and repeaters that operate into the microwave bands and 
> seemingly beyond.
> 
> Regardless of the number and size of cavity filters, weak signal and 
> amateur satellite operations are difficult (I used to operate on AO-13 
> and to a lesser degree the pacsats) or impossible.
> 
> And the intermod/overload on 160 is pretty amazing, regardless of the 
> radio I've used... be it Kenwood, Icom, Yaesu or Ten Tec.
> 
> For the past 5 years, I had an Omni-6+. For the past year, an Orion.
> 
> The solution? Well designed and built BCI filters.  I spent as lot of 
> time researching what was available in the amateur radio 
> world.  Neither the ICE filter (402X), W3NQN, Top 10 Devices or anyone 
> else's worked for me.  In the end, I did find one, not (yet) 
> commercially available filter that worked so well for me that I had my 
> best score ever in the CQ 160 contest!  If and when it becomes 
> available, I'll post information here on the reflector.
> 
> A great resource for locating the broadcast (AM, FM and TV) stations in 
> your neighborhood is AMSTNS and TVFMSTNS by Bob Carpenter, 
> W3OTC.  Bob's software was invaluable to me in identifying the local 
> broadcasters to better understand who and where and to what degree the 
> offending stations might be.  An overview of the software is available 
> at http://users.erols.com/rcarpen/INFO0227.html while the latest 
> versions of the software are available at 
> http://home.earthlink.net/~lvehorn/   For best results follow the 
> various links!
> 
> The bottom lines is that if you're close to a broadcaster and suffer 
> from intermod and overload problems, don't blame it on the 
> radio!  External filters are the only solution.
> 
> GL!
> 
> Eric W3DQ
> Washington, DC
> 
> 
>