Topband: SP Propagation

[Telegrapher9@aol.com]

Interesting propagation during the Stew Perry. The QRN level here was S-3 
during the ARRL 160 M and S-9 during the SP. I couldn't tell if signals were 
weaker in the SP or if they were just buried in the noise. It didn't sound 
like thunderstorm QRN as there were now crashes- just a steady roar. What was 
the origin of the QRN during the SP?

On another subject. Tom, W8JI, would a resistive shunt solve some of these 
amplifier stability problems? On a Ten Tec 30 meter QRP rig I installed a 150 
ohm resistor across the antenna terminals to stop an oscillation around 8 
MHz. The resistor value could have been much higher but I wanted lots of 
margin and am willing to burn a couple of dB of signal during casual QRP 
operation. I figured the engineer at Ten Tec did all of the design and 
testing into a 50 ohm load and didn't check for unconditional stability. This 
makes me wonder about Ten Tec in general. Bad to risk the reputation of the 
good rigs to sell a few cheap rigs.

   Dave WX7G


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