[TowerTalk] Re: TowerTalk Digest, Vol 23, Issue 4

[John Gagen]

Martin,

Hold your horses till next week when I bring you your ICE filter! (plane leaves in 8 days but still no visa!!)

73,
John - W2YR

PS - lumped constants in any filter will change the X Y  Z reading in the MFJ meter
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: towertalk-request at contesting.com 
  To: towertalk at contesting.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 13:44
  Subject: TowerTalk Digest, Vol 23, Issue 4



  Message: 4
  Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 09:53:16 +0700
  From: "Martin Sole" <msole at loxinfo.co.th>
  Subject: RE: [TowerTalk] My MFJ-259B annoys me.
  To: <towertalk at contesting.com>
  Message-ID: <20041102025316.A55BB7F848 at mailz2.loxinfo.co.th>
  Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

  This is in reply to all the great info and suggestions I received to my
  question about the 259B.

  Probably what I forgot to put in the original post can be summarised here.
  Running on batteries, okay with a selection of resistive loads, tracks
  reasonably well - no jittering.

  Thanks to Bob, K8IA, who mentioned the use of an ICE BCB filter, and to
  John, W0UN, who mentioned using shorted 1/4 wl stubs cut for the band of
  interest and T'd at the analyser.

  Here's what I know now. The spectrum below 1.5MHz has some BIG signals in
  it, my TS940 pins it's S meter on a couple when pluged into the 40m dipole
  at 60 feet. Both the quad and the dipole show many signals around 6MHz as
  being at the S9+60+++ S meter pinning level.

  I have an ICE BCB filter on order as I suspect I have some BC issues anyway,
  it should be here with a friend later this month, in the meantime I built a
  rough copy of the RX only filter from the handbook. Immediate improvement.
  SWR drops to 1:1 and all readings look good with no dancing meter but I did
  notice that the 1:1 point is moved about 100 to 150KHz higher compared to
  what the meter on the rig says, this has always been fairly accurate, and
  still is as far as I know so I guess it's a phase thing with the filter.
  This on all the bands tested. Next job will be to try some stubs as per
  John's suggestion to see how they work out. I have the bits, just need the
  time to put 1 or 2 together.

  Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas. Looks like a $5 solution will meet
  my needs.

  73's
  Martin - HS0ZED