This is my new slicker and quicker version of the old “Four and run” concept.
Last night I suffered intermittents on BOTH of my T-bar connectors for my Tracer battery - the newer one, and the older repaired “spare”.
Today - Wednesday 8th November 2017 - I only had limited time between some a day’s supply teaching and a couple of private tuition appointments. Well, with no battery for the FT-817 it would have to be 2m handheld anyway.
Thanks to M6XBQ and MW6ISV.
Back home and I started to check out the connectors by doing continuity/short testing - yet it appears everything is in order on both T-bars. Maybe there’s an unclean spot on one of the battery terminals? Anyway, that’s for tomorrow, I’m off to bed!
What a strange device! It looks as if it could quite easily be fitted upside down, so reversing the polarity with potentially disastrous results. Presumably there is something not visible in the photo which prevents that from being done.
Looking more closely, perhaps the gap in the middle is offset from the centre?
Yes, it is designed such that connecting it the wrong way wrong is impossible. Believe me, I’ve tried…
I also - very nearly - reconnected one of the T-bars the wrong way round after opening one up this morning…
Anyway, as I say, both T-bars passed all the continuity and short testing with flying colours last night - or seemed to. I gave the battery pack terminals a clean this morning, after which one of the T-bars seemed to be working fine. The other one though did initially power up the 817, but still proved intermittent when giving it a good wiggle.
I opened this one up and couldn’t see any issues, other than a fair bit of black residue at the base of the connectors. I cleaned this off, and now it works fine, even with wiggling.
So it looks like we’re good to go tonight for the 6m activation.
Another two-QSO SOTA activation for me last night. Liam was at the theatre in Congleton with his mates, so rather than going home in-between taxi runs, I went up the nearby G/SP-015.
I knew it was pushing it a bit going for 20m after 2000z in current HF conditions, but I couldn’t be bothered giving it much more thought - plus I had my trusty 2m handheld with me as back-up!
As it was, I rather enjoyed sitting alone on a peaceful summit, under a clear starlit sky, as the Palm Cube repeatedly churned out my CQ call in beacon mode. This also gave me plenty of time to create the poll about reflector thread post limits. I needed it too - my first couple of attempts failed due to errors in the settings I used - so if you were one of the first to vote, you may need to do so again. Anyway, the poll can be found here: POLL: What should the maximum number of posts in a thread be?
Just two stations came back to my calls on a very quiet band - OK2BZ and YU1SY - but reports incoming and outgoing were all 599. I could hear N9XG activating W5T/CI-001, and AC1Z working him, but only quietly.
