Is a very very happy bunny

Oh yes indeed :laughing:

I finally have me FT450-AT had to go get and borrow a few quid but its here and now in play after setting it up such as me power to 10w. the mike side of it and few basic points need to be sorted prior going on air.

The Trio kinda died Sunday lost me TX and the heat sink was so HOT, i burnt me hand on it. So she be off to the repair man at later date. Shame the 450 won’t tune in 80 and 17 on the loop but the MFJ handles that including 160m :heart_eyes:

Managed me first sota DL6HH/p on 40m late afternoon reached with ease and it seems i am now putting out the full ten according to my MFJ meter compared to 9w on 10m and on 40m 6w on me Trio, suspected it been going a while now.

karl

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Hi Karl, congrats on the new rig. I also find the 40m loop isn’t very good on 80m (it shouldn’t work at all really), which is why I put up the drastically shorted with coils, 80m dipole. 17m should work at a reasonable SWR on the 40m loop, perhaps you can retry that band with the FT-450AT.

73 Ed.

Like said Ed with the MFJ tuner all bands can be tuned in prob even 60m but not even trying that one till am proper licences.

But goes to show how the MFJ can handle it with such ease.

Now one day break out the portables and see how she handles those as fed via the 9:1 unun unlike the Loop full wave 40m feed by the RG6 tuned feeder could be the problem over ridden by the MFJ949D :smile:

But will be interesting when i get around to building the coiled 80m loop on a 40m band sized length. In other words 44m of 3.5mm rope with 88m of wire wrapped around it using the light weight sota wire. Will be an interesting experiment some time in the summer coming. :smirk:

Only thing that lets down the FT450 is its speaker, god its pants :scream:

karl

Karl, this is VERY important.

The automatic antenna tuners included in most modern rigs are limited in tuning range and power handling. They don’t like matching excessively mismatched loads at high power. Boy are they are easy to use, click, bleep, clatter-clatter, done but they can fail if you push too hard. I know that currently you will be only running low power but read the manual carefully and check that you use the auto-ATU as designed over the SWR ranges specified etc.

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Cheers Andy

Come to that conclusion if it no tune it once, go manual via the MFJ it did say does have limited ability’s can’t expect it to handle all. Just trying now to suss out how to turn off the RF and have the SQL setting in instead.

So one will stick with the man tuning at time I am so used to it and can handle it quickly but keeping key bursts short. Its nice rig doing things for you but am old fashioned LOL and like twiddling things.

Man its like flying Sopworth camel aeroplane and then going onto a 747 Boeing Jumbo jet.

karl

Hi Karl,

As Andy said inbuilt tuners will handle up to 3:1 SWR and that’s about it. MFJ tuners handle up to 10:1 SWR. Depending on the actual impedance components both will go a bit beyond the spec limits.

Of course the ability to tune high SWR with an auto tuner does come at a cost. The losses are a bit higher, but given the choice of being able to operate with a happy rig and not having a happy rig, there is no contest.

I hope you get thousands of happy hours with the new combo.

73
Ron
VK3AFW

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Just to echo what Ron said. If you need to use an antenna coupler/matcher (these boxes do not “tune” the antenna as the antenna doesn’t change by the way), it’s a compromise. The idea of an 80m loop made physically smaller by winding the wire around a supporting cord, hence still being electrically resonant on 80m should give a better result that matching the 40m loop with the MFJ.

We have discussed this before in emails (in fact it’s on my to-do list for when some more of this ice melts!), a real summer project. It remains to be seen whether the added inductance through the wire being wound around the supporting cord, may affect the antenna, but we are experimenting and that’s part of the fun.

Most simple antennas are compromises, it’s a question of whether you can live with the compromise.

Ed.

That we have Ed :wink: among other things :smirk:

Come to conclusion more power chucked through it more possible inductance will be had say than just running a bare 10w through it say compared to 400w. And oh yes the experimenting side of it i do really enjoy.

When I did my shortening coils on the verticals i have someone said won’t work blah blah and bingo it does work But tightly coiled next to each other it did not on 40m but upper bands OK after spacing out the wire about 1cm apart from each other be about same on the shortened 80m loop am planning. So idea is to up the wave on me 80m loop to full wave and make 160m 1/2w and so forth.

Mind you going around and around the signal am sending instead of straight along the wire does it make it sea sick. :scream:

Tis all a learning curve :neutral_face:

karl

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Make life easier for yourself Karl - run 50 watts - with one caviat - sit the intermediate exam first, well worth it I would have thought and if your technical and licencing rules knowledge matches your operating ability, you shouldn’t have any problem passing the exam :wink: part of that learning curve eh?

73 Phil

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