I thought I was having a good weekend - loads of uniques on 40m CW
About 17:00z the lights in the house went very bright and then dimmed - power surge?
Result Ft-100 will not turn on - Ft-817 lost all memories.
Sorry forgot to mention Doublet took off in high winds yesterday - feeder still there.
Bad news:-
FT-100 appears dead.
Good news :-
Ft-817 recovered and I’ve managed to reload all settings using FT-817 Commander (thanks Simon HB9DRV)
Kenwood TS-530sp (which I have been using solely for 40m CW ) never flinched and is working perfectly. Aren’t valves great ?
Sorry to hear that Roger. Claim on the household insurance for the FT100 and you’ll be cooking with gas in no time.
AS a somone who does nearly 100% 5MHz activation I get to work quite a few FT817 only home based operators. Geoff G4CPA and Martin M1MAJ spring to mind. They’re not big enough signals to be heard in the initial pileup when I first get spotted but I can normally work them without any great issue. I suppose that has more to do with the relative quietness of 5MHz though. I guess 40m would be a lot harder.
Cabin fever now setting in. Didn’t get out last weekend because of the wx and this weekend we were kid free and had Tinto lined up. Mrs FMF has wanted to climb for a long time as we drive past it regularly. However, 8.00am and the trees were horizontal. We live on the North side of a hill at 175m ASL and the wind was from the South. If it’s that bad on the lee side it would have been foolhardy to venture up to 700+m. Anyway the hills will still be there next week. But I feel that I’ll be venturing up something next weekend unless there has been a nuclear event!
Roger, are you sure its the FT100 and not the psu? This rig should take 16 volts without flinching but there might have been crowbar protection on the PSU. Its worth giving the PSU a check over.
I used the FT817 on the DC bands very successfully, on 5 megs I worked everything I could hear and often beat the high powered stations by tailending the pileup, this worked equally well on 40 and 80, but by last year the rig was getting a bit well used so I got an FT857 and in all honesty the extra few S points don’t seem to make much difference - except the sense of achievement from running QRP has gone - perhaps I will splash out on another 817!
AS a somone who does nearly 100% 5MHz activation I get to work quite a
few FT817 only home based operators. Geoff G4CPA and Martin M1MAJ
spring to mind.
Indeed so; I can work pretty much every 5MHz SOTA station that I can hear through my local noise, and usually get better reports than I am able to give. The antenna is nothing special; just my portable dipole attached to a fencepost and squeezed in between my house and next door.
As you say I can’t break the pile up. If I can I like to get in before the spot-watchers pile in, but quite often I just have to wait until it dies down. It gets a bit frustrating when there’s deep QSB and I can’t get in at the peak.
I could arrange to run more than 5W but I don’t think it would gain me a lot.
I guess 40m would be a lot harder.
It is harder but I still get QRP contacts on 40. I’ve picked up lots of points from Klaus, for example, all QRP.
I did work one activation from our club station running full legal power. It felt like cheating!
In reply to All:
Thanks for replies.
Doublet is now back up.
FT-100 seems to have CPU fault, it starts to initialise but then switches off. The PSU is fine Brian I think the fault has come via the CAT or Data connection via the computer. The FT-817D is now working fine (it was connected to a laptop and only seems to have set itself to factory default ) just worked a couple of stations 20m CW with 2.5W.
Martin and Andy I agree that 5W is sufficient for 5MHz, it’s what I use when activating, in fact I only used 10-25W with the FT-100.
Just need to sort out an antenna for top band with the TS-530S in case GX0OOO/P does some daylight activations as I’ve rerouted the feeder of the doublet to reach the '817.
73 Roger G4OWG (please no more references to frying or cooking with gas )
)