Rig is percolatin’ but the RF ain’t AR Effin’ …

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Disappointing news — no joy in my attempt to check in to the net this evening. I had the SB-102 warmed up and tuned well — it was pumping out 80 watts max and the SWR was low. What gives?

I tried checking in and it was like I wasn’t there — and the received signals were relatively strong. I’m going to check my feedline that goes from here to upstairs to make sure everything is working correctly. I suspect there’s something broken somewhere.

Throw the switch! ZZZAAAAPP!!!

I have a knife switch here behind my at the window to switch the feedline to upstairs or here, and I had to replace the wiring yesterday — the feedline going upstairs was completely broken off, so I need to doublecheck that I have both conductors of the feedline in place.

I also replaced the o-ring on the HW-101 for the loading, and it works well. The rig puts out the snot too — right at 100 watts on 80, and slightly more on the other bands except about 80 on 10 meters. Unfortunately, there’s no receive on the HW-101. I haven’t done any troubleshooting yet, but it may be something early in the receiver — you can’t even hear the 100 kHz marker generator.

Now on the second SB-102, the receive works but no transmit — nada, zip, zilch. Again, I haven’t done any troubleshooting to see where the problem may lie.

All three of these rigs are basically as they arrived from eBay, and I only bought one that I expected to work — and it does. The others will take some troubleshooting.

Of course, I still have my Hallicrafters station to put together … but I’m going to let that wait. I’m going to get my Yaesu rigs upstairs for photos and video and then list them on eBay. I’m probably going to bring the IC-756PROII down here to replace the FT-950.

Well, tomorrow is another day.

73 es CUL … de KY4Z …. SK SK …. (dit dit)