Random Odds and Ends

First random thought - I discovered an on-going antenna problem this evening that was totally not what I expected. I have been having some SWR problems on my mobile antenna. I have been thinking it was either the PL-259/coax in the truck or the antenna mount. Every time I have checked the antenna and mount the antenna has been solid in there. So I would wiggle the PL-259 and try again. Usually the SWR would be back down at this point and stay down.

However, I just pulled the antenna off the truck because I need to take it to the shop (won't clear a garage door with it up!) and to my surprise the antenna fell apart. It is a Diamond SG-7900A and it came apart in two pieces above the bottom loading coil. The set screw had worked its way loose! So I tightened the screw back down and now the antenna is solid again. I will have to wait until later to see how the SWR is but my bet is this was the problem all along - not the mount or the PL-259.

Though, I have had to re-solder the SO-239 on the FT-857D about 3 or 4 times now. The center pin from the SO-239 would press fit on to the center pin of my VHF/UHF PL-259 and when I would pull it off the rig's pin went off with the coax. So I used some JB Weld the last time (several months ago) and haven't had a problem since. I was briefly thinking there was an issue with my repair on my bad SWR issue, but after finding the loose set screw I am 99.9999% sure that was the issue all along.

Second random thought - We have a repeater here on 6 meters. The output is 52.700 and the input is 52.940. My base radio is a Kenwood TS-2000 (which isn't that great of a radio, I wrote a few blog posts over the summer about this one maybe back in July). It does all modes on VHF/UHF so 6m FM and repeaters is not an issue. However, it only tunes repeater off-set steps in 50kHz increments. Note the repeater input is 52.940, not an even 50kHz step. Just for the heck of it I keyed up at 52.950 to see if I could get in but the 10kHz difference is too much and I was shut out of the machine.

I don't use this repeater much, but I remember the last time I was on it from the house (it is programmed in to the FT-857D in the truck, no offset problems there) I had to put the radio in to split operation mode. Basically, the radio has two VFO's (all modern general HF+ radios do) so I set the repeater output on VFO-A and the repeater input on VFO-B. When I transmit the radio switches from VFO-A to VFO-B and when I stop transmitting it automatically goes back to VFO-A.

This is pretty cool! Only, the TS-2000 has one more trick up it's sleeve. I can actually program this memory in to the rig! Wohoo!!! No more punching 8 gazillion buttons to set frequencies, mode, split operation, etc to access a repeater...

I know the TS-2000 is a satellite-ready rig, cross band repeats, and does KSSII+. Out of those advanced features I have yet to use one of them in the 7 years I have owned the rig (KB8YQS and I tried to rig up KSSII+ with his TM-D7AG but after 2 hours of reading manuals and getting lost in the menus not being able to get the right data rate set we gave up).

Little did I know the memory on the radio goes above and beyond the normal modes of operation! This older, and well used, TS-2000 taught this user a new trick! That still doesn't make it a great rig, but I was most pleasantly surprised.