Starting Up My 19-Set Mk III Cdn

[David Dunlop]

Met up with my friend this morning and he popped over with a number of pieces of test equipment. Nice to know someone with 40 plus years of experience in radio broadcast engineering and a seasoned amateur on top of that!

He was as pleased as I was to run my 19-Set and new dipole system through its paces and find it is all working together so nicely.

3885 khz will be our frequency of choice Saturday. It is right smack in the sweet spot for my dipole. We are going to try and connect at 17:00 hours Saturday Evening CST. Or if you prefer, 23:00 hours UTC (GMT). We were going to try a little later in the evening, but HF traffic increases significantly in the evening and we wanted a more quiet time, just in case either of us ran into issues picking up our signals.

The only potential fly in the ointment at the moment is the fact solar flare activity has been spiking the last few days. Said interference just bumped up from a G1 Level to G2. If it hits G3 by Saturday there won't be much of anything to find or listen to on the ethers.

David

[Mike K]

I think it will go well . Maybe the ground wave will reach that distance but the dipole might be mostly skywave energy. A vertical might be better ?

I have never had a 19 set on the air. I did have one QSO with a NO. 11 set on 40 meter cw ...with a VK5 . Drifting all over the band .

Being a transceiver some of the mixing stages in the 19 set are common to tx and rx. With the coarse tuning dial of a 19 set It's so easy to "pick out" one of the unwanted products of the mixer and you can unknowingly transmit on a frequency outside of the band.

[David Dunlop]

Rats!

It was a “NoGo” this time round. My set was up for it but I received a call from my friend late in the morning to advise he was having some dipole issues and help was on the way to try and get the aerial repaired. A Wind in the Willows development.

Will plan for another day once his aerial is back up and running.

David

[Mike K]

bad luck

One day we will try a VK to VE contact on the 40 meter band using WW2 radios ! I've done it before with US stations , with a simple dipole antenna. Must admit the signals were extremely weak but we exchanged call signs so that's a QSO in my book. How is your morse ?