Easy 10M Station

[flintstone mop]

Hello Am Folks
I figgerd out an easy way to get a quick 10M station on the air when there might be a possibility for an opening. I can't have a separate station for each band so, I thought of using my modified TS-440 and plug it into one of those solid state leanyears and reduce the RF drive to a few watts and reduce modulation from the TS-440 and away we go with 100 watts of pretty decent modulation. I was surprised that the envelope looked as good as it did using a solid state linear.
I have a Radio Shack HT,whatever it is for 10M transceiver, that I could have used to drive the linear , BUT after monitoring the TX audio in AM, I would be ashamed to be on AM with that tinny tiny sound. I didn't want to try to re-engineer those tiny circuits to make big audio.
Soooo, this was my solution for a quick 10M station and have the East Coast sound to boot.
That's it from 'MOP radio
Fred

[Jim, W5JO]

Mop:  Use the shack HT to drive the lynear on 11 meters. 

[flintstone mop]

Yup,
That's the mystery of 10M. You gotta be ready for those surprises that pop up during the low sunspot years. There really are openings.
One last question, is there a special time of the day that we try, or just throw a call out there and take a chance??
Yea, I  was surprised at the terrible audio from that Radio Shack thing.
I'll check back later today.
Gotta Cushcraft beam 70 feet in the air to launch 10M somewhere.

Fred

[KB2WIG]

Sometimes, I'll park my ratshack ex ceiver on 28.4 with the squelsh set...   ya tend to  get the ducks quacking here; the other method i'd use , in a more upbeat part of the cycle, is to park the ex ceiver on a beacon frequency and set said squelch..Or if ya want to 29.6 is tha FM callin freq, and thar is "repeaters" lurkin just above... I have observed, menny times that several beacons will be beaconing here, and no one speaking, callin CQ, farting etc..Sometimes, I call cq on 29.003  say,every 15 min when i'm working ..  During Field day activities i've heard  and worked stations from Maine to Michigan an hour before sun up. Not bad for summer conditions around low sunspot activity. There is a lot of propigationout there...... (my Lafayette 460 is parked on 50.4 around Dec and May to July)

Last  Sun,  2PM local, dubya6s were strapping into Central New York on 15m, so ya can sometimes use this as an indicator... So peeps say that treating 10m as a vhf band, propigationally, will reap benifits.... eskip, <temp inversions maybee> skat modes.....

Tinnie sound from tandy??  Ya can feed it with a better mic somewhat easily (maybee fattin up a few caps). It still is good, for less than $150....

get on the air .. 50 years from now, most of us will be dead, and then what will you say to your friends? "Now I've got the time to opperate??"

[Pete, WA2CWA]

10 meter openings to South America, and a few into South Africa, have been fair to good over the last several weeks. I would expect these conditions to improve as we get into summer. Asia and Europe stations have been hardly heard even with the 4 element beam at 70 feet pointed in their direction.

[W1QWT]

You might try tuning to 29.039 AM at 4PM Local time here in the Boston area.
There is a group of us on every Sunday at that time from just south of Boston.
You never can tell when there will be an opening. Well maybe some can but I can't.

Regards Q W1QWT

[flintstone mop]

Thanks for the encouragement guys,
I did make a 5/4 contact with Alex LW7DUC in Buenos Aires S. America on 29.000 around 7:45 PM last night. We were both running about 70 watts into our beam antennas. He had a 4element and I am using my Cushcraft at 70 feet.

Fred