Hello to the group. I am a new chum to HF even though being licensed since 1991. I said I would never go HF mobile due to the inefficiencies and ugliness of the antennas, except probably 10 metres. Once I put HF in the shack this year the bug has bitten and now I am looking for a mobile setup with a radio that has a remote mounting head. To this, I am even prepared to drill holes in my eight year old sedan. Not the roof, just the trunk, easier to change antennas. My Ham Dealer is suggesting a Diamond HF40FXW, trunk lip mount to operate on 40 metres, our apparent most popular band and to be tuned to 7.070 MHz. One of my friends tunes his to 7.100 MHz.
This antenna only has a bandwidth of 50 kHz so I am told. I have read some of Alan's web page
http://www.k0bg.com/ and I will not say I understood all of it. There was so much there that I started to switch off. Though I did come away with a better understanding about capacitive coupling, other terms and mounting.
If I may step back a couple of months, I was in a net on my home station chatting to some hams in New South Wales on 40 metres a 1,000 kilometres away S9, when a chap from Adelaide, South Australia popped up and he was mobile. His signal was so weak, I thought why bother. Yet to the credit of the net controller he persisted and welcomed the weak signal ham to the net.
After this experience I have been in a quandary whether I should go for a TS-480 SAT 100 watt and tuner or a TS-480 HX 200 watt? My dealer has a HX though runs it at half power and a few other hams I know also run 100 watts though I think this is because it is the limit of their radios. The 40 amp plus load that the HX puts on the car is something that also concerns me. It is a big draw.
Anyhow I open this to the group for some constructive positive feedback on which way to go. Australia is a big country with a 1,000 kilometres between cities as the norm. Some times much further.
My question to the group. Will the extra 3db make all the difference? Or should I go with the SAT in built antenna tuner to play further up and down the band. Mode of operation SSB.
I did look back in the previous posts and there was one on a similar line of thought, though that was for home station setup, under "Antennas" as the ham there was experimenting with different antennas.
Thank you for your time.
Paul.