"The Beacon":  I heard this guy last week; I was driving home listening to 17m phone, and there was a fair-sized simplex pileup going on.  "Mister Beacon" YELLED his call about every 7-8 seconds.  It didn't matter if the DX station was working someone else, or calling "who is the Nancy Whiskey station?" or anything else; Mr. Beacon keyed up every 7-8 seconds, no matter what, and shouted his callsign, as loudly and automatically as a foghorn.  :-(

Sam, this is just my own opinion and millions of people would disagree.  But I'd suggest turning to the higher bands and listening carefully, no matter WHAT the SFI or K-index is.  Last week the propagation summary said 15m was "poor" for night, but I listened and found a JA calling CQ all alone.  Weak signal, but I worked him ... and then realized JD1 isn't a JA after all.  :-)  Lately on 15m/12/10m (from here on the east coast) I've been having fun working into the Pacific plus VK/ZL/JA after local sunset, even with so-called "poor" propagation.  It's been great!  Weak signals, yes, but very few American hams are up there trying, so the competition is scarce!  :-)  I've worked more FO's in the last month than in several years put together.  And a bunch of ATNOs, too: P2, FK, KH0 ...

So my own suggestion is not to worry much about what the propagation numbers say, and just LISTEN to the bands!  There's fun to be had!   73!  ken

It's the same thing as a henway.   

Having E change to V is a vowel movement.

Wes KC9TNH has a good idea there, about the hidden menus.  And it reminds me of how I solved my own 817 problem.  I'm no guru, but I bought an old 817 last year and the thing just didn't seem to work on HF at all.  I fiddled with it for a day or two before I had the idea of doing a full reset on the 817.  Google "full factory reset FT-817" and you'll find instructions.   I also had to replace the third-party internal battery pack, which had some problem I never did understand.  Once I did both of those, the 817 sprang to life and works normally.  Fun little radio!  73 GL  --ken

Mauri, you're right!  And another great thing about FLDIGI is that it is available for both Windows and Linux.  With both types of machines around the shack, it's nice to have software that will run on either.

I've been using FLDIGI for a year or so, for RTTY and PSK.  I've been very pleased with it--lots of useful options, easy to set up and use, and it does everything I want.   A while back I noticed I could use the waterfall as a sort of spectrum scope--very handy for CW DXpeditions, since you can see (up to 1.5khz or so) what station the DX is answering and drop your own next call near to that one.  And it's handy for zero-beating CW if you have lousy ears, too.  :-)

Since doing that, I've also been using FLDIGI while operating CW, and I've been impressed at how well it follows most CW.  I mostly use my ears, but FLDIGI regularly catches details that I miss, when I am working at near my maximum speed.  I might miss a guy's name or the other guy's serial number in a contest, but FLDIGI often catches it when I didn't.  That's nice!

So another "thumbs up" for FLDIGI.  :-)  73!   -ken

    He could have saved time by saying "/DL"   

It isn't much help now, but I've bought a BUNCH of old Hustler resonator/whip combinations, and a bunch of hamstick and even old CB antennas, used at hamfests.  If I can get them cheap enough, they supply lots of extra whips at low price--very handy to have!

As long as I'm rambling, most of those whips are stainless, and it isn't easy to shorten them cleanly without bending the cut end.  The way I do it is to mark the place where I want to cut the whip, then use my bench grinder to deeply score around the whip.  Then the end can be snapped off pretty easily.  FWIW!

W5WSS--OK, sorry, I wasn't following your question at first.  I'm using the cap hats as KB4QAA says, to increase the efficiency of a mobile HF antenna for a given length.  And I really never worry about SWR as long as it's below 3:1.  I get the antenna resonant at the desired frequency, and the SWR usually isn't any worse than 2:1, more or less.

I haven't used the step-up transformer you mention; as long as my SWR is low enough that the transmitter isn't folding back the power, I don't worry about it.  I have experimentally tested the cap hats change in a given antenna's resonance. Now, I've never actually tested this, but it appears to me from my fiddling around, that getting an antenna resonant at a given frequency is more important to performance than getting the SWR to exactly 1:1.  I have no data to support it, but that's what it feels like to me.

I am, as you say, doing the bit where I have a pre-tuned resonator/whip/hat for each band, each on a quick-disconnect.  To change bands: I pop off one resonator and pop on the one for the band I want.  In the past I've had separate ones: one for the phone portion and one for the CW portion of the band.  And special long ones for trips, where I didn't need to worry about fitting into my parking garage.

Anyway, sorry my rambling replies didn't really help.  Maybe you could use antenna modeling software to try to give you some answers.  Either way, good luck with it, and we'd be glad if you tell us what you wound up doing and how it worked for you!  GL 73!  --ken

No, Jordan, that would have been a better way to do it, I imagine.  :-)  What I did was to pop out the little plastic cover and screw the towing eye into the socket in the chassis.  Then I used a standard aluminum bracket meant to take a 3/8x24 antenna mount on one end, about 6" long, and stuck it on the towing eye with U-bolts.  The antenna connector was in the middle of the eye itself.  :-)  If your browser lets you zoom in on the photo of the little red car, you can see what I'm talking about.

My current car didn't have a towing eye that screws in--it has a loop coming off the chassis, under the body.  The loop is vertical (the old setup was horizontal) and I've got a piece of aluminum bolted to the towing loop, and the antenna mount bolted to the other end of the aluminum.  I'll take a photo if you want.   Strictly improvised, but it seems to work well.

Hope this helps!  Mobile HF is a lot of fun!  73!  --ken

Deputy:  "Sheriff!  Come quick!  Huge bugs are attacking the town!"

Sheriff:  "You'll have to handle it yourself, Barney.  Monk Apollo is on 17m RTTY and the pileup isn't very big right now!"

First off, this is the second time I've posted this link recently, and I apologize for doing it so often.  :-/

I've been using modified Hustler antennas with various homebrewed elements for a few years now--to me, they're a great way to get more performance than a hamstick while still keeping the antennas fairly cheap and small.

Here's the link: 
  http://people.duke.edu/~kuzen001/ac4rdmobile.htm

As I say on that page, capacity hats clearly DO help performance.  But I build my own, with brass rod from the local hardware store.  They're cheap to make and easy to fiddle with, to get a particular resonator/whip combination just where you want it.

I sometimes use either a capacitor or an inductor at the base of the antenna for matching, but it's rarely actually necessary.  What I do is get that antenna resonant (X=0) at the desired point in the band it's for, and the SWR is usually good enough that it doesn't need any further fussing.

Hope this helps; feel free to email if you want to discuss it further.  73!  -ken

Jordan, I've been using a tow-hook mount for several years now.  Seems to work pretty well for me.  I found I still needed braided straps from the antenna mount to the car's chassis; the tow-hook to chassis alone wasn't a good enough RF connection to let the antenna work well.  There are some photos:

  http://people.duke.edu/~kuzen001/ac4rdmobile.htm

 ... that same antenna is on a different car now, on an aluminum bracket bolted to the towing eye beneath the rear bumper.  The shot showing the tow-hook mount on the little red car is higher resolution than you see on the web, so you can zoom in.   Feel free to email me if you want to discuss further.  GL 73!  --ken

JKA, I think you got MY share of good luck for the weekend.  On Saturday it was a pretty morning and the weather has turned fairly warm here in NC.  So I hauled the 817 and a gel-cell out, hooked them up, had trouble with the antenna I wanted to use and spent a half-hour fiddling with that, and finally got ready to have a little QRP fun in the back yard.

I heard a CQ from WT0S on 17m and answered him ... or TRIED to.  Turned out my homebrew paddles apparently got bent out of alignment in storage over the winter.  And I didn't bother to CHECK them before I answered Don's CQ.  :-(  I kept trying to make a basic exchange but the dot paddle either didn't work at all, or it sent lots of extra dots.  I couldn't even get a clean "SRI" out.  :-(  I finally finished the QSO, embarrassed about how bad my code was ... and just then the rain started and I had to start hauling stuff back into the house.

Yep.  JKA, I do believe you got your own share of good luck for the weekend, and MY share too.  :-/

We're all in that boat, really.  We all decide how much expense and bother we are willing to go to, for mobile HF.  I used hamsticks for years, then switched to a Hustler system for a bit better performance.  But I'll probably NEVER bother with any sort of screwdriver antenna--too big, too much money, don't want all the bother of running control wires and choking them, etc.  I'm perfectly happy with my current setup--and it allows a bit of fun experimentation, besides.  The screwdriver owners made their own decisions, too, just as we did.  "Having fun" is the goal--I know I'm having fun with it!    73!  -ken