I spent the better part of 2010 operating lots of CW with 10 watts out from an Icom IC-703 Plus. And I didn't sign anything after my call. Admittedly, I have some decent antennas and a great hilltop QTH and didn't feel compelled to explain to anyone before establishing the QSO that my output was a few db lower than the 100-watters. But if you want to sign QRP after your call, go for it. It's still low power even though it technically doesn't meet the accepted definition of QRP but let's face it, the 5-watt limitation is kind of arbitrary. Mainly because you have to set the limit somewhere to define QRP. But it seems to me it could have just as easily been set at 4 watts or 12 watts or whatever. So sign QRP at 10 watts if you want. You just won't be able to claim any QSOs for various QRP awards which might or might not be important to do.

I've operated QRP off and on for more than four decades -- since my high school days. Often, I've taken the attitude of "no begging," which I personally define as not signing QRP after one's call. But I candidly admit that sometimes I have broken my own rule and signed QRP if I thought it would help me break a big pile-up or get someone to answer my CQ, etc. Since this is hardly a "criminal matter" and society will not suffer one way or the other, I say do whatever feels right at the time.

So how was it operating with 10 watts out for many months? Honestly, when I was on CW, I didn't feel too disadvantaged at all compared to 100 watts out. I still called a lot of CQs and got many replies. Answered a lot of CQs and had lots of DX and ragchew QSOs on 80 through 10 meters. I made a few SSB contacts with the 703 but didn't particularly like the SSB audio quality on receive so just didn't do much of it. A few times on 40 I ran into a fellow in Minnesota running the same rig at the same power level. We had some great QSOs on 40 meters with good signals and never faded out, etc. Even broke several DX pile-ups with 10 watts but soon decided that calling right with everyone else was doomed in most cases so instead I began going to the very top of a DX pile-up, determining the highest frequency on which I heard anyone calling and then I went just a hair higher and sat there calling. More often than not, eventually the DX ops heard me and I was in the log. Sometimes I got lucky and got the QSO quickly and other times not.

72 and GL,
Dave, N4KZ

I own a TS-590 and TS-2000. On HF, the 590 has a superior receiver. Much quieter and the newer DSP is much better than the one in the 2000. I can easily get rid of splatter and QRN using the 590's DSP features that I can't on the 2000. I primarily use the 2000 on 2 meter SSB these days.

As for the transmitter output, I see no problem with the 590. It's apparent to me that on SSB, the 590's output meter is measuring average power because my outboard PEP wattmeter reads 100 watts out on SSB. In fact, a little more than that on some bands -- as much as 110 watts out. But the rig's meter function only kicks up to about 2/3 of the scale. When I switch to CW, the rig's meter goes up to 100 watts out. But I trust the external meter more in this case.

There's no issue with SSB output on the TS-590. There is a small issue with the rig's meter since it's apparently showing average output instead of PEP. No biggie, as far as I'm concerned.

Many hams don't understand the difference between PEP output and average output. I didn't either several years ago when I bought a Radio Shack HTX-10 10-meter SSB rig for the car. On FM, it put out about 30 watts but on SSB my meter only measured 8 watts out. I was having a fit until a more experienced ham explained to me on the air about average vs. PEP output. My then-wattmeter only measured average. The meter was too slow to show the rig's PEP out and I was fretting about nothing.

If your wattmeter requires external power -- a battery or wall-wart transformer -- then it might be measuring PEP output but if it requires no external power source, in all likelihood it's only measuring average power which will give accurate readings on AM, FM and CW but not on SSB where the voice peaks are fast and difficult to measure.

There's nothing really wrong with the TS-590's SSB output. It's at 100 watts or better. Now as to why the rig's meter appears to be showing average output, I don't know.

73, Dave, N4KZ

Still no card but got my LoTW confirmation several weeks ago. I chased S21 for years so the quest is partially over thanks to LoTW. But for a $5 donation via PayPal I would have expected a card by now.

73, N4KZ

"So I'd get rid of the ladder line."

Been using open-wire and ladder line for 42 years now. Always works well.

Countries worked: 340
WAZ
5 Band WAC
WAS
5 shy of DXCC Honor Roll

Personally, I would use open wire and variations of it over coax for feeding a wire antenna anytime.

73, N4KZ


73,   

I have been using 80-meter horizontal loops since 1998. I've had 3 of them at 3 QTHs. They have been excellent antennas and all three have been fed with 450-ohm twinlead with excellent results. With the first two loops, I ran the twinlead from the antenna feedpoint through a metal window frame and to the back of an old manual MFJ KW antenna tuner with a built-in 4:1 balun. At first, I wrapped the twinlead with a lot of electrical tape and ran it between the window and metal frame. Yes, I know. It's less than ideal and I can hear the purists out there grinding their teeth now. But it worked fine for me. I only ran 100 watts in those days. I would not attempt that technique with any substantial amount of power.

At the next QTH, I made my own window feed-thru similar to the one sold by MFJ. It worked fine and was an improvement over the electrical tape technique.

By the time I moved to my current QTH in 2002, I took a different route. I rented a hammer drill and drilled a 4-inch diameter hole in my foundation right above the basement ham shack. I put PVC through the hole, sealed around it and ran my 3 coax cables, rotor control cable, another cable AND my 450-ohm twinlead through it. Again, this works fine for me although it's probably less than ideal because in a perfect world my twinlead should not be in close proximity of any metal. But it's only for about 4 inches and seems to have little effect on my antenna system.

These days, I run the 450-ohm twinlead to a heavy-duty DX engineering balun mounted on the wall. From the balun, I run about 6 feet of coax to my MFJ-998 KW autotuner. This tuner doesn't have a built-in balun -- that's why I use an external one. But the convenience of an autotuner is makes the external balun worth the expense and effort.

As with most anything, there are different ways to feed a loop antenna. But from my experience, I think running twinlead almost all the way from the tuner to the antenna makes for a simple, low-loss way to do this. I prefer twinlead because of the low losses and it makes my loop an effective multiband antenna. The use of coaxial cable from the antenna to the shack somewhat complicates the situation, in my book. Needlessly so too. For my money, twinlead is much cheaper than coax, less lossy and allows me to use my loop across the entire HF spectrum and even on 6 meters. And it's not as hard to work with as some think.

I have used my 80-meter loop to work 237 countries on 40 meters since 2002. Seems to work well.

73, Dave, N4KZ

I agree that an inexpensive external tuner would open up some options for wire antennas, including your existing end-fed long wire. However, don't be quick to dismiss a ground-mounted vertical because of the radials and lawn mower issues. I have used ground-mounted verticals for years and had zero lawn mower issues because I used small gauge wire for the radials.

I didn't even bury my radials. I wanted until the fall after the grass mowing season was finished for the year and laid down about 50 radials. I used lawn staples to keep them in place and by spring they had self-buried and could not be seen. Over the next several years, I did run over two of the radials but since the wire was small -- about 22 gauge -- there was no damage to the mower.

In the meantime, the vertical made an outstanding antenna at minimal cost.

73, Dave, N4KZ

I used a Butternut HF6V for years with excellent results on all bands. My antenna was ground mounted -- about 120 feet behind the house. For radials, I used small gauge insulated wire (22 gauge) I purchased in the Dayton Hamvention flea market for a few bucks. I laid down 60 radials -- about 50 feet long each. I tied them to a radial plate I bought. I did not bury the radials. I stapled them to the ground every few feet. I did this in the fall after the grass growing season was over. By spring, the radials had self-buried and were no longer visible. Over the next several years, I lost two radials to the lawn mower. I didn't replace them. I used the vertical mainly on 80, 40 and 30 meters and worked tons of DX with it. The antenna eventually was victimized twice by ice storms. So much ice collected that the antenna laid over horizontal and the aluminum broke just above the feed point. I repaired it after the first storm but it was not easily repaired after the second. I took a job promotion soon afterwards and we moved and I gave the antenna away to a new ham.

Excellent, excellent performance. No need to bury the radials. No need for big wire for the radials. I think bigger wire would have been an easier target for the lawn mower with worse results for wire vs. blade. The small wire caused no mower damage whatsoever. But if I had used No. 14 wire, watch out.

I wish I had the space at my current QTH for another Butternut. If I could duplicate the set-up I had at the other QTH, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Think about it -- the vertical worked well on a bunch of bands, was easy to install by myself while STANDING on the GROUND. Easy to maintain by myself WHILE STANDING on the GROUND. Easy to tune. And on and on and on. And while my current multi-band yagi on my crank-up tower works outstandingly, it requires a lot of maintenance, cost me a small fortune for the whole yagi/tower set-up and causes me frequent stress during high winds from thunderstorms. I've been known to run out in the middle of the night to crank it down when storms approach or even drive home from the office during the workday when storms approach. Of course, when I nab a DXpedition on the first call, I tend to forget all the negative stuff.

But verticals work well -- when properly installed -- and are free of many of the negatives associated with a more complex antenna and antenna support structure.

73, Dave, N4KZ

For a few months, I've been doing A/B comparisons between my Icom Pro 3 and new Kenwood TS-590. The Icom has a 15 khz wide roofing filter - as a result of its up conversion high first IF design. On 160, 80, 40, 20 and 15 meters, the Kenwood uses down conversion with a low first IF and has a 2.7 khz roofing filter for SSB. Sounds like a big difference, huh? That's what I thought until I started my comparisons -- same signal, same antenna - just flipping quickly between the rigs with a coax switch. Most of the time, I can tell little or no difference when on SSB. That's under casual operating conditions. But when I have done my A/B testing during a major contest, the Kenwood's narrow filter does come into play but only if I'm listening to a signal with a huge, rock crushing signal very close in frequency.

Here's one such example. During the spring I was doing the A/B receive test during a big DX contest. I was on 40 meter SSB. I heard a weak LZ station calling CQ contest over and over and getting no answers. Then a strong U.S. station opened up just a couple khz away. On my Icom, the LZ could still be heard but most of the time he was not readable. He was covered up with SSB splatter. But on the TS-590, he was perfectly copyable at all times. It took a lot of knob turning on the Kenwood to get there but I could make him 100 percent copyable.

I've encountered that situation several times but only during big contests. During my normal casual ragchewing or sometimes DX chasing, I've yet to encounter the exact same scenario. So, for me, the Icom and its wider roofing filter is adequate at least 95 percent, or more, of the time. And as an overall package -- bandscope, Dual Watch receiver, size -- I still like the Icom a bunch. But its receiver isn't quite as good as the Kenwood but most of the time the Icom is still plenty good enough.

On CW the situation is much the same with the Kenwood being better but only under circumstances that are fairly unique to contests -- tons of strong, close signals often only a few hertz apart. Of course, keep in mind that on CW the TS-590 has a 500 Hz roofing filter. That's much better than a 3 KHz roofing filter -- particularly when the strong signals are within that 3 KHz range, which they will often be.

So, if you like to contest to any degree, narrow roofing filters can be beneficial from time to time but if you turn off your rig and run and hide when contests invade the bands, save your money because narrow roofing filters probably won't help often enough to justify the expense.

Not a very scientific reply to your question but just some real-life observations. Frankly, I expected to see a bigger difference between the Icom and Kenwood but how much difference one sees is very much dependent on your preference of operating -- casual ragchewing vs. competitive DXing or hardcore contesting.

73, Dave, N4KZ

I'ver been using my Pro 3 and ALS-600 amp together for nearly 3 years. No issues. The connections between the two are easy to figure out and quite logically labeled. My amp has auto bandswitching which essentially turns the rig into a 500 watt transceiver. I run an 80-meter loop antenna on several bands and use an MFJ-998 autotuner which is also interfaced to the Pro 3 and the amp. The only button I have to push is the Tune button on the Icom -- which puts the rig in a 10-watt CW tuning mode, interrupts the amp relay keying line and activates the MFJ autotuner. It's slick and very convenient.

73, Dave, N4KZ

This is an informative topic because I've been hearing this signal for a while on 12 meters but mistakenly took it to be something local - like a switching power supply in my own home or a neighbor's house. Only recently after mentioning it to a W6 that I realized that others were hearing it too - over much of the USA, in fact. I'm going to file a report with the IARU and also with Chuck, K0BOG, at ARRL.

Getting rid of intruders, even the unintentional ones, can be a long process but it's still time well spent by us in defending our most precious commodity - our spectrum.

73, Dave, N4KZ

No legal reason not to call CQ on 2 meters but it's generally not a practice used very often. Seldom, in fact. On HF, people are tuning up and down a band so it's good practice to call CQ for 30 seconds or so. Maybe a little longer. You're hoping someone will tune across your signal and answer your CQ. But on 2 meters, you are generally listening to just one frequency at a time - particularly on a repeater - so the need to make a long CQ call is not necessary. That's why it's better in that situation to just announce your call and that you are listening. It serves the same purpose as calling CQ but takes less time since you essentially have a captive audience listening to the repeater's frequency. All that said, I have been known to call CQ on a 2 meter simplex frequency or so - just to do something different and hopefully attract enough attention from someone out there to get a call. I recall being gently chastised by a person or two for doing that - newcomers who felt they had to lecture the old timer!

BTW, from time to time I hear folks on HF who call CQ for just 5 seconds or so. That's really not enough time to attract much attention from folks tuning around. Making your CQ at least 20-30 seconds is more effective in getting a QSO started.

73, Dave, N4KZ

Yep, my novice period from Feb. 1969 to September of that year when I upgraded to general class was a magical time in my 42 years of ham radio. The wonder and amazement of it all -- my first QSO was on 80 meters with someone in Connecticut - I was too nervous to copy much of his transmissions - to working my first DX station on 15 meters - a ZD8 - and the several QSOs with a ZL named Matt who'd transmit on SSB in the 15 meter novice band while working us novices who were toiling away on CW. My novice call was WN4MEN so I delighted when I worked WN6EGG and he sent me a QSL with the word EGG cut out from an egg carton and pasted on the card. And I was thrilled to work another novice on 15 meters who was in the Air Force at Ramey AFB in Puerto Rico and discovering he was from my small hometown in Kentucky. What a weird coincidence that was!

My novice station consisted of a Heath DX-100 that I bought used from AES. Ray, K9KHW, took my phone order. My receiver was a National NC-98 that I bought from my local Elmer. A couple years later I sold the NC-98 at a hamfest in Kentucky and unloaded - literally - the DX-100 at an Indiana hamfest right after college. So image my surprise in September 2009 when I was walking through the flea market at the Louisville, Ky. hamfest and found my original NC-98 for sale. Not one like it. The ACTUAL receiver that I had owned and used during my novice days. I bought it back, of course, and now it sits proudly once again in my ham shack. But wait, there's more! That same evening, I got on 2 meter SSB to work a little in the ARRL VHF contest and who did I work but Ray, K9KHW, in Milwaukee - the same guy who sold me my novice transmitter.

What are the odds of buying back my original novice receiver AND working on the air the guy who sold me my original novice transmitter and all on the same day!??

Yep, the novice license was a magical time for me.

73, Dave, N4KZ
ex-WN4MEN, WB4MEN, WB9LHS, WB8TOB, KJ8S and WE4K

Once upon a time - in the late '50s and early 60's - there an antenna company based in Oklahoma. It was called Hornet and made tri-band yagis. Eventually, as I recall, Hornet was bought out by Swan which continued marketing the antennas under its brand. I Googled Hornet, as you might want to do, and came up with a 2008 posting from NU0R. He said he had purchased a Hornet tri-bander from a silent key estate sale and had a manual and was willing to send out a copy if anyone needed one. This is a shot in the dark because I don't know if the Swan antenna kept its original Hornet design or if it was modified.

73 and good luck,
N4KZ

For reliable communications over a 50-mile path, personally, I would try 2 meters. And if maximum reliability is an issue, I would try 2 meter SSB instead of FM. FM is great as long as the signals are moderate to strong. Under that circumstance, it gives reasonable signal to noise ratio -- which is always one of the final determining factors as to what signals you can copy. But when propagation drops down and FM signals get noisy, their signal to noise ratio becomes poor. That's when SSB shines and shows how superior it is to FM on VHF.

A few years ago, a buddy of mine - who was skeptical that SSB was superior to FM on 2 meters - participated with me in a test. I stayed home and ran my home station on a vertical antenna on 2 meter SSB while he ran mobile. We both had 2-meter multimode rigs. We started on FM simplex and he drove out about 25 miles where the FM signals began breaking up. It made communications difficult. So we then flipped over to SSB while on the same frequency and antennas, he was then totally readable.

He drove out another 15 miles or so. By then, the FM signals were just barely breaking the squelch and were not readable. But again we flipped over to SSB and signals were quite readable both ways. Weak but completely intelligible. When signals get weak, FM loses its signal to noise advance and the advantage instead goes to SSB.

73 and good luck,
Dave, N4KZ

Eric,

Welcome to 10-meter propagation. You will notice that you can regularly hear hams hundreds or thousands of miles away while someone as close to your Tennessee QTH as North Carolina is actually far too close to hear. Their signal is skipping over you. Ten meters is good for local communications -- out to 30 miles or so -- or good for long distance communications. But when signals are in-between those distances, you probably won't hear them. That's normal.

It sounds like your Ranger rig actually uses upper sideband in the CW position. That's not unusual and that's why you could copy some signals while the rig was in CW mode. On lower sideband, they are unintelligible because they were transmitting on upper sideband, which is normal for 10 meters and all the ham HF bands on 20 meters and above.

Welcome to ham radio. And like some of the others said, the Ranger is not the best pick for a ham rig. For what it cost, you probably could have bought a used HF all-band HF rig which would be far more useful -- particularly after you upgrade to general class.

73 and good luck,
Dave, N4KZ