Quote:
I assume you are using a Tuner?? and not to sound ignorant, but where do you have it located in the feeder line. The ladder line should come directly to the antenna tuner without touching ANY METAL then to a Wattmeter and to the Transceiver. If you are getting good SWR on you Wattmeter loaded into your antenna there should not be a problem unless you are letting the win dow touch metal or in very close proximity??

Let us know?

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The ladder line feeds into the balun under the eve of the house, then the balun runs to the tuner in my shack about 50ft of LMR400 to the tuner, that goes to my amp, then to my radio.

I went over the antenna with a fine tooth comb today, found one spot where the ladder line made a twist, which put the two sides in close proximity to each other. I fixed that, and then took the balun down and cleaned the connectors on it, tightened up everything and put it back together....Not sure what helped...the twist in the ladder line or the connectors in the balun.

But the SWR no longer jumps as I tune the amp...and the amp is now push a solid 500 watts out into the antenna.

I feel like there should be more coming from the amp however, I get just a hair under 1000 watts into a dummy load, the antenna seems to be loading up good and signal test with some friends show a big kick in my signal to them going from 200 to 500 watts {barefoot to amp} as  you would expect....

But still open to idea's why the amp will not put out at least 800 to 900 watts on the antenna when I get 1000 on the dummy load. Specially since the antenna is loading up well.

SWR is remaining perfectly flat at 1.1

I have a wire dipole in an inverted V format that running barefoot on my FT2000D {200 watts} works wonderful, fair performer on 160, but on 80 meters it gets me out a good signal and I hear pretty well.

But where the problem comes in is when I try to use my amp......

On a dummy load my SB 221 tuned for 80 meters will put out a sold 1,000 watts, when I tune up my antenna and put the amp on the antenna I can not get it to put out more than 300 to 400 watts and at times when I peak the amp it will cause my swr to spike. But with low swr's, the amp will just not tune up.

Antenna is a dipole, with 35ft of ladder line, it's spaced out with PVC spacers to keep it 18 inches from my tower and comes straight down with a PVC spacer at the top {the apex is about 60ft up my tower} the ladder line comes down and under the eve of my house I have an MFJ Balun Box model MFJ-912, the coax feeds back to an MFJ 989D tuner, then to the amp and then to the radio.

I pulled the balun this morning to check to see if it was arcing inside and I'm not finding any signs of that.

I'm open to suggestions, would like to run 500 to 800 watts on 80 meters.

I highly recommend the Heil PR-781 microphone. It is an end firing microphone so make sure you place it properly on a bomb, desk mount, etc.

I have 8 of them wired into all of my radio's and from FM operation on 2 meters, 220 and 440 I get outstanding audio reports.

I use them on my HF rigs {FT 2000D, Icom 756 PRO III, and FT 920} and always receive very positive audio comments.

It is a good clean natural sounding microphone and you will be very pleased with it.

I resolved the problem with a 2nd restart of the processor. Something some place locked up.

That is a first for me with any radio......


Does anyone know if you can perform the firmware upgrade with a macintosh for the FT2000D?

I recently purchased 2 FT 2000D used. But both in perfect shape and very few hours from a trusted ham.

They have worked perfect for the past 2 months, until today. The one when you turn it on powers up just fine and then the S meter pegs all the way over and there is NO audio. I have reset the processor, and checked everything I can think of.

It does this on all bands, all modes, etc. When you key the transmittor it puts out full power....Just on recieve NO audio and full scale on the S meter?

Any thoughts

That is not true a properly installed chain link fence is an outstanding ground radial. If you mount your antenna on the chain link fence you will get best results, but next to it and a solid ground connection.

Your vertical radials work best located 4 to 6ft above the ground, since most of us can not do that, we lay them on and in the ground slightly.

But using the chain link fence you are getting the best of both worlds, a ground radial that is up off the ground, and is also well connected to the ground.

I know 4 people who are using chain link fences for ground radials and in every single instance they are getting outstanding operation off of a simple vertical antenna.

I have a friend who has about 350ft of chain link fence, he mounted a vertical there....and the performance is nothing short of amazing.

John,
      The FT 920 is an excellent radio, I have owned two of them over the years and both are still running in my shack and sitting next to an Icom 756 PRO II, and 2 FT 2000D's and  Kenwood TS 2000 still gets a lot of air time.

They will work fine for CW as they come out of the box, the filters will add some benefit, but you will never miss them. My wife does CW on one of the FT 920 regular and enjoys it.

You made a good choice with the FT 920 and it will give you a lot of years of great radio operating

Has anyone tried the noise canceling speakers? Do they work, are they worth the extra cost?

Benefits and negatives?

I have a ham friend who is looking at different options to cleaning up noise issues and he asked me this today?

I have no experience with them so looking to see what I can learn about them.

Well interesting enough we got to test it with two 6 meter band openings sunday evening and this afternoon.

I stopped using the 80ft high 5 element beam, as the 11 element is showing on these contacts an average of 5S units higher gain.

I will be pulling the 5 element down and putting the 11 element up on the high tower this spring.

Should see as much of a gain in local as distant operation that way.

Well interesting enough we got to test it with two 6 meter band openings sunday evening and this afternoon.

I stopped using the 80ft high 5 element beam, as the 11 element is showing on these contacts an average of 5S units higher gain.

I will be pulling the 5 element down and putting the 11 element up on the high tower this spring.

Should see as much of a gain in local as distant operation that way.

A KLM 6M5 is 9.7dBd, and a KLM 6M10 is 11.7dBd. Thats only 2dB difference or less than half an S-unit (assuming 6dB per S-unit). The height difference will typically have far more effect than that.
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The cushcraft is rated at 6 or 7 dbi, the KLM 50-52-11 is rated at 14 dbi, so it is a big gain.

I am assuming the performance hit on the much higher gain antenna is due to the low height compared to the 5 element cushcraft. I can live with this local, it is the long distanace 500, 1000, 1500 mile operation I am looking for.

I would love to put the 11 element up on the tall tower, and i may do this some day in the future, but right now with what I have up there, this would add WAY to much wind loading.

I have an older KLM 11 element 6 meter beam, we just put it together and it's got excellent SWR and appears to be working well.

I know on local ground wave antenna height will have some impact, on tower #1: which is a 80ft tower and a 15 ft mast, I have a 5 element 6 meter cushcraft beam at about 85ft. 5ft below that is a dual phased set of 13 element 2 meter beams, and 5 ft above that is a 2 meter G7-144 omni. SWR is 1.4

On the lower tower.....which is 35ft....I have the just installed KLM 11 element beam at exactly the 35ft mark and then 5 1/2 to 6ft above that beam is my M2 6 element Killer Tri-Bander.

The 6 meter beam has 1.1 to 1.2 SWR.

Now here is the confusing part. While I expect better ground wave on the higher antenna, the massive gain on the 11 element beam should make up for some of that difference.

Speaking to one ham friend who is SW of me by about 5 miles, with both of my beams aimed at him....There is a 3 S units difference in my signal on him and his on me....with the 11 element beam losing.

On another friend who is about 5 degrees north of the first ham and about 2 mile further...He gets an S10 on me with the 5 element beam and an S9.5 on the 11 element beam.

Thoughts?

I was expecting more out of the 11 element beam. Due to the total lack of band opening since we installed the 11 element beam this morning I can not test for distance differences.

But sure seems like the 11 element is missing something on the performance scale.

how far apart are you're antennas and what is the max power you run?