As said, terrain plays a role as does the antenna on the receiving station.

A friend of mine has a repeater on a hill 16 miles away which is roughly 400ft higher than where he is. Last night he demonstrated how good it was by putting a handheld in a metal fridge at floor level transmitting on low power about 1W and managing to open the repeater.

I've worked VK from the UK on 20m with 100W - a distance of 12,000 miles with my Little Tarheel II and the stock whip replaced with a 6' one. Every week I work the USA on 20/15m - distances >4,000 miles. Regularly I've made it through pileups where other stations have had beams and 1.5kW.

Whilst not as good as the bigger ones on the lower bands, from 20-10 they give a good account of themselves if you swap the stock whip out.

Because mine was installed on the roof of my car via the hole drilled method it probably works as well as those using full size Tarheels installed by people on hitch mounts and stupid brackets sticking out from under the car.

Not all of us have the ability to install a Scorpion 680 on their car, especially here in Euroland where we don't drive around in massive SUVs and trucks, and when they do the mounting methods used mean they're no better than my antenna on my car.

Please don't buy an ATU if you intend to try and match anything more than 3 or 4:1. Buy an antenna coupler which is at the antenna end and will reduce coax losses due to high SWR.

Remember that using an ATU at the shack, the high SWR is still present on the coax between the tuner and the antenna regardless of what the radio sees.

That is incorrect and came about from some lazy gimp at Kenwood copy'n'pasting the TS480 info.

I have tested the tuner in the TS590 and it will match 10:1 but as someone has already mentioned you can end up with a 10:1 SWR with massively varying figures of reactance and resistance, some of which the internal ATU can't match.

However here's my 2p worth.

DO NOT USE A SHACK END ANTENNA TUNER. They're what, in my opinion, idiots who know no better use once you're using them for any more than a slight mismatch. Any sensible person uses an antenna coupler. With a shack end ATU even though the rig sees 1:1 the high SWR is still there on the coax between the tuner and the antenna so you will get additional losses because of this. With my inverted L and its unmatched SWR of >85:1 on some bands, those losses can be quite significant and remember those losses are both on TX and RX so not only will you not get out as far, you'll not hear as much either.

An antenna coupler such as the SGC230 which connects directly to the antenna feed point avoids all of that. The SWR the rig sees is what is on the coax.

A long standing amateur at my club disagreed with me quite vehemently. He recently came across the chance to get a MFJ antenna coupler quite cheaply so gave it a go on his inverted V doublet. Not only can he hear stuff that wasn't possible before, he is able to work stations with 100W barefoot that he couldn't do running his linear amp at full tilt.

 

All I'll say is that as an owner of an Icom 7000 and a TS590 I respectfully disagree. My TS480 worked better than my Icom 7000 does on HF.

If you only want to do FM on VHF and UHF, a TS480 and separate dualbander will give you far better performance for the same money and in addition you can monitor VHF/UHF repeaters etc whilst working HF - something you can't do with a IC7000 or FT857/897.

No it isn't a good start as it creates ground loops.....

Martin...

Just use flattened RG213 braid and go across the hinges on the boot/hatch and again on the bonnet although I found doing just one hinge on each gave the same reading as doing both sides but still did both sides as a "belt and braces" method. You can do the doors but I noticed no observable difference on my Mondeo with the analyser. I also didn't notice any difference bonding the exhaust to the car either but if you get RFI it is worth doing that.

Don't bother using the FT857 to do this - just use the MFJ and observe the frequency that x=0 is at and what R reads after you've added a strap. By the time I'd stopped adding bonding, the resonant frequency of my Tarheel had dropped over 300kHz.

I've had both.

All the shortcomings of the FTM-350 as stated in the Eham reviews are correct. Yaesu dropped the price in the UK by nearly £200 and threw in a free GPS receiver because it is Yaesu's current "lemon" radio.

I had one two weeks before I took it back to the ham dealer and P/X'd it for a TM-D710. The TM-D710 might not have built in speakers in the head unit but the Yaesu ones were pathetic. You might have to pay money for a GPS receiver but the Kenwood is just so infinitely better it is worth the expense.

Also one thing you can do with the Kenwood which you can't with the Yaesu is link it up to a Garmin and use the Garmin in "Dispatch" mode for messaging and to navigate to a callsign you received through APRS.

I've yet to find a European car that doesn't have a way to feed in power from the engine bay to the passenger compartment. On my Mondeo it was a case of cutting a small slit in the massive grommet where the main wiring loom goes through the firewall.

Kenwood TS480 or Kenwood TS590. The TS590 is the better rig by far for receiver performance.

The FT897 is a FT857 in a larger case with different laid out buttons.

The internals are identical which is why you won't find any substantial differences.

By far the best mobile hf radio is the Kenwood TS480. Easy to use with a 200w version as well.

Owning an original I would say to sacrifice 10m if you have any problems as performance on 10m isn't brilliant. I think there's too much interaction with the 12m element.

SGC230. A quick Google for sgc230 balanced antenna should take you to the site of a G4 who used one with ladderline as well as at the centre of a doublet.

Another vote for the G3TPW Cobbweb although I would build the G3TXQ variant as it is far easier to tune.

20-17-15-12-10m full size dipoles in a 8'x8' antenna.

Sounds like corrosion in one of the connections.