Virtually all new construction on FM broadcast antennas use circular polarization and have been moving that way for 20 years or better. Used to be all horizontal. While 2 Meter amateur doesn't have the same diversity of receiver situations as broadcast does, a circular polarization is useful in reducing multipath issues and selective fading in both applications.

I haven't looked at mfr's specs for a while, but recall that some crossed beams could be rigged for circular polarization. Could be useful as a universal SSB / FM setup, might also prove useful for Sporadic-E openings.

(?)

This might be a VHF question... The M2 "Horizontal Omni Loop" looks like this in the 2 Meter flavor:

http://www.m2inc.com/products/vhf/2m/2mholoop.html

Plus, there is a 6 Meter option which can be stacked with  its smaller sibling:

http://www.m2inc.com/products/6m/6mloop.html

Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with M2, the letter M does not appear in my first, middle, or last names, and I've never been been accused of being squared. Not even by crazy people...

Look for a CR-2025 coin sized 3v lithium battery on the control board located behind the front panel. Could be marked as 'BAT4001' on the board.

That's a 30 second task for a search engine...

http://www.radioamateur.eu/schemi/FT2700_serv.pdf

I have no experience with the tuner... But... I think this has come up before. Looking at the user's manual:

www.mfjenterprises.com/man/pdf/MFJ-993B.pdf

The block diagram on page 30 shows an external jumper has to be installed across the two binding posts with the * between them to connect Antenna 1 to the internal balun.

I think you should hear equal RX band noise from either terminal of the balanced line binding posts through the balun if it's jumpered correctly. If you can hear noise only by touching the jumper across the * and nothing from either 'balanced line' post the balun is probably open...

I'm assuming you're touching only one of the posts at a time and not touching the radio case or tuner ground.

(?)

Yeah, and the queers will be getting married every Saturday night on 3950...!

I won't know what to make of any of this until Rehab Rush tells me what to think.

Speaking from the perspective of a Standard Broadcast DX'er who has screwed around with a variety of low band RX antenna types... If you want to watch your S-Meter dance into the big numbers, go with a longwire through a 9:1 single core voltage balun and a decent ground on the coax shield. Absolutely the best in terms of signal strength, but, they do tend to be noisy.

Next best in terms of raw signal strength is a resonant loop. 6-7 turns of wire on the largest frame you can tolerate indoors. Wire a large-ish variable cap across the loop, wind a single turn loop within the frame and hook the single turn loop to your RX. Adjust the cap and rotate the loop for best signal. Sigs will be less than the longwire, but the noise will also be much less. Between the two the loop will be a much more 'listenable' antenna even if your inner anal-retentive insists you tweak it every time you QSY.

These two antennas are definitely best on the low bands but not so good above 4 MHz or so.

Slightly less in terms of signal strength but the best overall compromise is an outdoor terminated loop. Run a loop of #14 copper outdoors using whatever supports are convenient. Try to get the largest enclosed area inside the loop for the space you have to work with. Use a 4:1 current balun at the feed point and install a 400 - 600 ohm 1 or 2 watt non-inductive resistor approximately midway between the loop ends. You'll have reasonably good RX from the AM BCB through 10 Meters and a quiet noise floor.

The noise floor thing is important as I'm using a terminated loop this winter and it's amazing how much a signal can fade but remain listenable compared to the typical dipole or longwire. A resonant loop has the same properties, but as an SWL antenna it's lame by comparison.

You might consider a seven-ish turn loop with a resistor in the middle and 4:1 balun to your RX if an outdoor loop isn't a good option for you... Hang it on an exterior wall and see what happens.

On a related note: I've had a recurring problem with the battery terminals on the car I use daily. About every six months they needed to be removed, cleaned up with a ScotchBrite pad, re-greased and re-installed.

Fixed the problem every time.

Always used white Lithium grease as it's fairly clean (as far as greases go) and seems to do a good job of making the connection water and oxidation resistant. About two months ago I was de-junking the garage shelves and found two cans of WW II / Korean (?) surplus graphite grease I had bought years ago and forgot about. Some of you may recall them, packed in a brass colored shoe polish style can. The grease had dried out somewhat but a few drops of oil brought it back to a good working consistency.

It smells like.................. Victory.

Time will tell. I'm thinking a slightly conductive grease like a graphite or molybdenum might be the better choice for a compression fit application like battery terminals and ground rod clamps. And it doesn't 'run' like NoAlOx does.

Many radios of that vintage (and newer) use a series of relays to switch bandpass filters between the PA and SO-239. If one or more relays go bad it can affect transmit on some bands without affecting the receiver.

That would be the second thing I'd look at... First thing would be to confirm all switch and configuration settings, including the things you rarely use.

I'm a bit leery about using sandpaper in a situation like that as the residue is non-conductive and solder resistant. Steel wool might be the better choice.

The flip side of this is that I won't use steel wool anywhere near a PC board as it throws shards that are conductive. Given the size of SMT parts it doesn't take much to make an unintentional circuit modification.

I hate it when questions like this go unanimous...

About 12 years ago Fair Radio Sales of Lima, OH advertised surplus Lambda power supplies in several sizes. I ordered two 19 amp / 15 vdc jobbies for $75 each. Visualize an extended length cinder block with a barrier strip on one end. They arrived in near-mint condition and best guess is they were warehouse spares that obsoleted on the shelf.

I can't run a 12 volt radio on a 15 volt supply. Sure I can... The bottom end of the tweaker is ~ 11.5 volts and they run OK Fine at 14.0000 volts. 19 amps isn't heavy enough. Like hell. That's a continuous rating and I have nothing in the shack that will overload them. Voltage regulation is within .1 volt from RX to TX using an IC-756 in RTTY at full output.

Nice thing about them is that they're a fairly straight LM723 design with eight pass transistors instead of the usual four. This should reduce the chance of any one of them shorting out. Not that it can't happen, but...

In all fairness I also have an Astron RS-35A and an Astron RS-7A with a Motorola logo on the front panel. Both are perfectly wonderful, but if you can score a Lambda in good shape at a decent price you'll find the build quality is noticeably better in the Lambda.

Poke around here to see if you can find something similar enough to be helpful:

http://bama.edebris.com/manuals/simpson/

I doubt if every VOM model Simpson made was 100% unique.

Useful Factoids:

Nicola Tesla attended the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz but stopped showing up for class in the first semester of his third year. Never graduated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Thomas Alva Edison attended grade school but there is little mention of anything beyond. One of his teachers thought he was 'addled' as his attention tended to wander.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison

Michael Faraday attended lectures by noted physicists of his day but was not considered a 'gentleman' as he had no nobility in his family. This limited his access to higher education.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday

Alessandro Volta was educated in the public schools of Como, Italy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta

Andre-Marie Ampere was considered a child prodigy and attended the Polytechnic School in Paris as a subordinate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9-Marie_Amp%C3%A8re

If you multiply Volta by Ampere you get...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt

Who had little to do with electrical theory but did invent the modern steam engine which can be used to generate Volta's and Ampere's. Watt attended school irregularly.

Please do not take any of this as a slam against education as I like to think I have one myself and my alumni association keeps reminding me of that by sending out donation appeals every year. Then there's that fancy piece of paper with the word 'Bachelor' on it... But I digress.

A degree, certification, diploma, whatever, is a milepost on the journey of life. A good education will teach someone how to analyze, research and resolve issues while discovering how much more there is to learn.

Same deal with Ham Radio... If you work it right.

"It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree."

--- John Fitzgerald Kennedy on receiving an honorary degree from Yale, June 12, 1963

There is a difference.

Wrong... WA4D... The title of your post was "The Elmer Concept is no longer relevant"

And after the response I've seen it looks to me like WA4D is no longer relevant.

BTW: My Elmer's were the poor bastards with the patience of Job who worked behind the counter at the local TV repair parts house (remember those) and always knew more than I did... Which was what kept me coming back... And the slim but enlightening assortment of tech books at the library.

Also have a cousin who was a Tech back in the days of 2 Meter AM in the 60's and is still licensed today, but lived about 100 miles away so my exposure to the shack was modest. But, it was good to know that radio could be practiced in a dense urban area.

That was my first Q... About seven miles away, but I've done better since.

Good comment on the noisy power supply. Easy way to check that is to unplug the antenna from the rig... If the noise is running anything above an S-1 with no antenna, it's internal.

BTW: I had a curious situation a few months back. Decided to start using the HT again and whenever I put it on the table next to the bed it wouldn't scan. Squelch opened up on noise. What's on the table? A phone and a battery operated 'atomic' clock.

The clock is the noise generator. Kinda' counter-intuitive to think that a clock with a 60 kHz RX inside would throw that much hash on 2 Meters, but it does...

A few years ago there was an article in one of the major Ham mags about an OM trying to track down a noise source that seemed to move around. Took a while, but he finally pegged it to his pager. Sometimes the pager was on his belt, sometimes not. Hence the difficulty in finding the culprit.