I am a newly licensed technician, study for the general exam. I plan to purchase an HF rig soon and would appreciate suggestions on a good starter rig. I am budgeting $800 for a rig and antenna. I would be happy with a good used rig but I am not sure where to start looking for information. Thanks, Jim KI6ISQ

"Michael Coslo" wrote > I might suggest picking up a tuner such as one of the MFJ 300 watt ones. > Then get ladder line, and throw a general purpose dipole in your trees. > That for my money is the best starter antenna going, and can service you > long after you're a newbie. Some do not like to have to tune the antenna, > but I can say that It is possible to contest with such a setup. I think it's even more than a "starter" antenna -- it's great, loads on just about any frequency, and if decently in the clear will work quite well. When I move to a place with the room for a hundred footer up in the trees, it will be the only antenna I'd really ever need for HF. However, I think a ladder-line fed antenna needs a tuner (i.e., transmatch) that has a pretty beefy balun. I had the MFJ-948 that gave me lots of trouble using a 55' long dipole with ladder line. I learned how to make a bigger and better 4:1 toroid balun to replace the dinky one that came with it... then it worked really well. Right, Cecil? ;-) Howard N7SO

"Steve Bonine" wrote > I agree that a random length dipole fed with ladder line makes a great > antenna. I've used one for years with a traditional tuner. My question: > If I put a balun between the ladder line and the tuner, can I use one of > the automatic tuners built into modern rigs? If this works, it provides > the advantages of one simple antenna for multiple bands without the hassle > of having to retune when changing bands/frequencies. Steve, if the auto tuner can handle very high SWR's.. then sure. ;-) Seriously, I don't think it'd work. I had one of those in-line baluns designed for the purpose of being able to run RG8 coax through the wall to the transmatch. The coax length was maybe 8 feet. My antenna was about 50' long, fed with 450 window line, and I used it on all bands from 10 - 40m. The balun was from RadioWorks and was rated at maybe, I forget.... 4KW? I was running 100 watts and that balun got HOT. After a while, it seemed that the balun broke down from the excessive heat and was no longer useable. (Can that really happen?) That should give you an idea about the auto tuner idea for this kind of setup. It's really not that hard to re-tune a transmatch. Find the right settings for each band [segment] and write down the numbers. There are typically just three transmatch knobs to re-set, and it can be done in five seconds. OK, maybe seven seconds. ;-) Howard N7SO

>I agree that a random length dipole fed with ladder line makes a great >antenna. I've used one for years with a traditional tuner. My >question: If I put a balun between the ladder line and the tuner, can I >use one of the automatic tuners built into modern rigs? If this works, >it provides the advantages of one simple antenna for multiple bands >without the hassle of having to retune when changing bands/frequencies. Depends a lot on the radio and on your individual installation. The ATUs built into a lot of modern rigs are of the "line flattener" persuasion. They're intended to be used with an antenna which isn't too awfully far from a resonant 50-ohm load. As a rule of thumb, I'd say that most of them can match a 3:1 load, some of them will cope with most loads of up to 5:1, and few of them can handle 10:1 loads at all well. For what it's worth, the ATU in my Kenwood TS-2000 won't even attempt to match anything above 10:1. It'll struggle with a lot of loads between 5:1 and 10:1, depending on whether they're low-Z, high-Z, and/or substantially reactive. I suspect that this ATU is probably fairly typical of modern rigs. External tuners often have a substantially wider matching range than an internal line-matcher, and probably have significantly lower losses when handling difficult loads. An unbalanced tuner plus a robust balun is probably going to work better than a rig's ATU plus a balun. The balun can be a problem in either case, with difficult (high-Z) loads - it's not easy to build a balun which has a high enough choking reactance to really balance out the line currents well if it has to work into, say, 5000 ohms or so. Link-coupled tuners seem to be a better technical choice for such difficult loads, although (as per your comment) they aren't the most convenient beasts in the world. If your doublet length and feedline length leave you with reasonably tolerable in-the-shack feedpoint impedances on the bands that you care about, then you might want to consider a sort of hybrid approach. Use a robust balun to connect to the feedline, and feed the unbalanced side of the balun to a (bandswitched) set of L networks. You'd want one L-network per band, selected to bring the impedance down to somewhere in the 3:1 SWR range (or so) in the band center. The output of the L networks would go to the transceiver. With this approach, the L networks would perform the "gross" tuning of the antenna feedpoint Z, and bring it down to the point at which the transceiver's internal ATU could do the rest of the matching across the full width of the band. Since the L networks wouldn't need to provide an exact match for a 1:1 SWR, selecting the component values and tuning the networks would be simplified. -- Dave Platt <dplatt@radagast.org> AE6EO Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

"Steve Bonine" <spb@pobox.com> wrote in message news:13fjbofrs4qkq1b@news.supernews.com... > I agree that a random length dipole fed with ladder line makes a great > antenna. I've used one for years with a traditional tuner. My I would strongly suggest against a random length doublet. A non-resonant doublet will have impedances all over the place. At some freuencies it cannot be matched at all, at others the losses in the tuner make you wish you hadn't been able to tune it. The trick is keeping those nasty spots out of the ham bands. There are a number of G5RV type antennas that are doublets whose length has been chosen to keep those nasty spots out of the ham bands. Spend a few minutes looking up the right lengths for your doublet and avoid potentially a lot of grief. Random length, of course, is random. you COULD get lucky. Or not .... ..

"AF6AY" wrote Lots of good stuff snipped.... > Now ANY impedance-matching tuner will let one load up just > about anything. All that serves is to transfer the most RF power > into a load. What is NOT known is WHERE all that RF is going. > Unless some ham has a balloon-borne sensor and data transfer > gizmo, NOBODY can know just where the pattern is going to be. > Big trees WILL affect the pattern, especially changing it between > dry and wet climate times and between different kinds of trees. > So will structures and assorted conductive things (aluminum > patio covers, small garden sheds, power, phone, and TV cables) > all within the near-field (within five or so wavelengths). Even > some houses which have had aluminum siding added on > compared to similar houses with just wood or stucco or brick > siding. > Everyone's residential location varies greatly and only a very > few are "perfect" (as to the antenna analyzer programs). One > can load up practically anything with a tuner but only the shape > and arrangement of conductive elements is going to determine > where most of the RF goes to (or comes from). No tuner can > help that. I had to leave the important stuff... sorry to make everyone scroll down.... Len, I'm confused as to just what you're specifically referring to. Do you mean a doublet fed with balanced line (300 or 450 ohm window line) to a transmatch in the shack is something you don't recommend? Or are you referring to this system fed with coax to an autotuner? It'd seem to me that, as long as the system (fed with window line to keep the serious losses down to negligible) is in the clear, the transmission line is 90 degrees to the doublet for the "required" distance... all should be fine and the radiation pattern should emanate properly from the antenna itself, not so much the transmission line. ? Howard N7SO

I have an ICOM T-90A (it's my first radio). It's a good "klunker" handheld radio for beginners. There's a lot you can learn with it; you can't break it unless you intentionally and deliberately try to. Some things are annoying, like the fact that the battery charge takes 14 hours, unless you have a special charger, and you can't transmit while the battery is charging, but all this is safety-oriented, apparently. -Mindraker <jimnlacy@pacbell.net> wrote in message news:XUTIi.796$6p6.319@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net... >I am a newly licensed technician, study for the general exam. I plan to >purchase an HF rig soon and would appreciate suggestions on a good starter >rig. I am budgeting $800 for a rig and antenna. I would be happy with a >good used rig but I am not sure where to start looking for information. > > Thanks, > > Jim KI6ISQ

<N2EY@AOL.COM> wrote > The big problem with HF/MF antennas for the radio amateur is that > the best choice is so dependent on the site and what the amateur > intends to do. This is why it is impossible to give general advice > about HF antenna types that is any good, without knowledge of > the available resources and intended use. You're right. We've (I've) made assumptions of property conditions that may not exist for the OP. My little 50 footer with ladder line was technically in the clear, but its apex was only 7 feet above the flat roof. The transmission line could only drop straight down for about 6 feet, then run suspended across the top of the roof for 20 feet, then down to the shack. Yet I worked DXCC with it, including serious long-haul, from 10 - 40 meters. We don't know the OP's situation. Howard N7SO

"Michael Coslo" wrote > A few years back I did a modeling of an antenna that was 1/4 wavelength > long at I think 40 meters. The SWR of the antenna was approaching > infinite. If I get the chance, I'll model it again tonight - I'm doing the > mass mailing for the PAQSO party tonight, and if all goes well, I should > have a little time. I'd think a strict 1/4 wave, regardless how it's fed, would be pretty horrific on that specific band. (But I couldn't explain why...it's just from what I've read.) That's why I made mine (55 feet) so that it was under 1/4 wave for 40, and more than 1/4 for all the higher bands. As for window line being affected by water... yes, it is, but I never found it a big deal. As I recall, I just retuned some of the transmatch settings to accommodate. I used both 450 and 300 ohm window line... and even tv twinlead. What fun I had one night when I heard a cat playing on my flat roof, and I could tell he was playing with the transmission line that was suspended about a foot off the roof... I transmitted 100 watts and heard him take off like a shot! BTW, I wonder what happened to the OP? Did we drive him away? ;-) Howard N7SO