I was on 3796 this am and KK6ZM was
carrying on and on. I moved Dave, ZL2OK up to 3799 and had a brief
conversation. He was S8 (crashes to S9) but 90% readable from the vertical at his home station. Another ZL
called and I worked him, but it was a big struggle through the noise.
My Ameritron 1306 solid state amp has a blown final FET, so I am using one of my 60 year old Drake L-4B amps and putting out about 750 watts pep. (That's a full 1/2 S-unit below 1,500 watts you know!) *Original Eimac 3-500Z tubes are still good!
The L-4B will put out a little more power, but I only have 50 watts of drive from my SDR / Hardrock 50 combination. In other equipment news, I found water and flash-over burning inside of the fiberglass insulators in the linear loaded elements on my 2 element 40m beam. Those have been replaced and the antenna is back to performing great. I had a failure of a 24vdc coil on a mil surplus coaxial relay between the hardline and separate feed lines for the SteppIR and the 40m beam. That relay has been replaced with a 4 pole relay and Bobby, K7FX is sending me a replacement relay. -- 73 for now, Jay, HP3AK --
