Alas, Poor Mimi, I knew her well (with apologies to Billy Shakespeare).
Tomorrow I must bid goodbye to someone who has been with me for many years. She was always close to my heart but it's time to let her go.
Mimi is my heart murmur.....Yes, I named my murmur "MiMi" and tomorrow I will be the recipient of a replacement aortic heart valve and MiMi will be gone. However, my chances of having a fatal heart attack will be greatly decreased. Yeah, me!
Just thought I'd share.
Now, on to other ham radio related "stuff".
I have been toying around with my new/old ICOM IC-706 MkII G transceiver. Although 20+ years old, it is a solid performer (provide some additional IF filtering is installed) even by today's standards. Covering 160-10 meters HF, plus 6 & 2 meters and finally 70 centimeters, this is an all-in-one small box that operates CW/SSB/FM and data modes.
I know that someone is going to ask so I'll just come right out and say it: It's what I can afford and it fills my requirements. Why spend more money than necessary when a used rig will do everything you want to do on the ham bands.
Slap a Signal Link radio-to-computer interface on it, hook up an old laptop running your favorite digital software suite and you are in business.
One of my primary reasons for obtaining the IC-706 was to mount it in the truck and remove three other radios while getting HF coverage in addition to the V/UHF bands. Thankfully, the truck has enough room in front between the passenger seats to mount this rig without having to resort to spending a lot of cash for the optical cable that allows one to remote the control head from the main body of the radio.
Another reason is that it offers multi-mode coverage over the most popular HF/V/UHF bands at reasonable power output levels. Additionally, with it's digital capabilities one can run all sorts of digital modes using a small laptop computer or a Raspberry Pi.
Mobile HF antennas are always problematic. Aside from 10 and 12 meters, the antennas required for mobile operation on 80-15 meters are quite long compared to a quarter wave antenna actually cut for a specific frequency on these bands.
One of the most popular mobile HF bands is 40 meters. A quarter wavelength on 40 is around 34 feet +/- depending upon which area of the band you want to operate on. A quarter wavelength on 20 meters is around 16 feet +/-, and so on. So, as you can plainly see the bands below 12 meters are always going to be short, and in the case of 80//40-20 meters only a fraction of the actual length needed for efficient antenna radiation. This is the primary reason why obtaining good/efficient HF mobile operation is difficult to come by.
As for HF mobile antennas, there are the coil loaded "hamstick" antennas with a long whip at the top, there are other antennas that offer marginal performance at these frequencies, but, if you are serious about HF mobile performance, the standard 102 inch CB steel whip fed through a remote automatic antenna tuner is hard to beat.
If you are really serious about mobile HF, the next step up the HF antenna ladder is the "screwdriver" antenna offered by a number of manufacturers. These are NOT inexpensive! I had one on my 2001 Nissan Frontier pickup truck and it worked great. The caveat here is the fact that I had a special antenna mount fabricated by a local welding shop that was welded directly to the frame of the truck. That was a very efficient antenna system and I worked a lot of DX from the truck using an Alinco DX-77T transceiver running between 5 and 50 watts.
Another annoyance is the noise generated internally by the various vehicle computer systems. A good noise blanker is a blessing, while a very good Digital Signal Processor unit is essential to limiting the noise that gets into your radio and then into your ears. Of course, good engineering practices regarding grounding and bonding of the various sections and systems in the vehicle are also quite important. Do your homework and read up on ways to eliminate or at least reduce the noise your rig hears and you are well on the way to working some decent HF mobile contacts.
Now for something completely different: Thanks to the help given to me by Brian Page, N4TRB and Larry Brinson, KO4IZU, two local hams, the 5 foot Glenn Martin roof tower, Alliance HD-73 rotator along with the 6 meter Ringo Ranger were successfully removed. Thanks, guys. My days of tower and roof work on antennas are over.
In the near future that roof tower will be re-mounted on the opposite end of the roof from the original location, rotator re-installed, and some V/UHF antennas installed to allow OSCAR along with 6 meter DX to be available to K7SZ.
I still have two trees to cut up.....yup, the same two trees that ate two of my HF wire antennas. Once that is done, I plan on installing the new G5RV on one tower leg at the 60 foot level and a V/UHF discone antenna on the other tower leg at about the same level. This will complete the antenna farm at K7SZ, at least for a while.
Stay safe and get on the bands and play some radio!
Vy 73
Rich K7SZ
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