Friday, October 1, 2021

IC-7300 - Strange SWR anomaly solution

  Yes, my own stupid fault. There was one comment from Gerard NL14080 who suggest I should push the tune button and see what happens. Push the tune button? I don't use the internal tuner! Do I? Look at the picture I took this evening testing another suggestion from DB6LL


Just take a close look at the left upper corner....yes, the tuner is on and I didn't notice. That's causing that strange anomaly of course.


Now a proper measurement of the vertical. It still is a bit high on 28,500 MHz but within limits for me. The problem is that I use the 1/4 wave wire for 20m as well which is a 1/2 wave at 10m and probabely causing a high impedance at the feedpoint. The CG3000 doesn't tune high impedances well. A solution would be another balun, preferable 1:4 or so to transform this. Something I didn't test yet.

I did another SWR sweep on my 4 elements 10m LFA beam.


Which of course gives a more traditional picture....

I did a test RX on 10m FT8 this evening. The difference between the vertical and the 4 element LFA is astonishing. Difference receiving several stations from south america between 6 and 10dB better on the beam. Sometimes decoding nothing on the vertical and everything on the beam. I wouldn't like to miss the beam on 10m. But imagine the difference on other bands when I would have a proper beam for 14-28 MHz.

2 comments:

Bram PH9B said...

Z’n mooie mast verdient toch wat meer aluminium 😎
Zelf ben ik heel tevreden over de HexBeam. Maar op 10m gaat die het natuurlijk niet winnen van een LFA.
Groeten Bram PH9B

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Bram, ook qua hoogte niet denk ik. Maar hoe groot de antenne en hoe mooi een mast ook is we zijn allemaal afhankelijk van propagatie. En met goede propagatie werk jij ook gewoon de wereld rond, ik kom echt niet verder. 73, Bas