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Necromancing this thread Been using my new Tecsun PL-880 for a few weeks now. Great little radio and incredible sound and bandwidth settings. It's comparable to my DX398 (ATS909). Only thing it lacked was MW antenna input so I added it myself. You can add 4 or 5 turns of magnet wire around the...

Funny this thread would be made and I see it first right after I bought a 6' galvanized steel ground rod and plan to pound it down. One method I read about is to push the rod down as far as you can, pull it back up and add water to the hole, repeat, up until the point where you can no longer...

Okay update... it rained like an absolute bitch this morning. I turned on my radio and keyed up with high power and guess what? SWR is almost flat near ch20. This tells me it is indeed a ground thing going on since the soil is moist. Definitely installing a few ground rods asap to see if that...

This is good advice and I eventually plan to try a current choke. Calculations I saw said 5 turns 4.5" but I'm sure it's not too specific, and placement should probably be a foot or two down from the antenna so that it has enough return juice to light up the antenna as an EFHW from what I read...

That makes a lot of sense to me. I definitly will ground my tower properly soon. Like said this was a temp setup until I get it more permanent when money allows for ground rods and all.

No radials. I determined there wasn't CMC strong enough to mess with things by playing with coax length and position and none of it mattered. Also took a field strength meter and wanded it near the tower and noticed little to no radiation compared to the antenna itself which obviously threw off...

As of right now it's buried at the base around 2' in dirt, and clamped to a porch post and rail. Basically using the 20' of tower as a really sturdy pole, obviously not safe to climb hence my use of a ladder. Doubt that counts as a real earthed ground, but I plan on adding a ground rod in the...

After I put up my new A-99 clone antenna on my 20' of tower and mounted directly on top the tower (no isolation) I have a decent SWR of around 1.15 in the middle of the CB band, and about 1.2 on ch1 and ch40. Though this is great I noticed something very odd.. When my 6' ladder is propped up...

From what I understand it's still a dipole antenna, just fed at the voltage node where impedance is in the kiloohms instead of the centered current node where its around 70 ohms, which is why it requires the transformation. If it weren't a dipole then hams wouldn't be calling the extremes like...

I got to wondering if anyone has tried the A99 or IMAX2000 or really any variation of these end-fed dipole antennas and if a choke at the end helped or not? Also for those who tried using them with or without did it affect your tuning and where SWR is lowest? I got to thinking how a choke...

It's identical to the A99 in it's internal coil circuit. In fact the instructions even show the schematic for how it's made.. The more I think about it I came to the conclusion that either the instructions are a bit off for CB tuning, or being as my antenna is around 20' away from my TV/SW...

Got myself a Tram 1498 which is basically a much cheaper clone of the Antron A-99. Basic end-fed dipole in a fiberglass stick. Was happy to see it arrived so fast but as soon as I started looking at all the hardware I noticed it was missing the allen key adjustment screw to tighten the end whip...

Found this, may be interesting to OP and some others.. http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/spore.html I'm still learning about how the sun does its thing to radio and other ionospheric stuff. "E-layer skip occurs most often from 0900 to 1100 and 1900 and 2300 local time (not UTC!), although it can...

Locals only here. Luckily I just got a homebrew EFHW antenna 20' up on a tower made out of some conduit pipe touching the clouds at 37' or so at the tip and a simple weatherproofed DIY Fuchs 1:8 matcher for 11m base but it's bumming me out at the same time since all I am hearing is people within...

I have a Teaberry Five by Five radio that does this when not using the stock mic. After some playing around I learned it is the way the original mic button is designed. There is a momentary gap of no connection in the original button when pressed/depressed. Slowly releasing the button has no...

That RF amplifier is designed for the FM broadcast band 88-108MHz and is class C biased. Short answer: It will not work. Long answer: Even if you did get it down to the frequencies used by CB and biased it for class AB which is needed when using a radio that is already modulated you would only...

Woops sorry about my last posts. Was thinking this was a thread for hifi audio with modification or outboard equipment. Got mixed up between this thread and a similar one.

I also recommend skimming through this since it applies to more than just broadcast audio.. http://www.orban.com/support/orban/techtopics/optiair/ There are other documents online going into far more detail but that will give you an idea of where to start with a proper audio chain for HIFI...

Most stock radios could sound good if unmodified and use a wideband audio section. Drive it to the peaks through a chain of mic>5kHz LPF (6 pole to roll off hard after 5kHz for least channel bleeding)>all pass brick wall limiter>diode peak clipper>high frequency limiter/filter to recude clipper...

^THIS. This is exactly what I experienced but I swear the echo was even longer. It was too perfect of timing and was there exactly as I lifted the PTT like you. So this leads me to believe to this day that it was the real thing. Also as I said towards the end I eventually heard the echos fade...