After years away from the hobby, I picked up this rig a couple weeks ago. I’m kind of a stranger to good radios, so it doesn’t take a lot to make me happy. Spent all my time on AM in my previous endeavors. My SSB experience was limited to a SS3900, which wasn’t fun. Everyone always told me I was off frequency, and I spent all day trying to tune folks in well enough to understand, only to have the radio continue to drift.
So far I am liking the Lincoln. I actually didn’t know SSB could be this easy. I’ve made a bunch of contacts, all barefoot and Mobile, and more or less don’t touch the clarifier.
There’s almost too many ways to change the frequency, or channel if you prefer. I’ve settled on using the memory, where you can put pretty much anything in and in any mode and just scroll through with the channel buttons. Works for me, with the few freqs I’m currently listening to. Anything else I punch in with the knob.
Output power puts me in a strange place. I’d like to pair it with a dx500, but the output power puts me in a pickle. To drop the am carrier to under 4 watts has the rf power knob fully CCW. The same setting leaves SSB anemic. To have the SSB pep at 20 watts or so, that setting on the rf power leaves the am at 10w carrier.
I don’t care so much about the am, but if I rely on memory to adjust the rf power when switching modes I’ll cook the amp in short order.
One thing I don’t like about the radio is the ASC. I’m a static listener, so I generally run with the squelch completely off...but when I switch to am, that’s the position for ASC. And it doesn’t seem to unlock reliably with even the strongest of am signals.
Anyway, so far so good. But still wondering if I would have been happier with something in the 2950 series.
So far I am liking the Lincoln. I actually didn’t know SSB could be this easy. I’ve made a bunch of contacts, all barefoot and Mobile, and more or less don’t touch the clarifier.
There’s almost too many ways to change the frequency, or channel if you prefer. I’ve settled on using the memory, where you can put pretty much anything in and in any mode and just scroll through with the channel buttons. Works for me, with the few freqs I’m currently listening to. Anything else I punch in with the knob.
Output power puts me in a strange place. I’d like to pair it with a dx500, but the output power puts me in a pickle. To drop the am carrier to under 4 watts has the rf power knob fully CCW. The same setting leaves SSB anemic. To have the SSB pep at 20 watts or so, that setting on the rf power leaves the am at 10w carrier.
I don’t care so much about the am, but if I rely on memory to adjust the rf power when switching modes I’ll cook the amp in short order.
One thing I don’t like about the radio is the ASC. I’m a static listener, so I generally run with the squelch completely off...but when I switch to am, that’s the position for ASC. And it doesn’t seem to unlock reliably with even the strongest of am signals.
Anyway, so far so good. But still wondering if I would have been happier with something in the 2950 series.
