1296 Tests.

 With my latest antenna, the 5m long X-7000 vertical, and the improved cable (20m 1/2 inch plus a bit of LMR400 type), and an added preamplifier, I have, until now just been able to work locally up to about 6km.

Today a new station appeared on 1297.5MHz at a distance of about 15km. He had a good signal, and a call provided a nice QSO, al be it with some fading, most likely due to small antenna movements creating phasing phenomena.

He has a bit more output power than I do, so my signal was not too strong, but we could make a full QSO.

Tonight I made a test with another, well placed station in one of my good directions. He was about 50km away, and when we tried SSB I could hear his signal, but no reception the other way. 

As I have a preamplifier near the antenna, and he has not, I suspect we could have made a QSO if he used a  preamplifier at the antenna. We both use 10W. Not a bad result with just vertical omnidirectional antennas on 1296MHz. 

I really do need to get a rotating (horizontal) antenna up and running on 1296MHz. It will take some work, as I need to get the rotator up and running first, and I should add small antennas for 2m, 70cm and also microwave bands, such as 2.4 and 10GHz. 

The other microwave bands must wait a bit, as the (weather proofed) outdoor transverters need to be assembled.

CW Filter for FT817.

 Going through some of my stuff I found something very interesting in a box with crystal filters and ceramic filters: Two 455kHz Collins mechanical filters, bandwidth 500Hz for CW, for the FT817.

One is now mounted in one of my 817s, and is working fine. That one is likely to be used as back-end for the QO-100 receiver system. I think I will use another one for my uplink system. As that is TX only I will run that one without the filter.

I do have a third one with a defective PA. I will likely use that one as a base for transverters, for both home and portable. so I can run 4m and microwaves on that one. I will need to bypass the PA module and make some control circuitry for that one. The second CW filter will likely go into that one.

Mounting the filters is easy, it's a simple plug and play. I like to get those small transceivers running, as they draw much less power than the "big radios", like the IC7600 and others.