Tag Archives: short

Jun 20

My beef with Ameritron and MFJ.

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In the process of rewiring the shack to facilitate additional radios I had found my new MFJ wattmeter had a loose rattle inside. Come to find one of the plastic prongs holding the actually meter broke off. How!? I’ve been nothing but careful with it and have never pushed or touched the actual meter face.

And then…. I added a new Ameritron wet dummy load (the paint can type), and found that the parts used to hold the 50 ohm resistor in place was shorting the center pin to shield. Wow, great. after a little engineering and removing the “cage” from the resistor enclosure, the dummy short was finally a dummy load.

Is this the kind of stuff I’m going to have to worry about when I got to buy my 811h and MFJ auto tuner?
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May 25

Camping and a little SWL

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Laurie (KB3SIK) and I just got back from a holiday weekend of camping a Lackawanna State park. While there I was able to hit a few local repeaters in the Scranton area with the aid of my Diamond SG7500 mobile antenna. Of course no activity, although I was able to hit those same repeaters with the standard antenna that came with my Yaesu VX-5r from a boat in the middle of Lackawanna lake. In addition I was able to do a little Short wave listening (SWL) and heard 2 tech shows broadcasting yesterday. I can’t wait to get my portable HF rig. I’ve been eyeing up the MFJ-706 EmComm Box for when I eventually get my Icom 706 for such trips. Between this and a Buddipole, I should be set on the /camp mode.