91DD018

I must be getting Old....

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:22:22 GMT

I don't normally get too political but several things have ruffled my feathers recently.

Below is a quote from the Sydney Morning Herald...

A POWERFUL Indonesian parliamentary commission is set to recommend that Indonesia's ambassador not return to Canberra until Australia apologises for the Papuan visa crisis.

In response to John Howard's refusal yesterday to say sorry over the affair, a member of the foreign affairs and defence commission, Djoko Susilo, accused Australia of trying to "hurt the feelings of the Indonesian Government and the Indonesian people". "

Hurt the feelings of the Indonesian people! What about the cartoon of the Aussi Prime Minister depicted as a dingo mounting his Foreign minister?? It just doesn't come any worse here than to portray people as dogs...That was really demeaning!

Come on Aussis.....Just tell them to Fuuuuck Ooorrff!

I still remember when a planeload of Aussi tourists were turned around at Bali and sent home because they did not have visas. The fact in those days that Aussi tourists did not need visas for stays up to 60 days was forgotton for a day. Once again the tail wags the dog.

"Mr Susilo said the commission would urge the ambassador, Hamzah Thayeb, who was recalled to Indonesia three weeks ago, not to return "any time soon, until we get a satisfactory explanation from John Howard's Government or until after a formal apology for what happened".

Let the ambasador stay in Indonesia. If he worth his salt he will tell the commission to grow up and get on with something worthwhile like bringing the bankers who caused the Indonesian monetary collapse to justice.

And as if to add to the current woes of no DX (Except Australia which doesn't count as DX) Playboy magazine moved in to the 4th floor of the building we occupy. I have a feeling more stones are going to hit us than Playboy!! The riot for hire FPI wanker bastards demanded Rupiah 1 billion to go away. Well they hadn't arrived at that stage because they couldn't find the office. The local Jakarta youth group (Also Muslims) were contacted and arrived en mass to defend the area from the FPI In loose terms FPI means Forum for the Protection of Islam. In reality it is a group of thugs who are paid to go out and protest/attack and terrify whatever and whoever their paymasters decide...all under the guise of protecting Islamic values. They also run a protection racket for businesses which are deemed to be offensive to the Islamic values they serve to protect. Three truck loads of protectors of the faith attacked a restaurant/nightclub in Kemang a few years ago and while terrorizing patrons and trashing the joint removed wallets and valuables from the patrons. The owner of the building confesed he had refused to pay the protection.

Personally I hope the police shoot the pricks and jail the ringleaders. I guess playboy must have paid the money because the police and TV crew have gone and no body seems interested in our office anymore....There are two massage palours and a duty free liquor outlet in the complex....the FPI could have a field day protecting the morality of the masses....maybe thats where they all ended up!

I don't usually feel like this....I must be getting old....

Dinasaur Radios

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 02:56:47 GMT

Dinasaurus Radios

I was thinking the other day about how far computers had come in the past 10 years and then hand phones from 20lb bricks you would have to clear a space on the floor for to nowadays when my windows based PDA phone is about the size of two match boxes and then I looked at my radio collection. There is stuff all difference between the radios of 20 years ago and those on the market today. Sure they advertise more power, (there was 400w valve rigs 20 years ago too) DSP, (Can you really hear anything a well tuned Collins won’t?) and TV screens that won’t pick up much but there has been very few groundbreaking improvements in amateur radios. It is a box with a few knobs and dials that we talk around the world with using a microphone or tap out morse code on a key by hand.

By comparison on our computers and phones we can tap out the text on a keyboard and send it along with a picture, video clip or whatever. I am talking SMS or MMS or instant messaging. I believe that you can buy several after market products that you can add to your basic radio and computer, that after considerable study, effortand trial and error may be able to send and receive faxes, emails, slow scan TV and even small pictures with some HF radios.

Why isn’t this already in one black box? They can put it all into a tiny telephone and sell it for peanuts so all that would be needed for HF is more power and a good antenna. Bandwidth problems? Hardly, the Ham bands are empty most of the time and bandwidth is solved by compression and digitalization techniques and just look at where Skype is at these days and the latest MSN messenger. As far as commercial stuff goes voice communications are a pain in the butt. I would much rather prepare a page or two of text and have that sent and 100% received than try to explain technical stuff with a non native speaker about how things work! Send a document and he can pull up babel fish on his radio/computer at his end and read it in his language. This is where HF radios should be today. Let the computers handle the hard stuff. The technology is definitely out there but ICOM/Yaesu/Kenwood and the rest just don’t want to risk it. I think the market is saturated with radios. There is hardly anything to set them apart. The laboratories can tell that this one is better or worse with their delicate instruments but can our ears? I don’t think so.

I want a new radio and this is what I want!

It has to be incorporated into or based on a fully functional computer. I want to lift the top up and look at a screen just like I do with my laptop. And no crummy 7” TFT’s I want the whole top to be screen plus a monitor plug if I want to watch it remotely or on a really big screen. I want USB ports so I can plug in keyboard/mouse/printer etc at least 6 of them. For marine use an input for a gps signal so it will always transmit present location with every transmission or as programmed. The computer will take care of everything, The DSP on transmit, receive and audio tailoring at everystage. Already we have software defined radios coming on to the market so hopefully it won’t be too much longer. See the following links for where they are at…

http://www.winradio.com/
http://www.flex-radio.com/sdr1000.htm

One thing the radio will incorporate is an automatic decoder for every kind of digital mode (even morse code) currently available and the ability to update it as new ones come along. The TNC and software will be built in from the ground up. If the radio is the size of an Icom 756 then that’s plenty of room and a pretty good screen size. Should be able to get all the radio controls and settings up on half the screen and the rest taken over for the data decoding, but that can be altered as one wants. So can the colour scheme..just like windows.

The radio can retain the normal knobs as required but there should be a removeable cover over them so they don’t distract us and get in the way. Nothing on the cover except input and output plugs…Mics, keyboards, mouse, video and sound, ext speaker and what else? And more than one of each!
Speakers…The speakers on my laptop computer sound great. Put a couple of decent speakers recessed in the each side of the radio so they can be swung out and faced forwards. DSP audio and all that good stuff.
Voice transmissions can be normal analog or digitized if the distant station can also decode them. Look at where these AOR people are going…Gotta have this stuff built in..

http://www.aorja.com/ard9800e.html

Built in tuner is a must….
And how about this in case you are worried about your antenna…How about a built in antenna analyzer have to use all that processing power for something..Check out the TZ-900 AntennSmith TM Antenna Impedance Analyzer here..

http://www.timewave.com/

Power. I think the one thing that should be mounted away from the radio is the final RF stage. Make this one of the variables. It doesn’t have to be part of or built in to the radio..
I think it should be mounted on the antenna along with the tuner unit. And while we are on antennas the package should include one of these:

http://www.steppir.com/

But for secret squirrel band hopping stuff you will need a log periodic…..

Time to go to work and start saving up!

Have a good day.

CB Radio shoot out

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 08:48:51 GMT

So far as far as TX audio local quality goes....

Lincoln

AR3500

Magnum 257

George

SA 280

S-9

Cobra

Rx to my ears only

AR3500

SA 280

S-9

Lincoln

magnum 257

george

Cobra

SA 280 could rise up a bit with a tune up and backing off the ALC when I find which pot it is.

Cobra just aint worth a shit but I keep it on hand to let every one to steer clear of it!

One day there may be an easy fix for the audio but still have to fix the -/+5khz and a frequency display that gets out of whack when the clarifier is moved more than one or two khz.

FT817 hooked into a KL200 was also up the top in TX and Rx but has the additional SSB filters installed so hardly fair. Need to get some more CB's to test...

AR3500 still sits on the top of the pile ..a position it has held for the past 20 years and not much around to knock it off it's spot.

S-9 once more and more DX

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 08:33:42 GMT

Well the Astatic mic doesn't quite cure the S-9 cheap audio comments when signals are strong. Still adds depth to the standard mic though.

At S-9 plus 10db it still leaves a lot to be desired. Not that it is unintelligible but lacks the depth of the other radios. But..point it at europe and south america when conditions are weak with the standard el cheapo 1 dollar mic and she will talk over the "nice audios" every time. Never had a far away DX station tell me the audio from the S-9 sounded "cheap" like a Fremantle station did the other day!

Heaps of Aussi skip rolling into 91 div these days and especially good signals out of the west. Somedays WA can stay in all afternoon. Spoke to a station in the country running 2.4kw. Now that pricked my ears up! What sort of amp could that be. A Zetagi B1200 came the reply. No offense but the audio didn't sound too good but I couldn't copy him at all without the amp so still don't know if it was the amp or the radio. I suspect the amp cos my info is that the B1200 is a class C amp which will sound whiskery on sideband. With 8 ea MRF 422 transisters and a 422 driver I fail to see how it can put out more than 800watts. There is only so much a 422 can do! But those amps are being sold as 2kw amps over on the east coast for A$835.00 so best go get one. After all nobody has any idea how much you are putting out so get the bragging rites and join the 2kw club. Pity about the audio but as long as you can be heard who cares...right?

Why is it the Canary Islands can always get out when the rest of Europe is quiet? If you intend to do a European DX trip start with the canaries...You won't go far wrong DX wize and at least the weather is nice.

S-9 revisited

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 16:26:25 GMT

Got in some Astatic 636L hand mics the other week and tried one on the S-9.

What a difference. Have yet to hear it for myself but it irons out the trebly sharp audio of the standard mic and replaces it with super smooth big rig audio....hard to believe but even Geoff down there in Darwin couldn't fault it so I am on to a good thing here....now just got to find a cheap source of 636L's.

Good thing about the S-9 is that we can still leave the original mic in place for when we want to bust into a pile up somewhere....not that there are too many of them around these days but we have been getting steady conditions down into West Aus and Queensland so catching up with a few old mates at last.

A second class Pirate

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 06:37:44 GMT

A mate from down under told me off the other day....He heard me calling the boat on an outback 4wd frequency.

I didn't hear them too good but my call co-incided with the VS737 sched time. Naughty me. He said.."I thought you were a First Class pirate!" Dave. Never really thought about it like that but I guess I am now Pirate: 2nd (or worse) Class. I think it might be time to classify radio pirates.

First Class Pirate. Works all Bands, split frequency and mode and only gets heard by the pirate he is talking to. Never uses his real name on the air, Doesn't use his Ham radio while pirating and has several voice muffling mics to switch between.

Second Class Pirate. Pirates everywhere except the Ham bands. Uses his Ham radio. Occaisionally slips up and drops his ham or CB call sign into the conversation. Has trouble working out how his radio works so noted for sticking to one or two frequencies.

Third Class Pirate Scared shitless of getting caught he only operates late at night or mobile so seldom makes any contacts. Will pirate on any band he can find someone to talk to. Usually has had his equipment confiscated more than once. An expert in long wires and ruining radios. Seldom remains in one place for very long before getting hounded out of town.

Fourth Class Pirate This category is reserved for 27mhz freebanders. Frequently the most technically savy of the lot they spend a lot of time building equipment for and monitoring 27.555 USB and making choice long range contacts with 15w on 11m when 10m is officially closed. The most populous of the Pirate fraternity this class is being actively pursued by the amateur radio societies by reducing entry level qualifications to the Ham bands so the authorities can then tax them for talking over the airwaves.

Jokes aside..hope others can add some more attributes to the various pirate classes......

Anyway more serious stuff...

27mhz is pretty rotten these days and cluster stats are confirming the lack of propagation on our beloved 11m so what to do....

Indonesia realised this problem a few years ago and designated a frequency of 11.415 USB over to CB operators to use for communicating between the far flung parts of Indonesia. Designed more for important and emergency communications it has grown rapidly into a subset of the old CB crowd. Frequencies in use now cover 11.405 through 11.450 in 5/kc steps. 11.415 is still the only official designated frequency. There is no structure and all conversations are in Indonesian but most will switch to english if they hear an English speaking voice. With just a dipole and 100w it is possible to communicate through South East Asia most of the time with strong signals and only breaker stations as interference. Henry in Holland was listening to them the other afternoon and was so impressed he went out and flung up a dipole and worked me in Java with a 5/5 out of Holland with 100 watts. Marco in Italy was also copying us on his 4.5mhz dipole 5/9. Better signals into europe than what I was hearing around 13970 on the same night.

11m...11mhz way to go. Cut the wires about 6.25m per leg and a tad shorter if you can't get it up very high and join in the fun on 11mhz!

IC 7000

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 05:21:32 GMT

Had a bit more time to play around with the 7k and do a bit of research on the mic the oft reported audio problems in the mid and narrow Transmit Band Width (TBW) settings. . Needless to say as long as you leave the TBW in wide you won't experience any problems...just nice clear audio. Bob Heil of Heil Sound fame has got into the act and has a fine article on his web site outlining the problem and suggested fix. It concerns a little mic at the bottom of a tube and an offset hole for the audio to get through. More like a placement thing but he did say there seemed to be a problem in the audio amplifier on certain frequencies which didn't help.

I had already set the TBW as follows: wide 100-2900, mid 200-2900, narrow 300-2800 which was OK with the standard mic and fine with the Heil HC-5 and HC-4. I was getting better reports with the HC-4 but had to crank up the compression and mic gain more than with the HC-5 and std hand mics.

The RIT was given me heck as I didn't seem to be able to find it when needed. Now I have it on all the time but I have lost the ability to change between the memory banks without some knob pushing and praying but that is less of a problem as each bank holds 100 memories. The outside knob is now the clarifier unless I am fiddling around with the RX bandwidths which I am slowing starting not to do...novelty wearing off and seldom helps on SSB ...easier to use the 3 preset bandwidth filters of 3.0, 2.4 and 1.8. audio through the headphones a lot better than bult in speaker for sure.

Thought I would sell it but now I am starting to like it.....

Anyway..here is what Bob has to say.....Loks like the photos did not come accross. www.heilsound.com

HEIL MICROPHONES WITH THE iC 7000

All of our products built for the 706 will work well with the sensational new iCOM IC 7000. The Traveler 706, the iCM with the HSTA 706 adapter and the favorite is the HM-iC HANDI MIC with the Ch -1 iM cable. For the ultimate headset operation any of our IC headsets (BM-10 IC, PRO SET IC, PRO SET PLUS IC, PSQP IC) with the AD-1 icm modular adapter and HS 2 or FS 2.

Set the Transmit bandwidth in the WIDE position 200 Hz and 2900Hz. For extreme articulation, contest or DX pileups ups use the MID or narrow bandwidth filters.

The IC 7000 has extreme audio capabilities. Here in the Heil lab we have been VERY successful in using the 8 band W2IHY EQ into pins 2 and 11 of the rear accessory socket. Using the PR 40 with this set is absolutely stunning. Transmit Bandwidth set at 100 Hz and 2900 Hz.

Jan. 12. 2006

HC 5 on the IC 7000

Because of the lack of mid range and high frequency articulation in the IC 7000, you will discover that the HC 5 will give you the best results. I am using the HM-5 Handi Mic with the CH-1 IM modular coil cable for the 7000. You could use the HM-10-5, the GOLDLINE GM-5 or any of the headsets using the HC 5.

You will have to set it up correctly.

COMPRESSION On all the time. Set to 4
MIC GAIN sets about 50% - or where the ALC meter is happy
WIDE transmit filter set at 200Hz and 2900 Hz.

This is actually giving the best results as the HC 5 ads such wonderful articulation.

The key to getting decent audio is to set the 7000 low end at 200 Hz. and 2900Hz. on the top. There seems to be some weird anomaly with the mic pre amp section that when hit with lots of low frequency energy from the microphone, the transmitter gets "hollow' or boxing sounding. Moving the transmit bandwidth filter to 200 Hz. (not 100 ) seems to solve a bit of that. The HC 5 helps more as it doesn't start up until 300Hz so it is a perfect match for the IC 7000.

When the compressor is used at the low level of 3 or 4 it acts as an additional microphone pre amp. Just what is needed when using low level dynamic elements such as the HC 5. It truly has been the best
combination so far.

Help is on the way. Stay 'tuned' to this billboard about the IC 7000. We will add additional info during our IC 7000 project.

Jan. 13, 2006

Bob:

Just a short add-on -- one of my customers bought the Traveler for his
7000 and he is getting tremendous signal reports. Jay, WS1CO at HRO in Denver.

Jan 17, 2006

This has been a struggle....and not finished yet, HOWEVER I think that I have a fairly quick and easy modification to bring the iC 7000 transmit audio alive.

We all know how incredible the receiver is....but the hollow sounding transmit audio continues to plague all of the new owners. There are several problems. The first being that the iC element in the stock microphone is only 1/8" in diameter and 1/16" thick. This element fits TIGHT into a rubber 'tube' which is part of the 25 button mask. Would you mount a toilet paper tube in front of your GOLDLINE? That is EXACTLY what they did - but that is not all. The toothpick size opening you speak into is 1/4" to the right of this tiny element so your speech goes down inside this tube, hits the p.c. card and reflect back up to the top fact of the microphone, reflecting again back down to 'find' the element. All of this phase distortion is what causes a lot of this 'hollow' and boxy sound we hear from the 25 button microphone.

In addition, there is some anomaly in the speech amplifier frequency response giving a rise around 300 to 500 Hz...right where things get 'hollow' sounding. Add these two together and guess what?

You got it....Hollow and Boxy sounding !

There is no articulation using this microphone into this fabulous transmitter.

In looking at this 25 button microphone, I discovered that our HC 5 or the HC 4 (both which has become THE choice for the DxPedition and contest ops) fits - EXACTLY in the area on the BACK of the stock mic that they intended as a 'hanger'....well thank you, iCOM for doing that AND obviously using our HC element as a mold for that spot!

I had to shave just a bit of the 'bar' of plastic for the HC 5 to slide into but the HC 4 fit perfectly. Drill one hole and install a short small diameter shielded wire down to the two points where the original electret was installed. Don't forget the 1 mf non polar decoupling cap. There is some kind of plastic 'fence' molded on the inside of the back plate...they even left a small cut out to run our wire to the original element location ! The two solder points of the original element (outlined in a white square) are located right under the i.C. This is where you connect the shieled cable and de coupling cap.

I attached some audio files for you to hear. Interesting....because of the +6dB of 3K rise of the HC 5, I back the transmit bandwidth down to 2700 and 100on the low end becuase it rolls off at 300, thus NOT allowing the internal preamp to be hit with a lot of low end as the stock iC did causing that horrible hollow sound. Use the COMPRESSION - always to get the needed gain and that sets at 4. NOW, the iC 7000 in my statioin lab finally has some articulation.

Gentlemen - THIS is the answer !.....well for now.

My OTHER project and is REALLY the fix is in our tooling shop as we speak...couple of weeks, I should know about this. We have built our 1982 two band EQ 200 (the gadget that started ALL of this higher quality audio ) into one of our wonderful little Handi mics. Two 1/4" holes on it's back allow you to set the treble and base. THIS is really going to be the answer if all works out. The prototype certainly works well. MUCH more later.

Feb. 06, 2006

Step #1 - Mic Apart

Step #2 - iC7000 Entrance

Step #3 - Top Of Mask

Step #4 - Mask Shown

Step #5 - Mask with iC element

The huge problem with the stock iC 7000 'hand mic' is three fold. First, their electret is VERY small about 1.8" dia and 1/16" thick. It is soldered to the bottom side of the p.c. card. A rubberized 'mask' that is molded to form the buttons and control you push has a 'tube' that seals this tiny element on one end and seals against the top plate where you speak into, thus forming a 1/4" tube from the entrance hole to the element. Think about talking into a tissue paper tube in front of your microphone!

But this is not the worst issue. The hole you speak into is NOT centered into that tube. The pencil lead sized opening you speak into is 1/4" to the right of that entrance thus your speech enters the hole hits the p.c. card, reflects back up and eventual finds the entrance hole and back down to the element...all of this roaming around causes severe phase distortion and cancellation of mid range frequencies. Mids and highs goes in a straight line. Period. When trying to reflect these frequencies, all kinds of phase distortion occurs.....thus the 'hollow' sound the iC 700 exhibits.

One of the issues is also it's a hollow clam shell 'hand mic' with the element INSIDE. Our Handi Mic technology has solved this 50 year problem! http://www.heilsound.com/amateur/handi_mic.htm

All of this can be proven in the attached photos. One of the easiest fixes is to install our HC 5 on the OUTSIDE after removing the teenie electret and soldering a shield lead from those points to our HC 5 AFTER decoupling it with at least a 1 mfd. capacitor. (there is D.C. on those mic inputs for their electret)

BOB HEIL, K9EID
www.heilsound.com

IC 7000

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 12:02:57 GMT

The Mod!

3 diodes removed later we are up and running on gen coverage TX/RX but still not sure of the TV.

Lots to learn and remember to get the best out of this baby radio. We will check it out over the next few days.

George Receive

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 02:38:00 GMT

Was doing a few checks with the George last night to see why it didn't want to drive the linears very well. I thought I must have tweaked the ALC up and it was overdriving and causing probs but the meter showed the George was only putting out 15W! Time to try the other way..can always turn down the mic gain...Cranked her up to 30W on a fooooouuuuurrrr and a tad more on a whistle. Checked it out with a local station who said it sounded good. He was interested in buying a new radio and asked what else I had. I informed him we still had a few Magnum 257's and S-9's and switched to the 257. He reported the 257 had deeper and stronger audio and could he buy one! Some others came on and demanded to hear the S-9 and that was when I realized the received audio was much better than the george. The George rx audio has a bit of the ranger 29xx series white noise about it. Not as bad but noticeable when compared to the S-9. There is a transistor in the rx chain that can be changed out for a lo noise version and this may solve the problem. I may try it. Oddly enough take away the extra memories, the echo, the 5kc step and roger beep and you wonder if it is worth $150 more than the 257.

However with the increase in the ALC it now drives the DX500 to over 400W PEP on SSB so at least we have sorted that out.

Cheaper President radios

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:14:13 GMT

I have made enquiries to a European retailer and I think he can ship the Pres George into NZ for NZ$540 or so in single shipments. You will have to take your chances with the customs....

President George and Jackson

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 13:50:24 GMT

Reviews: President George SSB CB Radio

Posted by: Transmission1on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 08:34 AM

President's 3rd Generation of CB transceiver tried and tested. Is this the essential SSB radio for your DX station?

According to President, the George is the third generation of CB transceivers and is also Presidents' top of the range radio. We'll investigate this and see how it compares to other radios on the market in a similar price bracket. On unpacking the box you will certainly be impressed with the contents. The George looks very different from other CB radios, it has a very clean design with a "amateur radio" feel to it.

A lot of CB equipment is let down by the fact that it has a rather cheap and tacky finish or badly fitting case due to the relatively low cost of many radios. While it is fair to say that the George is one of the more expensive CB radios you can buy, this proves that you get what you pay for in terms of design.

Dual Colour Lighting

Ok, moving on slightly from the above points the radio would look great in a car due to the styling, it's very similar to a lot of car stereo systems but here's the best part - the radio is fully illuminated on it's front panel and it's dual colour! Notice on the left hand side controls above the mic socket there is a button called "DC", nothing to do with power but "Dual Colour". Simply press this button and the radio will change like magic to either green or amber illumination. Perfect for home use too.

I found the green to be best during the day and the amber to be best after dark. It's a case of whatever you prefer though. I would imagine that the lighting on the George is provided mainly by LEDS positioned strategically along with front panel behind the buttons. The large LCD display that runs right the way along the front panel is also very well lit. I would say that this is one of the most effective displays I have seen on a CB.

Security

<The George has a number of interesting features, one of them is a security code which I haven't found on many other radios. Taking it's ideas from car stereos, when the power is removed from the rig a four digit code is required to reactivate the radio before it can be operated again. This is another useful idea for those brave enough to leave such a rig in a car on display! When power is first applied the word "codE" appears on the display and flashes. At this point enter your security code which is a four digit keypress combination, by default this is pressing the "program" four times then press power. The radio will switch on and be ready for use until the supply is disconnected. This is a useful feature but it is a shame that there is no facility to turn it off or disable it! If you are using the radio at home then this could be a real pain after a while because if you turn your power supply off you will need to re-enter the code next time you put it back on. Easy to get used to but I wish there was an option to turn off this feature. The President manual gives instructions on how to change the PIN code and warns that incorrect entry more than X times in a row will lock the radio out and you will need to return it to an authorised President repair center, so you have been warned!

Bands, Modes and Memories

Depending on where you purchase your George it will come with a certain amount of channels or modes. Our review model (operated somewhere in Europe) is an 'Export' version, meaning this has the full lot - 240 channels, AM, FM, SSB. Believe it or not, many of the George's around can be re-programmed from the factory preset. For example, you can buy the radio as a 40 channel FM CEPT version then press a few keys and by magic you have an export rig with all the modes and bands. Have a look in our modifications section for more details. Recently Chris from C&L Electronics wrote and informed me that some 40 channel FM only sets are available in the UK which will not respond to the usual key presses. The reason is that a resistor has been removed from the CPU board and will need replacing for the full functions to be enabled. Anyway, the mode button on the front of the rig selects AM or FM and holding this same button down for a second switches the rig to USB or LSB.

The George features 18 memories that are very flexible. Channels from any band can stored in these and they remember the mode too which is a great help. On the frequency selection side of things you have three ways in which to select them.

Frequency Selection

The VFO which runs in increments of 10 KHz or 5 KHz depending on whether you press the 'Select' button or not. The 'select' button basically lets you go in between channels such as Alphas or work stations on the zero's. For example if you wanted to select 27.520 you would tune to 27.525 then press the 'select' button and rotate it down one position. The other two ways of tuning are via the standard mic up and down keys or via the 'up' and 'down' buttons situated on the front of the rig.

Here comes the problem for UK users. As standard the rig only tunes on 5 KHz and 10 KHz steps and there is no way of adding the 1.25 KHz shift onto the end. As you probably know, the UK 40 FM frequencies have a shift different from anywhere else in the world. Channel 19 UK, for example is 27.78125 MHz but the nearest you could get with the George is 27.780 which is quite a way off, useable but you might sound a bit dodgy to the other stations, especially over long distance. There is a solution to this but it involves modifying the clarifier so that it is unlocked, ie. it will move on transmit as well as receive. You could take the other attitude and say that the rig isn't designed for the 40 FM channels on the UK band but I'm afraid a lot of people living in the UK would say that this is a disadvantage.

Air Performance

Well, here it is at last. It's not how something looks, it's how it works, or at least that's what people say. We'll split the review into two sections here. First a list of equipment used with this installation.

· shakespeare ABS2600

· Watson 20 Amp PSU

· Standard George Microphone

· Zetagi Power/SWR Meter

On the receive side of performance the radio seemed quite sensistive. The radio was compared to a Kenwood TS240S, ok, I know this is in a different class but should show up how the rig compares to Ham gear and I can now tell you that the receive performance seemed almost identical in this range of frequencies. Incoming stations on SSB/AM were very clear and the quality of the built in speaker was good. The George has a filter called "Hi-Cut" which proves quite effective at reducing background noise although makes stations sound a little muffled. I prefer to put up with the background noise but thankfully this is switchable. On the FM side of things the incoming audio was also reasonable but slightly 'raspy'. Maybe this would be cured by the use of a better quality external speaker but I didn't have one to try this.

Transmit Quality

The test was performed with just the standard microphone. Let's start with the FM results. On FM the standard mic audio was reported by other stations as being very clear but a little on the quiet side. This was talking normally with the mic about 7-8 inches away. The microphone gives better results when worked up close. When I test a radio for modulation quality I usually also do my own tests which include connecting a HF receiver up and listening to my voice through headphones. This gives a very good picture of the audio quality as the headphones used are very high quality with a good frequency response. I can confirm that the George has good FM audio but could do with a bit of a boost on this side of things.

SSB audio was much different again! It was really good, you've got to hear it to appreciate what I am talking about here. On the outgoing SSB transmissions the audio was loud, crisp and 'punchy' even with the microphone at arms length. This is great for DX use and I am sure that putting a desk mic on this rig would probably spoil the quality as it would be over the top in most cases. Come to think of it, why would you want to? The standard mic gives good balanced audio. On AM the case was similar, good clear audio which shows how it's designer has put effort into this side of things more so than FM.

Echo Mike?

An interesting button on the front of the George is the echo feature. One press of this and you will sound like your head is in a dustbin (trashcan for the benefit of American readers!). Seriously, the echo feature is pretty naff and I suggest you keep it off. It's not a full slapback echo or anything special like that. It's reminisent of the old Altai DM-315E handheld echo power mics that everyone used to use. No, it doesn't do anything for me and reduces the readability of your signal to everyone. There is one adjuster inside the rig to make some fine tuning of the echo but it sounds tacky whichever way you turn it.

Roger Beep

The George comes with a Roger Beep facility which is fully switchable. It's a lovely small beep that sounds very mellow and rounded. I love this feature. It's not irritating and everyone who has heard it liked it. The most bizzare thing about this is that if you switch the echo on at the same time as the beep is selected the roger beep echos on it's way out!

Strong Signal Handling?

OK, audio quality aside now, how did the rig perform when used at home? When you have a lot of strong local stations in your area, ie across town this is a perfect test for any radio. I waited until a local op came on the air on the triple five calling channel (27.555) and I had to hold onto my radio. The distortion on the incoming signal was quite bad. It would appear that the radio does not like strong signals very much at all. The problem was easily cured by just turning the RF gain back a small way. After this adjustment the SSB audio was crisp and clear. This is something to bear in mind with the George if you are thinking of using one at home - you are likely to run into strong signals quite frequently so turn the RF gain back a little. I would say that the problem itself isn't to do with the strength of the signal so much, but maybe the AGC attack rate being too fast(?). Another radio that suffers from strong signal overload is the President Jackson. Fortunately, if you are careful you can do a small modification to fix this problem. On the AM and FM side of things the strong signals were not a problem.

Conclusions

The George is an excellent radio feature wise, there's more than enough controls to play with for hours of entertainment and not only that, it will look great in your radio shack or the car Great dual colour lighting feature and security system. You will not be disappointed with the rig if you predominantly work SSB and DX but if you are an FM person then you could buy something a little more friendly and useable for UK channels, such as a President Lincoln.

Strong signal handling on SSB was a little questionable but turning the RF gain back helps lots. Build quality of this rig is excellent. The President George is available from a number of dealers around Europe including Truck King in the UK. Check them out at http://www.truck-king.co.uk/ for more details. The current price is £225.00 (353 euros) which may be a little expensive for some CB operators but this is a top class set. If you want something a little different then this may be it!

Dave’s Notes….

Not my work but I agree pretty much with all said above. Both George and Jackson need to have the RF gain turned back in the presence of strong sign als or close interference. I don’t know if this is due to the selectivity being a bit broad but my take is that the sensitivity is too high. Problem goes away when RX gain is reduced.

For some reason this radio does not like to be hooked up to a linear on SSB. I think it may be due to the cable length or something mundane but I will look into this in more depth. After 100W the radio starts shutting down so I guess it doesn’t like RF. Will separate things a bit more and put a tuner before the amp and see what gives. Jackson also suffers similarly and so does the Lincoln but to a lesser extent. None of them seem happy driving a solid state linear. Tried DX500 and KL500 and the KL500 was slightly better. All George could do was rattle the relays of the DX500. Magnum 257 and S-9 drove the kl500 into overload and the DX500 to 450 W PEP +. Yankee toys for Yankee boys….

Great audio out of the George….sharp and strong and it is a class act with the 16 memories and 5k/c shift. Receive audio a wee bit on the sharp and noisy side but have not had time to really fine tune things. Mine arrived without the 560 ohm resistor in place so I had to remove the front panel and solder it in…No biggie but would have preferred President to have included it. The program mod and the memories have remained intact with the power disconnected which is a good thing. Pushing and holding the button combinations every time you want to use the radio would be a chore indeed. George will easily crank out 40W plus but sources in Europe advised keeping it to 25W or the receive RF gain goes funny. He said he couldn’t explain it properly in English so we let it go at that. I have the FM cranked up to 45W and AM 15W Carrier. Heat sink has yet to feel warm so I may tweak some more out on SSB and see what happens. All internal pots are clearly marked with their function which is a nice touch. There are not too many components to get in the way. They are all surface mounted on the back side of the board. Internally George is is a nicely laid out radio with lots of shielding around the PA section.

George PA Section…well shielded but still sensitive to RF…

George underside of Board…here’s where all the parts went!

President Jackson

Jackson..nice and simple with a big 70W SD1405 final on a daughter board. This is a real bread and butter radio…6 bands of 40ch with a 10k/c switch and 5/kc slide on the clarifier. Course clarifier works on TX and RX while fine clarifier tunes RX. Ready to go straight out of the box with no mods needed. Just like in the old days! Jackson is pretty punchy and let down a bit by a muffly microphone. Reports picked up when I used the mic from f the George and better again using the mic from the Magnum 257 which plugged straight in…Have to watch the mic gain and the rx gain or distorted tx and rx will result. Very sensitive. In fact too sensitive…I keep the RF gain at about 50% to prevent strong stations sounding “bubbly”. Has a modulation meter which wasn’t calibrated and a roger beep which I didn’t use to round things off. I didn’t know how much I relied on the counter of the S-9 and displays of the 257, Lincoln and George until I had to go “down 5” and got rather lost till I could zero beat on the other signal…You have to remember where you are on the channel readout only radios!

Looks familiar doesn’t it? Dunno what the black box does. Big speaker.

Note the single PA transistor on the daughter board

The Lincoln has been hammered to death so I won’t do anything on that one….

So What are these going to cost? Unfortunately too much. We have to buy direct from President in France at their Euro prices and shipping. And they are charging a bunch just to get a carton (6) into Singapore. No discounts for volume here. If there is interest in these radios I will bite the bullet and bring them in ….otherwise….they are readily available from European suppliers

President George shipped to NZ Address by Courier……..NZ$680.00 (ouch!)

President Jackson Shipped to NZ Address by Courier……NZ$570.00 (*&#@!)

The George might be worth it but the Jackson isn’t. Compared to the price we can offer on the magnums these don’t come close………The S-9 and 257 have these beat , especially for coverage and their willingness to work with an amplifier!

Coverage

George will cover 26.065mhz thru 28.755mhz in 5k/c or 10k/c steps. Won’t work off the Zeros and fives. Eg 27.547mhz.is a no no.

Jackson covers 25.615mhz thru 28.305mhz continuously using the course clarifier.

Cobra 200 Advertising Deceiptful

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 02:09:23 GMT

Cobra claim in their advertising that the Cobra 200 has a 6 digit frequency counter.

Quoted Specs:

30W AM/FM, 100W SSB, Dual finals, SWR Calibration System, Antenna 'Warning Indicator, Night Watch Illumination, 6 Digit Frequency Counter, Echo Control, Roger Beep, Dual Power, +10 kHz Control, Large Full Function Analog Meter,

It doesn't have a counter. It is not reading frequency. It is just a display like the 257, lincoln etc etc. Move the clarifer and the display system goes to shit. It is all over the place and nowhere on frequency. If you want to work the zeros 27540.0 for example for get this radio. It is 1.5 k/c out.

If you are walking down a lane late at night and there is a snake in front of you and a cobra 200 GTL DX behind you. You have one bullet in your gun.

Make sure you shoot the Cobra 200.......

Update to the sad sorry Cobra 200 GTL DX saga

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 01:28:34 GMT

When you have outlayed good cash on a radio that looks as though it should be a winner it is hard to sit back and accept that it doesn't work. Most of the folks that own this radio will try to accept it's shortcomings and concentrate on the positve aspects of the radio. I could only find one positve aspect. It had 100W for a price range where most radios had 20W. Therefore you could be heard by more people who could ask you what you had done to the radio and please adjust the audio or remove the rubber band that was obviously squeezing a most sensitve part of the male anatomy.

So with grim determination I prepared to apply the patch! A 50.V 1uf cap was found, the traces cleaned back to copper, Tested first ....OK and the cap was attached to the traces as directed.

And that was the last of the cobra!

It keys but no Audio out in any mode.

Its probably a good thing.......

Contacted Cobra and a trip to the US for repair is the only solution.

From here that is about US$75 each way.

For a dog that would chase a mac truck if it got off the leash that is just too much!

Way to much for this Puppy.

But in defence of Cobra they did send me a schematic, alighnment proceedure and parts placement diagram.

Credit where credit is due.....

So back to the drawing board and it seems I had shorted out the tracks instead of sloldering a capacitor in its place! Well we got that sorted out and tried the radio for a while and it seemed it was going along as it was before...rubber band stuff...

Ok remod...This time I got it right. No change in Audio but a big improvement in av talk power. Far out. Can piss off a whole lot more people with it!

Come on Glen ... more mods!

Cobra 200 GTL DX

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 13:04:27 GMT

COBRA 200 GTL DX

Back Ground

This is the new Cobra 200 GTL DX, the SSB/AM/FM hi power Cobra recently released in the USA. It did not take long for it to become the radio that “everybody loves to hate”! I couldn’t see why. If you looked at the price then looked at the specifications, no other radio comes close…30W on AM/FM/CW and 100W on SSB, Antenna warning light, SWR meter, 6 digit counter, echo, roger beep, Hi /Low power switch, NB/ANL, and coverage (Once modified) from 26.065 thru 29.695. The cheapest 100W 10m/11m SSB on the market is running around US$380.00 on up. Why did cobra price this one at US$229.00? On spec alone it should sell for US$350 minimum if they were trying to break into the market. Seems a bit more at stake here. Cobra is making a statement and we must all be wondering just how much we are being ripped off on SSB CB radios today? Obviously Cobra must be making money…they did not release it at this price to go broke! Unfortunately user reports on this radio have not been all good. The audio on SSB seems to be the problem. Regardless I had to have a look and see what Cobra was up to releasing a new 10m radio at the low point in the sun cycle. Doesn’t get much worse on 10m! Why didn’t they make a 40m 100W mobile for a couple of hundred dollars for the car…Now that would probably sell well at the moment!

Out of the Box

After waiting over a month for Fedex to clear a couple of these Cobras and a President Lincoln out of customs I eventually loaded up the wallet and drove out to the airport warehouses to do it myself. 3 hours later and a little bit lighter in the wallet I was speeding back to the house with the three radios.

One of the cobras had been opened by customs so I opened that one first.

First impressions. The box is impressive. Well constructed and excellent artwork. Designed to catch the eye. The box and the radio say they are constructed in the Philippines. I believe Cobra has a factory just out of Manila somewhere. This is a heavy radio. Finish is good and the heat sink from the back running down and underneath looks both effective and attractive. Heavy duty. First thing I did was pull the lids off. Had to see what it looked like inside!

The serial number on this was H506000270. No date.

As you can see the 100W PA stage is mounted on the main motherboard. Output transistors on this radio were the HF-50. I heard the new ones coming out had the 2290 finals and had specifically requested this but ….I wonder about the wisdom of placing the 100W PA stage on the main board. All amateur radios keep the PA stage well separated from the rest of the radio. Never seen inside a hi power Galaxy or ranger so I wonder if they do the same? Seems a huge potential for RF into the rest of the circuitry and all those resultant problems. But if Ranger and Galaxy can work it out then so can Cobra.

The boards look neat and lots of tiny components that I could hardly see with my eyes.

The speaker is huge also. The insert in the microphone looks like something out of an old telephone!

The heat sink wraps around the radio and protrudes about 2cm under the cabinet.

The speaker is really that big!

The microphone is huge and I was forever bumping my lips with it.

Front Panel

The Front Panel is relatively uncluttered and everything seems easy enough. So just what is everybody on about!

First things first…We had better convert this puppy so we can get it up and running on 11m and show it off to all my mates. OK no worries ..cut R138 and bridge the pad in front of it. Specs on and go searching….There are no component markings on the board and most of the surface mount stuff is microscopic. Black dots on the green circuit board! On to the net and email Dave in the states who has modded his. Help, Urgent, Do you have a photo. Impossible to do this without a guide! A couple of hours later and the pic arrived….Had to study it for a bit…This one was not quite the same..close enough tho.

My one looked like the one above. Went ahead and pulled out the side cutters and destroyed the resistor and dropped a blob of solder across the 2 points above it. A quick check and 26mhz on the counter.

Lids on and hooked up to the dummy load to run some quick tests.

Frequency coverage. (Expansion mod done)

There are 4 bands A,B,C&D. Each band covers 90 channels. All in order including the alpha channels which read out correctly on the counter and are marked with a dot after them on the channel readout.

We have 27085.0 on the counter and CH 11 on the channel readout.

We have 27095.0 on the counter and CH 11. on the channel readout

Sure looks like a CB set to me!

Band Frequency Talk Whistle

A 26.0650 - 26.9550 65W PEP 100W PEP

B 26.9650 – 27.8550 80W PEP 120W PEP

C 27.8650 – 28.7550 100W PEP 140WPEP

D 28.7650 – 29.6950 85W PEP 135W PEP

The -10kc switch does not appear to do anything.

ON AIR TESTS

First thing I found with this radio was that you can’t just put it down anywhere. The heat sink sticking out below the case means you have to prop up the front. Because this is a heavy radio the heat sink will mark what ever you sit it on if you leave it for long. I went back to the box and fitted the mobile bracket to it so it would sit up. Leans back on the heat sink but not too much..

The clarifier is in the wrong place for me. It is the third of 4 knobs and I always seem to go for the last knob which is the SWR Calibrate and echo. Received audio sounded tiny. With such a huge speaker they must have gone to a lot of effort to make it sound so sharp.

Everybody reports the transmit audio is too trebly. Clear but sharp. Just needs to get deeper somehow.

If nobody has heard you on the radio before they may not comment, but as all my testers confirmed it was not me and they did not like it. Need to try some other microphones and the mod listed below.

Cobra have released a fix for the 200 which involves adding a capacitor somewhere, but without a circuit diagram and a photo it would be impossible as none of the components on the board are marked. Impossible to find.

The Mod

TECHNICAL SERVICE BULLETIN

10043

MODEL(S): 150GTL, 200GTL

DESCRIPTION: Receiver overloads when receiving a strong signal, resulting in distorted audio. In addition there may be a warble in the modulation when transmitting (which the customer might describe as a popping sound during transmit).

ACTION: RF is bleeding into the receiver front-end. Apply the following fix:

For both the 150GTL and 200GTL, install a 1µF electrolytic capacitor across C607. (From C607 to ground)

200GTL

Scrape to expose the circuit traces as indicated above. The large copper area is ground.

Solder the capacitor as shown. Be sure to observe polarity.

Put some glue under the capacitor so that it cannot move.

Conclusion

Some how or other Cobra have managed to make a radio that is actually less than the sum of the total parts. It grows on you like a wart.

It bugs you.. the big microphone, the poor audio reports, the round knobs that tell you nothing, the clarifier stuck between two other knobs and deciphering the dots on the channel selector to work out where in the in world you are today.

Its kind of like it was designed by a committee.

The workmanship is great but it was certainly not designed as an amateur rig even though it is being sold as such. It needs a better microphone and much better modulation. More watts we can get from anywhere but if it don’t sound good to start with it ain’t going nowhere

It is a 100W CB set.

No more no less.

And priced accordingly

A bargain for a CB’er but no amateurs and serious SSB’ers will touch it.

Even if Cobra sold this rig for a hundred dollars…until we can get that ‘telephone’ audio fixed it will be staying in the cupboard.

Come on Glen, lets see if you can make this thing come good without redesigning the entire audio department.

91DD018

Jakarta

Dec 3rd 2005

tried this thing on air to go down 5k/c'son the slide. The counter is way off down there. 540 became 541.3 on the cobra. Something is seriously wrong here. That has pretty well killed it in my book. Audio acceptable until listener hears something else.

More on Amps for yeticomnz

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:43:25 GMT

Amplifiers

In these low sunspot years an amp is an essential for those of us without the real estate or where-with-all to erect a multi element beam at 60 feet. Slapping a few hundred watts in line to the old vertical can come pretty close to the beams in signal strength when conditions are in.

For example 40 watts into a three element yagi was stomped on by 450W into a 5/8 vertical located 50 feet away in the trees with the tip of the vertical about reaching the boom of the yagi. This was on a skip contact from Indonesia to Tasmania. Rod 43SD333 was calling me a Mud Duck on the beam! He didn’t complain about the signal on the vertical. An amplifier is good in the car…really makes a lot of difference working local and DX from the mobile but can give problems to properly install a hi power amp if things are not done right!!

Here at Yeticomnz we sell a variety of amplifiers from several sources. Some are actually legal to use on the Ham Bands. Most are not! Ok… you have been warned.

What makes an Amp legal to use on the Ham bands? Each country has different rules but usually the authorities want to see filtering on the output of solid state amps and an amp that is not keyed (switched to TX) by RF but by an external lead connected to the radio. In the US amps need to be modified so they will not easily work on 10m to prevent their use on 11m CB band. Fortunately most manufacturers get around this in various ways for the benefit of all free banders everywhere.

Every amp sold on Yetizone is keyed by RF so it can be driven by anything that will deliver a few watts of RF.

We have one valve amp the KL1000/P and the rest are solid state or transistors. The valve amp includes the power supply and will plug directly into the 220v AC wall socket at home. (Need to change the plug first.) Most solid state amps require an additional power supply providing 13.8 V DC at enough amperes to power the amplifier. If you are using the Solid State amplifier in the car just hook it to the battery terminals and hope you don’t drain the battery too often. (Pays to carry a spare battery and jumper leads if you are working mobile with a big amp. Or park on a hill)

Another thing that sets amplifiers apart is the degree of protection built into them. Most of them have none. Stuff up and run them into an empty coax, overdrive them or overheat them and you will be calling Glen for new transistors. We stock transistors for the RM amps. The amps with protection cost a lot more but they are worth the extra for those who can afford it. The Amplifiers we sell with the protection built in are the Ham amps from RM in Italy. The HLA300V, VLA100, VLA200V, ULA50 all have hi SWR and inverse polarity protection built in. The HLA300 has Hi temp protection built in as well. The HLA300V and the VLA200V have built in fans. If you are buying an amp without a fan make sure you put some fans on it to keep it cool regardless. The Ham amps from RM are better made, more cooling, have output indicators, better switches and cost twice the price of RM’s standard similar output amplifier. We have several amps for 2m but the pirate of note is the UHF ULA-50. This little beauty is tuned up to the top of the 470mhz range and will work on FRS and UHF CB!!!

With 50 watts. If you can’t afford the best little UHF CB set available in NZ(the IC208H) but you still want 50w on UHF CB and FRS this is the way to go! Once you are out of range of the repeaters 5w doesn’t go very far. Make up the difference with the ULA 50-1. It might save your life one day.

HF and 11m Amps.

The amp that goes best with the 30-40 W PEP output of the Magnum S-9 and M-257, President lincoln etc is undoubtedly the Texas Star DX500. This is a solid little amp I have been using daily for over a year now. You will get 450W PEP when driven with 40 watts. I frequently drive mine with the AR3500 putting out 65WPEP for 650W out but Glen doesn’t like me to tell you that. He says the trannies can’t do it. I saw it, so I believe it! Texas Star call it’s little brother the DX350 and the DX500 is exactly twice the DX350 in boards, transistors and ‘should be’ output. I drove a DX350 with 35WPEP from the magnum 257 and saw a solid 375WPEP on the meter. (Hansen) That means the DX500 could take 70W in and give 750W PEP out for a short while. I should mention the DX350 is away being repaired. It didn’t last. I mention this because it means the DX500 driven by a 40 watt exciter is operating well within it’s comfort range. Texas Star amps are designed to work on 11m (26-28mhz )only. The input SWR starts to rise above 1.5 as we go below 26mhz and above 28.5mhz. I will be checking all the other amps as I have time and will publish the results somewhere on this site. To run the DX500 you will need a 50 amps at steady 13.8V DC. Power supplies are better than batteries because the batteries will always drop under load reducing output from the amp. I use welding leads and connectors on my leads to keep cable losses to a minimum. Make sure your wires are thick enough. A volt meter at the amp will let you see how much drop you are getting under load. ½ a volt is OK, 1 volt should be looked at and any more is cause for concern.

We have a few of the DX1600 in stock but I am so not sure about these big boys. The DX1600 consists of 4 boards or two of the DX500’s in one package. It is a big unit and gets hot if you don’t keep the fan to it. Takes a while to warm up but when it does it stays hot for a while as well. Better keep the fans on full time. It has a temperature controlled plug at the back for the fans which switches the fans on when the amp reaches a certain temperature. I just run the fans whenever the amp is on so it never gets a chance to warm up. It packs some power…up to 1500 W PEP if driven flat out. Driven with the S-9 and the 257 we see 800 to 850W PEP which is idling these things, but even at these levels if anything goes wrong in the system they will blow the transistors on one or more of the 4 boards and you will smell the smoke as the combiner resistor burns out as well. The out put will drop by a half. Shut her down to save the other boards. At this time you are only up for a couple of 2SC 2879 transistors and a 2watt 100 ohm carbon resistor. I know because it has happened twice to me so far. Both times we had an antenna problem and the DX1600 bowed up before we were aware of it. If you have 100Amps of 13.8V DC and know what you are doing this is the meanest most powerful amp we sell. You will be noticed on the airwaves. The bigger the amp the more important it is to keep the SWR of the antenna system low. Change a lead make sure you recheck the SWR. Aim for no more than 1.3:1 and you are on safe territory. It is potentially dangerous to run lots of RF on 27mhz…You can start growing strange things on your body and irate neighbours can hurt you as you start racking up the “worked all TV’s” award in the neighbourhood. High antennas and thick coax is the way to go. Run a filter if you have one. Get one if you don’t.

Next in line would be the KL500. A lot of Europeans swear by this little amp. They call it a 500 but I could never get more than 375 W PEP out of it. Still makes a big difference over 30 or 40W PEP. Doesn’t have much heatsink despite the fact it has heatsinks all around and is a shiny red colour which must mean it goes faster. It is a four transistor amp so quite suitable for the magnums 30-40W drive. Funnily enough they can also be used down to 20m so could be a poor mans’ HLA300V! I will be looking at the input SWR to see just what it can go down to and the outputs shortly. RM just describe it as HF without going into anymore detail. By comparison several of their solid state amps are marketed as 26-28mhz amps. Not these ones. These do work well with any 10-20W SSB radios for a solid 200 plus watts. At half the cost of the HLA300V and 2/3’s the price of the DX500 it is a bargain. We sell a lot of these.

For those with FT817’s and other QRP ham rigs we have the KL203. For around a hundred bucks NZ you can turn your 817 into a 70 watt HF rig. I will be checking this combination when the next batch of these amps comes in but it has to be a bargain and I will be interested to see just how low in frequency this amp can go….Slap one in the car and off you go! It uses 4 mosfets in parallel so testing this with the 817 will be interesting. Glen says you gotta watch the mosfets…they ain’t as strong as the SD1446’s and 7’s.

For the Cb’ers we also have a hundred watt KL200. RM say 200W but Glen says no: 100W max. Uses a single SD1446 transistor so 70 watts is probably closer to the truth…but the price…Super cheap. Buy 2 and save a bundle on shipping! Excellent little stinger for any CB rig.

Last of the amps is the KLV1000/P It is big and heavy weighing in at 20kgs so you are not going to pick this up and take off out the back door when the Nazi R.I’s come visiting. More switches on the front panel than a 747. Only good for 26-28mhz and RF switched so about as illegal as it gets everywhere in the world. It uses four EL519 valves and is supposed to put out 1kw with 100 watt drive. It doesn’t. I have only been able to get 500-600w out of mine no matter how much I fiddle with the knobs. The handbook is confusing. You tune this amp to max output which does not always mean best match. We need to be looking at plate currents and grid currents as well. It has an SWR meter and a relative power meter. I bet Glen can reconfigure the meters to read the plate and grid currents so we can tune to a dip instead of max current. Hope so as he will be getting one to work on soon. No wonder the valves don’t last. If you want a solid 500W with no hassles about power supplies it might be the amp. Spare valves about NZ$50 ea but could come down in numbers of 4 ea. Shipping drives the price of this amp up a lot. Customs will probably also want to have a look at it and levy some duties as well. The adjustable pre amp works very well. I have seen reports of folks saying they got 1400W out of these amps but I could not reproduce these figures.

Yeticomnz is up and running

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:41:26 GMT

Have prepared a few posts for the pirate section of the yeticomnz site and will post them here for comments and corrections.....

First is about the out of band stuff we have available....this ol' pirate is coming out of the closet!

Pirate Pages with 91DD018 Dave

Just a few notes describing the radios we have available on Yeticomnz and their ability to work out of band.

Magnum S-9

The Magnum S-9 came to us directly from the factory in China with the jumper installed for expanded band operation. Even if you work only 10m the 10m option for this radio is a mess. Don’t do it. The radio comes with 8 bands of 40 channels with the exact frequency reading out on the frequency display. 10khz up is on a switch and anywhere from -6khz to +6khz is on the course clarifier…a great option for popping between channels. The frequency counter tracks the course and fine clarifier movements in all bands and modes so you always know where you are. Both Clarifiers work in TX and RX and I don’t know how to lock the fine clarifier to RX only at this time. We are working on it and the mod will be released when perfected. (A far cry from flicking switches and referring to a frequency chart to work out where you have gone!) The channels follow the American and Australian 1-40 system per band and alpha channels must be accessed by the 10khz switch. Coverage on the magnum is from 25.615 on channel 01 band A through to 29.205 on channel 40 Band H. As I mentioned before there are no gaps at all in the coverage using the course clarifier as a mini VFO to go to whatever frequency you need within the range. Coverage of the NZ CB frequencies starts on Band B and part of Band C. NZ operators will have to be aware of the frequencies of the channels they want and use the clarifiers to go down 5khz to find the zero. The frequency counter on the front panel takes all the guess work out of it. Band D is the normal 1-40 channels on the channel selector and the readout. Band E is the freeband 40 channels where you will most likely find 91DD018 on 27.555 or channel 12. Bands F, G and H take you into the Ham 10m band for those licensed to operate there. A good place to listen if you want to get bored to death. Otherwise best stay away. Operation is possible on AM/FM and SSB. For FM use you will need the mic gain turned up near full but for SSB local signals it should be kept below 12 o’clock. For DX wind it up as the S-9 audio gets very sharp and penetrating and seems to hammer its way through the noise on DX very well for a 40W PEP radio. For AM switch on the Top Gun Modulator and watch your voice peaks go to 40W on AM …pretty neat. Top Gun is not supposed to work on SSB. Noise blanker doesn’t seem to do anything either. I have not been able to make a difference to any noise I have encountered so far. We are working on that too as Glen says the same circuit does OK in other radios, so I am sure he will sort out where they went wrong with this one.

Well what else can you do with this radio…..Quite a lot and Glen is working on more mainly to do with balancing the Side bands, stabilizing the VCO a bit more and better biasing of the finals to get the squawk and warble out of the audio for local use. Slight use of the echo controls can also bring some depth into the TX audio but handle with care on SSB.

My favorite mod on this radio is the 5khz mod. Place another jumper in the box and the radio will change the way the band switch and 10khz switch work. With this in place Band A becomes 26mhz in 5khz or 10khz steps depending on the position of the 10khz switch. Totally brilliant in the freeband for positive instant 5khz steps. I don’t know of anything other than a digiscan that can do that. Band B becomes 27mhz, Band C 28mhz and band D 29mhz. If you are a ham this is the mod to use. The channel selector doesn’t work any more so everything is read off the 6 digit Frequency display. Clarifiers continue to function as before. This mod is available on the web but most people who do it don’t realize that you have to retune the VCO to bring it back into stability. The display just goes running wildly out of control until the VCO is retuned, causing most people think they have messed up and undo it.

The VCO is L17 and it is the coil in the middle of the wax poured around it. You won’t be able to see the part number on the board. Glen will probably get some pics up to help you find it before too long…maybe! Depending on the tuning of the VCO you can push the S-9 up to 32mhz but you will only have about 4-5khz bandwidth for stable operation. If your S-9 gets out of whack and the counter stars to run wild on its own; start looking around L17 the VCO. In this mode 26.000 is the lowest we can get without changing crystals. With a crystal change Glen was able to get 24.6 up to 29.? Mhz which could be useful to Ham operators wanting a cheap mobile with devastating AM audio for CB and the 10 and 12 meter ham bands. Glen does an amazing mod where you can change between the channel read out and the 5khz steps by using part of the dimmer switch on the front panel.

At the back of the set is a little switch marked “on – off” Default is off. Set it to on. It is supposed to be a hi SWR warning switch but I am sure it shut down the radio once when I had a cable problem. Saved the DX500 because there was not enough power to key the amp! The power meter will flash on and off alerting you there is a high SWR problem. It works. Receiver is pretty good. Quiet but sensitive. Compare it with an RCI 2950 receive audio and the RCI does not come close. I think the SSB white noise from the RCI 29XX radios could drive you insane eventually. It is awful. Does not seem to get hammered too badly by local QRM but if someone is close you will know it. Way better than a lot of other radios in it’s class but it is no Kenwood or Yaesu. Still chances are you will not copy a signal on your Kenwood that you won’t copy on the S-9.

One quirk you will notice pretty quickly is the slight difference in frequency as you change from lower to upper side…Display alters a few hundred HZ and a slight retune is in order. I don’t know if Glen has sorted that one out yet ….but he will..

The new hi power versions are due out with the mosfet finals and Glen will be looking into those as well. Deliveries are being pushed back as I think there may be some stability and audio problems with the mosfets similar to the new cobras. Our hi powered S-9s will come with the nitro knobs as well.

If you want the best S-9 on the planet you can buy from Yeticomnz.

E-mail the tech “Glen” for details….

Intersting article on Solid State amps but no design stuff

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 06:08:29 GMT

http://www.qsl.net/ab4oj/quadra/sshfamp.html

Holidays

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 17:02:59 GMT

The holiday season has hit Indonesia again. Each year at Ramadhan millions of people exodus Jakarta to return to their home villages in Java and all over. Most of them travel by road...Imagine bumper to bumper traffic for 200km for about 3 days and you starting to get close. The exodus is monitored on TV by all stations and all we get is accident reports and traffic statistics. Most accidents involve at least one bus. It is not fun. I'm not looking forward to it...I have about 400km to endure...plan to leave Thursday morning when it all should have died down...In the past the normal 5-6 hour journey has taken 22 hours. The rain isn't going to help matters much either. I will have the radio to keep me company on the return run the following day..asuming there is some propagation.