Since I have not got around to building my dual exciter yet (for 80 and 40 meters), I bought another icom 756 pro to drive the homebrew transmitters. I have the added advantage of having a good ssb and cw rig for all the bands, if I was to be suddenly overcome with some sort of ssb disease or something. I can now also listen on other bands besides 160, 80 and 40 that the homebrew receivers cover.
I was using a Collins 32V3 to drive the homebrew rigs (rf wise), but it was a pain to tune up on different rigs and different bands. The great thing about the icom is it has 2 antenna outputs plus a separate receive antenna input. Select 80 meters on the icom and it drives ant 1 output to the 813 rig, select 40 meters and the antenna auto switches to ant 2 and the 3X4D32 rig. The rx input is bridged with the homebrew rx so the band scope works, drive to the transmitters is stable and accurate. I did a comparison of the audio and signal levels between the icom and the homebrew receivers, using line out to the Marantz and headphones, and the icom sucks. They really limit the low end and add a lot of noise and distortion. On TX, with the stock mike, it sounds quite poor on AM, I never tried a line in audio, who cares at 25 watts out... Anyway, I bring this up as I had one before and sold it on ebay for motorcycle cash, and I just got a nicer one, with the separate speaker, service manual, for LESS then I sold mine for. For around $1000.00 you cant go wrong, just avoid the 756 non pro as they had display problems. People want the pro 2 or 3, which are not much better unless you contest dx on 20 meter cw. That makes them a very good buy for a used rig. I really like the band scope/spectrum display, very handy to locate AM signals without tuning all over the place. I ordered antenna wire from the wireman, insulated 13 gauge copperweld, to make a dual 80-40 meter dipole to replace the g5rv. I will run the 80 meter part through the trees and maybe down a bit on each end to get 120 feet, and hang the 40 meter below that fed by the same piece of coax, and hope to get it to work well without a tuner on 80 and 40. Brett N2DTS ______________________________________________________________ AMRadio mailing list List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Partner Website: http://www.amfone.net Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html Post: mailto:[email protected] To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body.
