The 706 that was displaced by when my K3 arrived ended up in our
1999 4Runner with a Little Tarheel screwdriver antenna. The
combination works reasonably well. I have the antenna mounted
high on the rear lift gate with due attention to bonding between
the antenna, the lift gate, and the car body. Some of the
highlights are a QSO with Denmark on 15M while my wife drove on
I40 east of Barstow, and using the antenna with the K3 for 80M
during the California QSO party (CQP).
I tune the antenna with a combination of a scale I made on the
side of the coil cover which shows approximately where the coil
should be for each band and the SWR meter in the radio. Note
that 80/75M covers 2 centimeters. If I am operating mobile,
tuning the antenna for maximum noise and then using the SWR
meter on the radio works reasonably well.
At higher frequencies, the antenna works quite well. On the
lower frequencies, the bandwidth is quite narrow and frequent
tuning is a must. During CQP, I was operating search and pounce
tuning up and down the 75M band. With this pattern, I always
knew the direction to move the antenna so when I answered a CQ
with "Whisky Six Zulu Zulu Zulu", I could also retune the antenna.
As for efficiency, I managed to contact 12 stations, all in
California on 75M during CQP using the K3/10 at 12 watts. Every
one of them said, "You're down in the noise, but we'll make it
work." Thanks to all of them for making the effort.
As a side note, I now have some tuned radials for 40M and 80M I
can use in portable operations. I also have a mast extension I
haven't played with very much. The real high point is I had my
wife logging during CQP. Having seen how things went on 80M, she
got me a KPA3 100 watt module for Christmas.
Cheers - Bill, AE6JV
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz |The nice thing about standards| Periwinkle
(408)356-8506 |is there are so many to choose| 16345
Englewood Ave
www.pwpconsult.com |from. - Andrew Tanenbaum | Los Gatos,
CA 95032
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