Hi Dave, Most of the 2-5 per second is receiving remember. The LDG AT-200PC computer-controlled tuner is pretty much the accepted standard for MARS-ALE, and support is built-in the program. You pre-tune the frequencies you will be transmitting on, and store the setting for each freq. When actually transmitting, the recall is near instantaneous as long as you did a solid tune before. There may be a 1/2 second delay as the tuner retrieves the settings. I use a 468' NVIS dipole for MARS-ALE (about 10-12 ft/. above ground with two parallel wire reflectors along the ground, and have recently been using it on regular nets just above 80 meters. Any regular antenna I try to use (Alpha-Delta off-center fed dipole) is just destroyed by atmospheric noise as we pretty much always have storms in the area during the late afternoon. On the nets I just crank the power up a bit (30-40 watts using ALE, 100 -200w SSB) and it offsets the reduced transmitted signal level caused by the NVIS. It sure does tame the noise to an acceptable level though. Best, Hank KI4MF NN0BBX
_____ From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dave Bernstein Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 3:20 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: [digitalradio] Re: Open 5066 for HF-based Digital Email, Emergency Data --- In digitalradio@ <mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com> yahoogroups.com, Steve Hajducek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >snip< > >The ALE antenna issue is a major one for either portable or fixed though. How's that? I have a NVIS antenna that above that range starts to look like a random wire with gain that is a 125 foot dipole make of brightly jacketed 14ga. wire (could be lesser gauge) that mounted 6 feet above ground, easy to do just about anywhere, easy to make very visible. >From the center of that 125 foot dipole span is 28 feet for 300 ohm twin led that raises to 10 feet above ground at which point is hung a CWS ByteMark 6:1 balum with a heavy earth ground and from there 50 ohm coax to the transceiver, over the soil in my backyard this antenna mounted as described is resonant at 3.2Mhz, the LDG AT200PC tunes it from 2Mhz (and lower) to 27Mhz (and higher) with ease for my MARS channels in use. It is basically a full 160-6m antenna with an HF-6m radio like my FT-817 and FT-847 and the AT200PC ATU. This antenna rolls up nicely and fits in a back backpack, if you are lucky enough to just suspend it from trees etc in your target surrounds then poles are not even needed, just dacron rope, although I have various push up and intersecting poles for use as needed. There are even screw together ground rods these days, although I just lug an 8 footer about. >>>The point is that you need a multi-band antenna. If the ALE scan rate is 2-5 frequencies per second, then presumably you need an in- board or out-board auto-tuner capable of retuning that rapidly if the frequencies lie on different bands, correct? 73, Dave, AA6YQ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
