Jack Twilley wrote in message ...
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"Tam" == t-tammaru Tam writes:

Tam Jack, Have you determined that the radio is actually putting out
Tam 100W? The light bulb test should give some indication.

I have an MFJ Versa Tuner II which has a power meter. It's not
laboratory certified, but the needle does go all the way up to 100
when I tune up and transmit.

Well, you know the radio works...



I can't get the wire any higher than it is right now at this current
location. This is pretty much the best I can do, and this little
antenna already totally fills my yard and the yards of each of my
neighbors (with their permission). It's a multiband fan dipole with
three pairs of legs, cut for 40, 20, and 10.

Your antenna is *very* efficient on those three bands, unless you have
coax or connection problems and power is not making it to the antenna.
BTW, the 40 legs will work 15 ok, if you tweak the match with the
tuner...Will be pretty efficient on 15 also as a 1.5 wl dipole.

My current goal is to acquire a noise bridge and see where the antenna
resonates, then trim the antenna as necessary until it resonates in
the right places.

Good idea. You shouldn't really need the tuner.

After that, I'll look into feedline length
modifications as necessary.

Should be unneeded. If coax length radically varies SWR, you need a
1:1 balun or choke to cut radation from the shield.

Hopefully those two approaches will
resolve my current issue.

Actually, I don't think you have a problem, assuming no coax or
connector problems. Does the receive noise level, and signal levels
sound fairly normal, or dead? I think the main problem is trying to
work locally using ground wave, with an antenna that is poorly suited
for that. But, you should usually be able to work 40m in the day,
being it's mainly NVIS. 20 miles is a long way for a low horizontal
dipole to work locally without the help of skywave. A purely
horizontal antenna has no groundwave, if no vertical feedline
radiation, etc. It has a space wave, but it's going to be hard to work
20 miles over the noise. If both of you had verticals, it would
probably be easy. As far as comparing antennas, all you have to do is
use a antenna switch, and see which is best on receive. Operation is
reciprical 98.8 % of the time, so a transmit test is unneeded. You
should be having no problems working 40m in the day, or even 20m to
stateside stuff. 10m local will be very tough, but you should be able
to work some skywave. A vertical is much better for 10m local. 20 ft
high is high enough to work for medium distance skywave. Maybe not a
barnburner, but it should be working for general gov work...I've run
many lower than that when camping, and had no problems. If you can't
hardly work *anyone*, I would check your connections, and coax , etc.
Also, if you use the tuner for now, use the bare minimum inductance to
get a usable match. That will help reduce tuner losses, which can
climb to 20% or so if too much coil is used.
I would eventually tune the antenna up, and dump the tuner. There is
no real need for it, unless you go off far from where you normally
have it tuned. IE: work some CW when the antenna is tuned for the fone
band. MK