OK, keep in mind my experience to date is limited to higher power HF traffic... From 100w on up of voice, tty and other data traffic in the military...
Why not use a tuner instead of the coils and etc? Or is the power loss through a tuner just too great?
When I was in the Army, we'd used different segments of chainlink fence for antennas as well. That was the nice thing about the tuners we used, we could pull down to 1.1/1 swr on 100' of chainlink fence.
OK, keep in mind my experience to date is limited to higher power HF traffic... From 100w on up of voice, tty and other data traffic in the military...
Why not use a tuner instead of the coils and etc? Or is the power loss through a tuner just too great?
When I was in the Army, we'd used different segments of chainlink fence for antennas as well. That was the nice thing about the tuners we used, we could pull down to 1.1/1 swr on 100' of chainlink fence.
I got my SSTRAN yesterday via UPS and can't wait to dig into it this weekend.
Hi,
You could use a tuner (sometimes called a transmatch) for part 15 AM. The power transfer gained by matching the antenna system to the transmitter will outweigh tuner losses. A possible limitation is if used with a 3 meter antenna a commercial transmatch may not have the adjustment range to operate with the highly reactive antenna load. No harm in trying though.
Many, including myself, use a coil loaded antenna with the SSTRAN. See their site for details. In a sense, this coil and the tuning capacitor in the transmitter form a transmatch. You will find that the tuning is very sharp due to the extremely short antenna, probably more so than the tuners you have used. If you check other threads here you will find that the ground is a very important part of the system.
I hope you enjoy your SSTRAN as much as I have enjoyed mine.
Neil