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I have owned this rig for several months now but it hardly get used as I prefer, because of my poor voice, to run my WSPR beacon on 10m.  It certainly works well with my last QSO being a W8 on SSB.

In the picture, the small WSPR beacon is far left with the Lincoln  with green illumination on the left of the FT817s and to the right of the WSPR beacon.

IC202

For me, 2m SSB began with the purchase of a 10W pep Belcom Liner 2, which opened up 2m SSB to the masses. Before then, people used homebrew transverters and HF rigs to get on VHF SSB.

After that I owned the IC202 from ICOM which had a very good VXO but less power (3W pep).  Later, the first digital synthesised rigs appeared and 2m SSB really took off.

In the last 20 years or so, certainly here in the UK, VHF/UHF SSB took a nosedive and what little VHF/UHF activity there is is mainly using FM. Here in the UK there is good SSB activity in contests and in good lifts, but little casual use of the SSB/CW modes, which is a pity. Ranges on SSB can be much greater than FM for similar power levels.

When I first used my Liner 2 I was amazed how far I could reach in flat conditions, even with 10W and a small indoor antenna.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/vuhf/ic202 .

This rig was designed and built many years ago. It spanned some impressive distances and worked well. The receiver was a direct conversion and the gain adjustment was before the mixer, so RF gain could be reduced easily which helped strong signal handling. No RX-TX offset was needed as this was just about right anyway. For quite a time it was the main rig used and every QSO felt like a million dollars! It was written up in GQRP SPRAT a very long time ago (30 years ago?). It is hard to get much more fun than using something this simple and working a long way regularly with it.

Before I had crystals for the CW part of the band my very first QSO was a USA SSB station that I called that was located near Chicago some 4000 miles away. I nearly fell off the chair when he replied.  After than I knew anything was possible. I really should rebuild it someday.

It crossed the Atlantic many times. I even used a 10/15m trap dipole (very low) occasionally and never used anything bigger than a low wire dipole. Output power was 800mW, quite enough I found for solid CW QSOs.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/hf/15m_pipit .

One of my least used rigs (it has still to be used at this QTH!) is my 4-band Elecraft K1 CW transceiver. This covers 40m, 30m, 20m and 15m CW at up to about 7W. It has the auto-ATU built in so just needs a 12-13.8V supply, CW key and end-fed antenna to be on the air.

At my old QTH it has worked lots including the USA on all bands with a simple end-fed wire antenna down the garden.  I really should consider selling it or trading it in as it is not being used.

Next winter I want to replace my hand rotated beams for 70cm and 2m with a big wheel stack for either 2m or 70cm. I was going to erect a 2m big wheel stack (of 2) but looking at the logs it may better to erect one for 70cm which is the more interesting band.

2 big wheels, suitably stacked, should give about 5dBd gain horizontal and need no turning. This is not far off the gain from my 5el yagi in the best direction.  Quite often I work stations off the direction of maximum gain. For my kind of operation (mainly UKAC contests and beacon monitoring) I think a big wheel is well suited.

70cm big wheel stacks are a lot smaller than the 2m versions. The stacking distance is smaller too. Commercial big wheels are available from Wimo in Germany.

See http://www.wimo.de/big-wheel-antennas_e.html .

As part of my recovery I usually do a short 5 minute walk morning and night.  When out this evening I did a “hard” reset of my 10m and 6m WSPR stations.  All power was removed, the PC (used with the FT817 on 6m) was turned off for the duration of the walk. Now home again both the 6m and 10m WSPR kits were turned on again and the whole lot sync’d to Internet time.

I hope to stay on both bands overnight, although, so far, I have not managed to catch any transatlantic Es openings. I remain hopeful. Because of the high thunder risk later in the week I may have to go QRT though, which will be a pity. Hopefully this will be a short break only.

I see MLS is offering rebates on Yaesu gear for the next few weeks. The rebate on the FT817 is £36, making the effective retail price around £413. As  far as I can see this is just a marketing ploy. A few years ago you could buy the FT817 for £349.

With the very good exchange rate currently I am surprised they don’t just slash the price and clear the shelves ready for the replacement. All development costs for the FT817 were recovered years ago, so the true retail price should be below £400. Yet again we are being taken for a ride I think.

The prices are as they are because we, Joe Public, is prepared to buy at these prices. My heart bleeds for all the poor dealers.