Pre-amps

[Ed Tanton]

Respectfully, I disagree Glen. Back in the early 80s when I was running a
Drake TR-7 transceiver, I used an Ameco PT (I think it was a PT-could've had
a number after the "PT"-it was the MOSFET self-switched/RF activated one.)
Consistently it performed better with the preamp 'IN'. Yes, the noise level
came up. The signals on 160M & 80M also came up. 

What would happen was that the signals that I could tell were there, but
could not quite copy became copyable(sp? Not a word?). Many times. 

At that time, I was in a friendly competition with my friend K4ODL on 160M.
He'd try some antenna and I'd try one, etc. We stayed neck and neck while he
went to a shunt-fed tower. I had a GAP DX Voyager which was adequate on
160M, pretty good on 80M, and excellent on 40M. I could her and copy stuff
WITH the Ameco he couldn't. It was so easy to switch it IN and OUT you could
easily tell. 

We were both running high power. I had a Drake L-7, he had an SB-220. I got
an Alpha 78, then what ended it were two things: 1) Randy got an Alpha 77
"two-holer"... I could still out-hear him, but he had the edge transmitting;
(He'd already had a slight edge [70' tower with 3el TH-7 Yagi 'tophat',
shunt-fed, with radials] over the smaller GAP [45ft/4 radial-like
'counterpoise' wires] just with the shunt-fed tower;) 2) THEN he put out a
Beverage. 

End of 'contest'. I could COPY signals OVER THE TELEPHONE from his receiver
(!!!) that I could barely tell were there, here, pre-amp or no-pre-amp.

We were about 5 miles apart, so the location-related propagation should been
the same. This was ALL CW.

73  Ed Tanton N4XY <n4xy at earthlink.net> 

Website: http://www.n4xy.com 
 
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OK-QRP   K2 (Field Tester) #00057
QRP-L #165

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Wag more  -  Bark Less
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