2016-10-21, 23:53
He, he, I've been wielding a soldering iron for a similar period of time. I know what you mean about a good joint and why I commented on the bare solder or gold pads not "taking" quite as I've come to expect. At least it's a very simple bit of circuitry, not many places for it to have failed. My problem is the tiny size of this SMD stuff and eyesight that is almost fixed focus at 6".
I need to get my head around the alignment of the antennas, Ch1 I'll stick with aiming the null for minimum Anthorn/Skelton. Ch2 will have a compromise between getting swamped by Athorn on one lobe whilst having the other facing the middle of the SE quadrant.
The station may have been doing well yesterday but that was pretty much just on the Ch1 loop. The Ch2 one was facing NE and was rarely sent, Ch3 Horizontal was sent more often! The E-field about as often as Ch2. Since today's antenna fiddle and ground connection I set a single LP filter in Ch2 at 19 kHz to use the filter slope to bring down the combination of Athorn and Skelton then switched to Automatic. It's fiddled with the gains and now all four channels are sent more often than not. It's currently seeing the strikes from the storms off the coast of Spain south of Barcelona (1000 miles) and between the heel of Italy and Greece (1500 miles).
I need to get my head around the alignment of the antennas, Ch1 I'll stick with aiming the null for minimum Anthorn/Skelton. Ch2 will have a compromise between getting swamped by Athorn on one lobe whilst having the other facing the middle of the SE quadrant.
The station may have been doing well yesterday but that was pretty much just on the Ch1 loop. The Ch2 one was facing NE and was rarely sent, Ch3 Horizontal was sent more often! The E-field about as often as Ch2. Since today's antenna fiddle and ground connection I set a single LP filter in Ch2 at 19 kHz to use the filter slope to bring down the combination of Athorn and Skelton then switched to Automatic. It's fiddled with the gains and now all four channels are sent more often than not. It's currently seeing the strikes from the storms off the coast of Spain south of Barcelona (1000 miles) and between the heel of Italy and Greece (1500 miles).