Changes at the QTH
Jan24Written by:
1/24/2012 6:59 PM 
Made a couple changes over the last few days to the HAM station I’ve got set up here. First I changed my HF antenna from a Comet CHA-250BX 24’ vertical to a Chameleon Antenna Hybrid with a 30’ end fed wire.
I mounted it much closer to where my radio and computer so I’ve got a lot of RFI, there are some more changes I need to make to get rid of that. The Hybrid is WAY NICE! Much better receive than the Comet and transmit looks like it’s going to be great too once I get rid of the RFI. I’m not stuck with one antenna with it either, many different types of antenna can be connected to it. I can use it mounted to the house as a base like it is now and can also quickly remove it and mount it for portable or mobile use. One of the next things I’m going to do is change the 30’ end fed to the Chameleon Antenna V1 and see how that works out.
I changed the grounding to the radio to use a ground rod I installed for the Comet awhile back. That seems to have cleaned up a little of the noise I was getting in general and feels much better.
I found a new APRS software APRSIS32. It’s a little different from the others I’ve tried but seems much easier to setup correctly the first time and provides a much better feature set and the use of open source maps that don’t look like crap.
I figured out how to use the built in TNC in my Kenwood TS-2000. Now I don’t have to worry if the SignaLink USB is still working or not and I can run the APRS software full time.