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160m/80m DC transceiver
21 January 2015 | by These are bands I rarely use, but some readers may be interested in the Hendricks Kits dual band transceiver. 5.5W sounds enough to work plenty.
These days, the main issue on these bands can be man-made noise from TVs, SMPUs and similar. At my old QTH I had an S7-8 noise floor on 160m and 80m. At the new QTH the noise floor on these bands is low currently, but this could change overnight. Some people use loops and nullers on RX to minimise problems. If you have a quiet noise environment then this transceiver may fit your needs. Don’t forget you will need a reasonably big antenna to get decent results. A half wave 160m dipole antenna is around 240 feet long.
In my youth we had rigs like the Codar AT5 12W AM/CW 160m/80m transmitter and companion T28 RX. I had the RX but not the TX although I did use an AT5 from the QTH of the late G4PJ. The T28 was mainly used as a tunable IF for my 2m converter. I heard my first 2m satellite signals via Oscar 6 and 7 using the T28 as a tunable IF. I remember being very thrilled hearing my first transatlantic stations on the top end of 2m.
One Response to “160m/80m DC transceiver”
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About a year ago I had the oportunity to build one of the first generation mbdc transceivers. I still have it and use it on 80 and 160 qrp (dipole on 80 and a sloper on 160). It works pretty good here on the east coast. It also makes a nice general coverage receiver down to about 15 meters. The only problem I had was with BC breakthrough during the day on 160. Not a problem because there is no daytime activity on the band anyway. A night the offending station 50Kw WTIC 1080kHz) changes its antenna patern and the problem goes away. It’s a fun project.