28MHz mobile
After getting the Sirio 10m antenna on the car last autumn, I’ve been switching the FT8900 over from the VHF/UHF aerial to use 10m, particularly at weekends as I’ve been driving around. On the FT8900 I’m restricted to FM of course, so I’d been thinking about getting the Anytone AT-5555 in the car to give me SSB capability.
It was just a case of getting the bits together to do it, which in reality was just sorting out the power. I assumed that fixing would be easy, but actually as ever, there’s less room in small cars than you think. And the Anytone is actually quite a big rig! In the end, I managed to fix it securely to the left hand side of the centre console. It seems quite easy to operate and doesn’t impede driving.
On a test drive across to the next village, I listened and heard some activity; UA9XL and an EA8 on SSB as well as a UN9 down on CW. SWR of the antenna seems fine in the lower portion of the band.
Hopefully I shall be able to make some contacts in the coming weeks. 12W or so is quite low power for SSB but I am sure something will be possible and in any case, it’s always interesting to listen.
One thing I have already tried – whilst parked – is tuning the rig to 28.120 to receive PSK and decoding it on my iPhone with the ‘Multimode’ application. In theory, a QSO may be possible by ‘miking’ the output of the iPhone to the rig.
I’m looking forward to seeing what can be done
looks a lot like the cobra 148 GTL DX i used to have (in fact it’s probably still in the parents loft) 😛