Mobile trafic
There are many reasons to implement a mobile radio setup in your car, or other transportation means. One is simply because you like it for what it is. Another reason can be when you cannot perform much trafic at home for various reasons (in my case because living within Paris downtown doesn't help to implement efficient antennas !).
Over the years, I have tried various setups, both for VHF/UHF and for HF, my main interest being HF.
As for any radio activities, what matters in a mobile setup is obviously the antenna which can become quite large for HF bands, pending the bands you are interested in.
I have mainly tried the Hustler antenna (large resonators for 20 and 80 meter bands) and much smaller ones such as the Comet HA07 for the 40 meter band.
Concerning the tranceivers, I have successively used the IC-735, FT-817 and now the FT-857 from Yaesu. I must admit that even if the FT-857 is not necessarily the best mobile transceiver of the moment, it is certainly one of the most compact 100 W transceiver and is doing a very good job in combination with the antenna ATAS-120 which I also use. In my FT-857, I have added the DSP and a 500Hz filter for CW which is, from my opinion, really necessary (this filter was the one I initially purchased for my FT-817, tranceiver that I finally sold - and I miss it a lot - to purchase the FT-857 so I re-installed the 500 Hz filter in the 857) (by the way, I also have the same opinion about the usefulness of the 500Hz filter for CW operation with the FT-817).
As depicted on the following pictures, the combination of the ATAS-120 and a Comet mount on the trunck provides a somehow "discret" setup.
For mobile CW operation (not while driving however !), I use an
old knee attach from an old straight key J-38. Since the 3in1
mini-iambic twin paddle from G4ZPY has a magnetic base, it fixes
easily on the knee attach.
Concerning the efficiency of this setup, I can say that it is quite good from 20 to 10 meters. On 40 meters, it is still possible to make contacts when the propagation is good enough but the ATAS-120 has a limited efficiency on this band. However, on all bands, the tuning is perfect with a very low SWR, and what a pleasure to switch from one band to another while driving !
More to come here .....
