4m Transverter

Tonight was the 4m Tuesday night contest and this time I was determined to try to hear something on this band. My Yaesu FT817 does not cover 4m, so I thought I might try to get my transverter running again after years of being in the loft packed away.

My Yaesu FT101E is still running fine after it's service, so I hunted around to find the necessary leads to connect the transverter to the FT101E. The only lead I didn't have was a connection from the antenna (which is BNC) to the UHF input on the transverter. A trip to Maplin was in order to purchase a BNC socket connector. I also bought a cheap CB type SWR Meter, I needed it so that I see if my transverter put out any RF!

The contest started at 8.00pm and guess what? It still worked! Heard loads of stations, but although my SWR meter tells me that RF is present, nobody could hear me!!!

Managed to work Ross G6GVI, he could hear me OK, but why could other stations who were quite strong not hear a trace?

I measured the power out of the tranverter at about 3w, so really I put it down to my vertical and a very poor SWR.

I am amazed that the transverter still works, it is also a 6m transverter as well and this also works fine!