07 Oct 17:30 TIDBIT Procedure

[ryanque]

How to fix a TIDBIT station:

The antenna may need to be fixed. You were able to fix a similar problem at Lurin last year by adjusting poles and tightening cables, so perhaps a similar fix is needed here.

The transmitter may have fallen out of tune. This can happen with temperature drifts or aging components. To fix this requires adjusting the manual tuner in order to increase the power transmitted through the antenna while simultaneously decreasing the reflected power. A picture of two tuners is attached.

You can tune the antenna by following these steps:

Adjust simultaneously the Transmitter and Antenna capacitances using the knobs on the right.
While adjusting these knobs, watch the transmitted and reflected power on the SWR meter. We want the forward power to be around 50 W and the reflected power to be less than 5. This also corresponds to a SWR of 2.0
If you can't get these numbers by adjusting the capacitance knobs, perhaps the inductance knob on the left has to be adjusted. Adjust this and then optimize the SWR using the capacitance knobs.
Perhaps some of the attenuators need to be removed or added during the course of the tuning in order to achieve with forward power = 50 W, reflected power < 5 W, and SWR < 2.0

[ryanque]

Antena Impedance