I used to have transmit problems with my Terra radio - receive was OK but
transmission was limited to around 5 miles and garbled/unreadable after that.
I had the Copper tape along the fin Europa supplied as the antenna.
Thinking it was the antenna I tried the Bob Archer antenna and it improved
some but still had problems when pointing towards the place I was
transmitting to, i.e., the airfield I was headed for. The solution for a
short time was to turn 30 degrees whenever I wanted to transmit.
Bob Nukolls lives here in Wichita so he helped me out by taking a reading of
how many watts my transmitter was pumping out. It was about 3 watts as I
recall - not the 5 or so I should be getting - but enough for line of sight
transmission. He suggested the engine block was blocking out some of the
transmission.
I decided to try a whip antenna mounted on the underside of the fuselage. For
the ground plane he suggested I used copper strips the same length as the
antenna (18 inches or so) soldered to a brass plate which was mounted to the
antenna. I radiated 8 strips around the inside of the fuselage.
I knew as soon as I took off that things were different - I could hear
Jarbara's Automated Weather Transmission and that was 10 miles away. I
transmitted to Jabara Unicom and the girl who normally told me I was garbled
at 5 miles could hear me 'fives'. I called up Wichita approach about 30 miles
away when I got up to 3,500 ft and they heard me fine too.
Since then I have had no problems - except for my Terra transponder which
last year had me at 14,500 ft when I was at 3,500 ft. Someone on the Forum
suggested I just turn it off then on again. I tried it and it worked. The
ambient temperature was 95 degrees F at the time so I suspect heat caused my
problem.
Regards,
Martin Tuck
N152MT
Wichita, Kansas
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