Equipment plans

As you know, aside from 10-meters, I lack any suitable equipment for use on HF, however I have been saving up what I can to get some HF equipment, antennas are no issue as I will build these as this is significantly cheaper and I plan to experiment with magnetic loops on HF and use wire antennas when portable so no point buying antennas (and Marconi would spin in his grave if I did).

The equipment in mind is all Yaesu equipment, their new FT-818 or their FT-991A, depending on what I save, the latter does have an onboard ATU and higher power output, the FT-818 has a battery onboard and no ATU and outputs 6 watts, I made my first 80-meter QSO from the club last meeting under the club callsign thus allowing me to use the 100 watts the radio was putting out legally, and most HF activity under my own callsign is generally restricted to 10-meters as I only have a radio for that band though at present no antenna.

I have little to no experience operating HF other than on 11-meters where different procedures apply as it is the Citizens' Band, though SSB is available my inexperience tuning an SSB frequency does show which is why I want to get into operating HF as soon as I can do so to gain that experience, after all Amateur radio is all about learning and learning to operate on HF properly is certainly something I intend to do, for starters I will be listening to Hack Green again and using that to start learning to tune SSB, as I can plug my shack headphones into my shack computer, that way once I have a knack for it I will be able to do it and also at the meeting after next at the club I shall practice my tuning on the club rig, not sure which bands aside from 20, 40 and 80-meters are covered by the club rig or its reserve, however once I know that information it will allow me to have a good tune around during club nights and practice for when I have HF gear.

Whether I get a 991A or 818 does not matter overly much, as I plan to do some portable ops during the summer and also operate from the National Hamfest every year, if I get an 818 I will probably need an amp unless I want to do true QRP say from the hills (SOTA activations for example), but this is a post for another day.

73 de 2E0EIJ