Army MARS

[blindfire]

Any of you guys active in this?

I signed up for info at NEARFest last month and just got an email from someone.

Reading through the material, it sounds cool and a great way to learn and contribute.

The only issue I may have is that the required frequencies are from 2-30MHz.

I'll be installing an 80m OCF dipole in a week or two, but I'm not sure if I can tune that guy down to around the 160m band. How important is that?

Thanks

 

[timbo]

I was pretty active in it back in the 80's...back then, it was a PITA to get on some of the frequencies they wanted you to be on...There was a small cache of .mil surplus stuff you could apply for and sometimes get but it was never yours to keep...most of the time I spent more time getting it to work and keeping it working...I had a model 19 teletype set up to copy and send TTY messages...it was noisy when it ran and it dripped oil. I had to keep it on a large pan to catch the oil.

It all changed when Kenwood came out with the TS-430 in the mid eighties which could be easily modified to transmit from 2-30 Mhz. I didn't have the $$$ to buy one at the time so I continued on for a few more years with keeping the old stuff going and then it got to the point where it was taking more of my time than I liked...I was raising a batch of kids and very busy at work so I bailed.

As far as antennas go...build a simple dipole fed with ladder line cut for the lowest frequency you need to work. You can hang a 4:1 balun off your radio if it has a built in tuner or better yet, bypass the built in tuner and use a manual tuner with balanced output...you'll be able to tune any frequency you need.

Back when I was involved in MARS, I used 16-2 Romex for a feedline only because I had 100's of feet of it and it was free. It worked fine for what I was using it for.

 

[sfd10]

Hi, I've been an Army MARS op for 16 years. I run a Tennadyne TD 90 folded dipole. Covers the freqs ok and doesn't take up much space.
I used to run a Barker and Williamson T2FD as well. Worked OK, I think the TD90 runs a bit better.
You can get any radio mods done by Lentini in CT. http://www.lentinicomm.com/
V/R AAT1AW

 

[blindfire]

Hi, I've been an Army MARS op for 16 years. I run a Tennadyne TD 90 folded dipole. Covers the freqs ok and doesn't take up much space.
I used to run a Barker and Williamson T2FD as well. Worked OK, I think the TD90 runs a bit better.
You can get any radio mods done by Lentini in CT. http://www.lentinicomm.com/
V/R AAT1AW

Cool...good to know. My Icom IC7100 has the MARS mod already done. I'll look into the antenna.