Ranger Communications RCI-2970 DX Bedienerhandbuch PDF herunterladen (Seite 3)

From October 2001 QST © ARRL

plained in the manual—and below—but

the procedures for the Ford test dictate

perseverance before I resorted to retriev-

ing the manual from somewhere behind

the couch. I noticed the

A/B and SPLIT

buttons to the right of the tuning knob.

Ah, dual VFOs! I had my solution. I tuned

144.85 MHz into the second VFO and

returned the first VFO to the display (only

one frequency is shown at a time). A press

of the

SPLIT button lit the corresponding

icon atop the display.

I turned up the

MIC gain and PWR con-

trols on the lower left front panel and

keyed the microphone—the display

flipped to 144.85. After announcing

“N4QX monitoring,” I unkeyed and sa-

vored the sweet synthesized sounds of

success: “This is the W1AW repeater

[beep].” The 6N2 had passed the Ford

test, going from in the box to on the air

in just under six minutes. All without the

benefit of the manual—and without ever

knowing the proper procedure for setting

up a repeater split!

It turns out that the correct way to set

a standard repeater split is through the use

of the

RIT button. In the narrowband

modes—CW and SSB—receive incre-

mental tuning operates just as it does on

any HF rig. The 6N2’s RIT can be ad-

justed anywhere within ±10 kHz of the

transmit frequency. The offset amount

appears on a sub display to the right of

the main frequency display, and is con-

trolled with an unlabeled knob to the left

of the concentric

AF/SQL knobs. This un-

labeled knob does different things in dif-

ferent situations. The manual calls it

“multi” (it would have been nice had it

been similarly labeled on the rig).

While in the FM mode, pressing this

same button will cause the frequency off-

set value to appear in the supplemental

display. The multi knob then allows

selection of specific offsets: –600 kHz,

0 kHz and +600 kHz on 2 meters, and

–1 MHz, −500 kHz, 0 kHz, 500 kHz, and

1 MHz on 6 meters. Users in areas where

nonstandard splits are employed (1 MHz

and 1.035 MHz on 2 meters, or 240 kHz

on 6 for example), fret not. These odd

splits are accommodated by using the two

VFOs and the split function—precisely

the method I had stumbled upon during

the Ford test.

CTCSS encoding is enabled by using

the

TONE subfunction of the B/W (band-

width) button. Subfunctions are assigned

to five of the radio’s buttons and are ac-

cessed by first pressing the

FUNCtion but-

ton, positioned to the lower right of the

tuning knob. The transmitted tone’s value

is adjusted by—you guessed it—the multi

knob. Forty-two tones are available.

The 6N2 can only send a CTCSS tone;

it cannot decode an incoming tone (some-

times referred to as “tone squelch”).

CTCSS decode tends to come in really

handy in densely populated environ-

ments, and an increasing number of re-

peaters are superimposing these subaudi-

ble tones on their output frequencies.

The memory functions and program-

ming are no more complicated than they

are on any other radio. Once you’ve set

the desired frequency—and any offset or

tone information—in the VFO mode, a

press of the

MW (memory write) button

brings up a memory channel number

(from 00 through 99) in the supplemen-

tal display. The user turns the multi knob

to the desired memory position and

presses

MW again to store. Pressing FUNC

before MW erases a memory.

When in memory mode, the user can

scan the programmed frequencies, and

there’s a “skip” feature for locking out

perpetually busy channels—NOAA

Weather Radio for example. There are

also provisions for scanning all frequen-

cies between user-programmable limits.

Those who like to use scanning features

will not be disappointed.

Beyond FM—The Weak-Signal

Modes

The real fun of the 6N2 comes when

one toggles the mode from FM to CW or

SSB. With the press (or presses) of a but-

ton, an adequate FM rig becomes a very

capable and enjoyable weak-signal rig.

As soon as I got done playing with the

6N2 on the W1AW machine, I set my

sights on raising some attention on the

2-meter SSB calling frequency: 144.200

MHz. Despite the obvious limitations of

my small vertical antenna, N1OPO soon

answered from 6 miles away and gave

positive signal quality reports.

For those who have yet to experience

it, single sideband operation is very much

like FM—simply press the PTT switch

and talk. When switching over from the

FM mode, you’ll initially want to turn the

squelch all the way counterclockwise so

you’ll hear any weak signals down in the

noise.

A phono jack on the rear apron serves

as the connection point for a CW key. The

same switching line is used for push-to-

talk on SSB and FM; indeed, CW can be

sent by pressing the PTT switch on the

microphone. The CW offset and sidetone

pitch is adjustable in 20-Hz increments

from 400 to 1000 Hz, and these settings

“track” each other. CW operation is full

break in, and the 6N2 upholds Ten-Tec’s

reputation for silky smooth QSK.

The built-in DSP bandwidth filter, the

noise blanker and 20-dB attenuator are

nice features. Single sideband bandwidth

is adjustable (once again, through the

multi knob) from 1500 to 2800 Hz, and

the CW bandwidth can be further ad-

justed down to 200 Hz. The DSP-based

filter arrangement is very flexible and

quite effective. The attenuator is nice for

those rare receiver overload situations,

but there is no indicator on the display

when it is turned on; users have to listen

for a marked increase or decrease in au-

dio in order to determine the state of this

setting. The 10-step adjustable noise

blanker suppresses pulse-type noise, a

routine occurrence at my QTH. These

sporadic noise bursts were neatly elimi-

nated with a press of the

NB button, and I

was impressed.

Bells and Whistles—Amplifier

Control, Transverters, Digital Modes

and “Perfect Paul”

The 6N2 provides up to 20 W of RF

output power out of the box. Two sepa-

rate phono connections for amplifier key-

ing, one for each band, are located on the

rear panel. There are also rear-panel au-

dio input and output jacks for connect-

ing external devices such as TNCs or

computer sound cards. QRO and digital

operators should have no problem what-

soever figuring out what gets connected

where, and the phono-type jacks simplify

the task of making up cabling.

There is also a transverter switch

on the rear of the rig, which reroutes the

144-MHz output signal from the SO-239

output to a phono jack labeled

XVTR OUT.

This jack delivers a low-level (+5 dBm)

2-meter transmit signal for driving

transverters. The receive signal from the

transverter is connected to the 6N2’s

2-meter SO-239 jack, and the transverter

is TR switched by the same connection

that would be used to key a 2-meter am-

plifier. Conveniently, activation of the

transverter feature does not affect 6-meter

operation. Unfortunately—unlike some

recently released transceivers—there are

no provisions for reprogramming the

6N2’s display to directly indicate the

“transverted to” frequency.

Many FM rigs include extended re-

ceive capability on the public safety,

MARS, CAP and business bands from

136-174 MHz. The 6N2 is no exception.

The farther the frequency is from 144-

148 MHz, however, the more cranking

that’s required to get there. Turning the

tuning knob is the only means of chang-

ing the frequency within a band while in

VFO mode. Although the “fast” tuning

setting for the FM mode allows tuning in

10-kHz steps, that’s still a lot of turns to

take us from 147 to, say, 162.55 MHz, a

popular NOAA frequency. Fans of

NOAA’s “Perfect Paul” should dial their

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