My weekend comms did not go as planned. I'm definitely not doing something right. After a bout of frustration, I emailed the local ham radio club, who set me up with an elmer to help me out. But before I bring my portable radio over, I regrouped and decided that I'm going to do some serious troubleshooting.
Previously, I thought it might have been the condo's electrical system. I'm now operating on the FT-897D's internal batteries (yes, I sprung for them, but I like having many different power options), so that is eliminated as a possible source. It limits my power to 20W on the batteries, but that should be plenty of wattage.
Also, I thought it may have been the band. I now check the bands, and I've gotten pretty good at recognizing when the band is closing up or not (really, it's very easy and its embarrassing that I thought that may have been the issue).
Really, I think a part of this is that I made too many changes to my "shack" at once, and now I'm paying the price.
A quick list of my issues:
1. LDG AT-897 Plus tuning cycle longer than 7 seconds (significantly longer, sometimes as long as 40 seconds before I powered off the radio) when I changed bands.
2. No response to my communications on HF (I could hear fine).
Pre-steps:
1. LDG AT-897 Plus problems most likely RF interference based on research. Unfortunately, I currently have no ferrite chokes. I ordered many. My solution was based on Internet research, "noodling the problem", and an email to LDG's tech support.
2. Ordered a dummy load. Don't know why I didn't have this before, but since I don't have a permanent antenna, I have to set up the Buddipole each time I want to run a test and I'm taking up valuable radio waves.
3. Acquire a longer jumper cable for the connection from the antenna tuner to the transceiver. This is based on my elmer's recommendation. He recommended 4-6 feet of cable, and I was running with 3 feet.
Day 1 of troubleshooting:
1. Went down to a nearly stock set up (I kept using a headset with microphone combination that I acquired). I realized that I hadn't reset the mic gain after hooking up the new microphone, so that was the primary effort of the evening. I had a few issues with it after playing with the settings, so the next time I have to test, I'm going completely back to stock (just the included microphone and the transceiver). No contacts made again. Heard lots of good conversations.
Verified good SWR - without the antenna tuner, I was generally running 1.2-2:1. Not too bad.
Now I wait. Work is busy and its cold and dark when I get home (so I don't have much desire to go outside to hook up the Buddipole and troubleshoot). When the dummy load gets here by this weekend, I'll really get into this troubleshooting.
I'll report how it goes.
Although I like it when things go as planned, I also like fixing things. My poor wife has been a real trooper listening to my troubleshooting ideas. Like they say, things aren't worth having unless you have to fight for it. Getting back on HF is going to be sweet.