Aaaaaaaaaauuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh!!!!!

[Particle Man]

Originally Posted by fatbuckRTO

Damn straight it is. SATCOM only works when the satellite works. And when there's no overhead cover. And when it's a clear day. And when the other side remembers which is the uplink and which is the downlink freq...

And that was the problem exactly. They provided us with an antenna tuner, and it was crap. You'd watch the SWR meter and the needle would just sit there laughing at you.

I can only imagine. They could also invest in some resonant antennas, too

I put a max of 140 watts or so into the tuner I have - it is supposedly rated for 300 but I'm guessing it'd start to arc badly at close to 215 or so.

[fatbuckRTO]

Originally Posted by Particle Man

I can only imagine. They could also invest in some resonant antennas, too

I put a max of 140 watts or so into the tuner I have - it is supposedly rated for 300 but I'm guessing it'd start to arc badly at close to 215 or so.

That's well beyond my know-how, ours were 20 watt man-packables. The 10' whips they came with are generally worthless for HF (most freqs that's what, 1/8 wave?), so we were stuck running field expedients (read: speaker wire and a cobra head). At 20 watts, proper tuning is not optional. And I wasn't very successful even once I had a decent tuner. At any rate we didn't have to worry about arcing, but your fingers might get a little warm if you were holding the antenna while you keyed (guilty, I'm a moron).

This was back in the '90's. When I was re-activated in '09, the military had pretty much gone strictly to SATCOM for long range comms. Worked great in the sandbox and I was glad to have it, but it's gonna hit us in the feels if we ever try to fight a war in trees again. NO ONE will know how to bounce a sky wave.

I understand they have a few volunteer-run SATCOM projects for ham operators now. That's kinda crazy.