Activating with the NEW TenTec Scout 555!
So I have a new TenTec Scout now… Let me explain…
This is a recent purchase as I needed a replacement for the TenTec Scout 555 that I had been using for so long. It turns out that if you put your radio in it’s hardshell storage case and then leave it sitting in the parking lot of the state park your were at, with no identification in the box with the radio whatsoever and then drive away without it, your radio will vanish into thin air… This is exactly what I did recently. It took me two full days to realize I had left it sitting in the park, and by then it was just plain … gone.
It took me a few days to let that go and to move on with my life. I have done all the usual stuff of checking with park staff a couple of times and such, but no luck. Armed with this sobering reality, I decided to go ahead and replace it with a new-to-me unit. So I went to the internet and the internet did not disappoint. I was able to procure another one in about a week for reasonable money. I have not used it until today though so I had not bothered to mention it till now.
I decide to activate US-0716 (Chickamauga National Military Park) and did the Tennessee side at Eagle’s Nest as it is a convenient location for me to access, close to home in relation to the Georgia portion of the park and is generally easy to work from. The only detractor for this location is the proximity to the main road which has MANY vehicles of all sizes on it all the time it seems. Big trucks, motor homes, trucks pulling boats, and a metric ton of passenger cars are routine here. This forced me to finally dig out some earbuds and an adapter to be able to hear the weak signals I knew were there but I couldn’t hear with the regular speaker.
So this was the station position for today. I started on 20 meters and I brought the Wolf River Coils 17’ vertical this time to save setup time and to simplify the system. Since I can tune the antenna physically, I don’t need an antenna tuner to match the radio to the radiator at all. This makes the system a lot simpler for me to setup and it takes up less room in the cab of the truck too since I don’t need somewhere to put the tuner. I actually prefer the setup to be honest about it. It just works.
Well, 20 meters was open fairly well today so I was able to put quite a few calls in the log on 20 meters before giving 17 meters a go. You can see in the above photo that I had already switched to 17 meters before taking the picture, but I think I had over 25 calls in the log before making the move anyway. The Begali Traveler has kinda become my defacto travel key of choice if there is a flat surface to sit the key down somewhere reasonable. It is a joy to use and I really like the engineering in how the feet fold up and protect the paddles when it is stored. I do have another key that just arrived that I will be talking about in the next blog post to see how I like it compared to the other keys I have and use.
The Eagle’s Nest location is grown up for now, they seem to come out and cut it all about once a year or so and I kinda like the vegetation. The plants adsorb some of the road noise so it is a little quieter. You can also see that I used the receiver hitch mount today with the telescoping whip antenna. This is a fairly effective antenna that I have grown to like due to two things. The simplicity of the setup and the ability to tune the actual antenna to a frequency that I want. I have learned something about my particular vertical with the radials that I use. Since I can not lower the angle enough, I am stuck at about 60 to 65 ohms of impedance once tuned to frequency. This will normally net me about a 1.35:1 SWR when I am done. The coax being 50 ohms creates a imbalance at the antenna feed point, but I honestly don’t think it is enough to even matter at this point. I considered making a transformer to correct for it at one point…and I may still do it for the research to see if it does help…noticeably. It probably wont. It is a fun idea though to experiment with.
Once I made a few contacts on 17 meters, I gave up as the band had some DEEP fading going on and it was tough to get the 5 or 6 calls that I did get. As a side note, what you see above is me on 18.076mhz CW. This is a thing with the Scouts. They are designed for SSB from the outset and I think someone realized that CW is simply SSB but with a tine generator instead of a microphone and so to use CW you have to offset your desired operating frequency by the side tone as well as the PTO drift till it gets warm. It will do frequency lock but the radio does need to warm up from what i have found to be truly stable. So if you want to use your Scout for CW don’t forget to offset the PTO to allow for the side tone. It should be about 700 hertz or so. Also the offset is relative to the band, on the low bands you have to be above the desired frequency by the offset amount instead… just a Scout tip for you.
When I was done fighting the QSB, I plugged the 20 meter module back in to see if I could hunt a couple more before calling it quits and packing up. I did hunt a couple and noticed that there was plenty of band space and not a whole lot of stations calling, so I setup on a frequency and started calling CQ POTA again. This proved to be a good idea as it didn’t take long to end up with over 50 calls in the log for the day! I was blown away at how much better I could hear the band while using headphones. Well, little earbuds actually, but it was like having a pre-amp turned on. There were stations down at the noise floor that were clearly audible and easy to copy while wear headphones but were not perceptible at all with the external speaker. Seriously, if you have a Scout and you have not tried it with headphones, I highly recommend it. I was in shock at how weak the station could be and it was easy copy. The needle wouldn’t even be moving on the S meter and I could hear them just fine.
…and just to think, I used this to hear every one of them today. That is mind boggling to me. I am always amazed at the fact that radio even works to be honest. It is literally magic in my book. To say that I am pleased with the new Scout would be an understatement. Do I miss the old one? Yes. I always will as it was my first Scout. But this one has proven itself today and will now be able to be built into a full on POTA kit complete with hard case and accessories. This time I will be checking the area before I leave though so I don’t leave this one behind too…
73
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