Harken! one and all to a tale filled with peril, woe and culminating in pleasant joyfulness!

I posted last time about a malfunctioning mic. I ordered a replacement and yesterday I got word of its immanent delivery along with an updated 40 M hamstick. Well, they arrived! I opened the box with anticipation and removed the contents. The antenna was packaged as expected and there was also a smallish box containing the new mic. I set up my FT891 and attached the new mic (after, of course, removing the old one). I attached my house dipole and turned on the rig. It tuned up just fine. I turned the power up to 75W and keyed the mic giving my callsign and the word testing. I had the meter set to “power out” and observed … nothing. As with the old mic, the transmit light came on but there was no modulation. Drats! I was hesiutant to believe a new in bopx mic could be bad so I went through the menu and verified every setting. I tried again and got the same result. I performed a factory reset, re-adjusted all the settings and … no change. Still not modulating the carrier. Non-voice modes seemed ok. I turned the rig off and replaced the mic with one off of my FT450. I immediately worked a POTA station from Canada with no problems. Tarnation! I guess the new mic was bad right out of the box. This led to today’s adventure.

Since mailing back and forth would cost money and take a few days each way, SWMBO and I decided to take a ride to the dealer where I had purchased the offensive item (microphone that is). We left home (in the rain, of course) at 0700 and had a good ride down to the store. The manager was polite and professional as he listened to my tale of sadness and disappointment. He gladly replaced the mic with a new one and we tested it on an FT891 had set up for such purposes. The new mic worked well and then we replaced it with the one that they had previously sent. It did not work! That vindicated me and made it apparent that the issue WAS a bad mic and not a problem with the radio.

Since it was not too distant and was located upon a route that would take us in the direction of home, we departed for Havre De Grace in the hopes of going to the Maritime Museum located there. It was still raining hard as we arrived at our destination and we realized that we had not checked the hours-of-operation prior to going. They are closed on Monday and Tuesday. CRAP! well now there was nothing left to do but test the new mic with an activation.

Located about 10 miles North of Havre De Grace is Susquehanna State Park US-1601. I set up my new antenna and fired up the rig. When I attempted to tune up I received a high swr error message. Sigh. Wait! I had neglected to adjust the stinger length on the antenna. I made the appropriate adjustment and it tuned up just fine! I self-spotted on the POTA app and got on the air on 7267 MHz. Over the course of 1/2 hour we logged 15 contacts. Not too bad considering it was daytime and on the 40M band.

I guess that troubleshooting is a matter of 1) always look for the simplest cause first and 2) if you hear hoofbeats, think horses and not zebras. Yes I realize that both those things are pretty much the same. Now for some coffee and relaxation. Autumn begins at 20:04 EDT today so this was my last activation for the summer. Namaste and keep your stick on the ice.