IARU Region 1 VHF/UHF contest

After returning from M3SXA’s place I fired up the remote rig set up to see if I could find some folks to work in the IARU 144/432 contest. Unfortunately I received several reports of bad audio and it looks like RF was getting into the Ethernet cables or RRC system at the radio end. This shows one major problem with the RRC/FT-847 combo – most of the radio functions are not available via the CAT system so it was impossible to tweak the mic gain or RF power settings to see if I could make things work at a distance. As my 8 month old son was sick in bed with a cold I couldn’t get direct access to the radio so had to give up. I did get access to the radio on Sunday and threw a handful of snap on ferrites at all the cables in the Ethernet network and audio chain. I also put my Ethernet network switch inside a metal box in case that was susceptible to RF. After taking the control half of the station to the remote end I readjusted all the levels including the DVK whilst listening on another RX. I sounded OK to me, but by that time the contest was over. I will have to get on for the 432 UKAC this week to try it out.