Thanks Roland, you don’t have to be in a hot climate environment. If you ever got a shock by rubbing your feet on your carpet, there can be static build up. Where I live the humidity is below 10% lots of times. I just put an order in for a inline spark arrestor.. John Carroll AA6RF

I have used this coax switch with the transceiver and WSPR desktop in my shack for years. On occasions I have had the switch in the wrong position and nothing was damaged. Daiwa CS-201A Coax Switches CS-201A

Bill, these beacons are really great. I have been using these beacons for years. After you use for awhile you will want to get another so you can do A-B antenna testing sending at the same time. One Beacon is great for propagation testing and two for antenna testing. Have fun. AA6RF

Phil, I’m totally on your side on this discussion. I talked to Rob and I understand what he wants to accomplish. I also found out you guys are friends. Let’s leave the poor old guy alone. Lol, he’s accomplish quite a bit already so let’s see what else he can do in the next 20 years. AA6RF

I know. AA6RF we have chatted a few times

Rob,AI6VN/KH6 has a better antenna for his receive. It’s 10db better. It’s got a really low noise level from his antenna. That’s where the great numbers come from. WSPR is based on S/N ratios. Lower noise level base and you will get better results. AI6VN/KH6 is getting great numbers because of his antenna. He isn’t transmitting

Phil, you got it right on👍

200mw is plenty of power for WSPR, If you ran a 1000watts on the same antenna on Ssb the WSPR beacon would make more distance records. 200mw is the perfect power level to show you what area you can make real contacts with. If everyone ran high power then the WSPR network wouldn’t work as it was designed. Weak Signal Propagation Reporter

A fold over mount at the base on a 14foot pole and attached to the house at the eve.

I bought a Hygain AV-620 6 months ago at Ham Radio Outlet. I checked the price on it from my invoice and it was $379.95 Sorry I made a mistake on my above quote of $220. I just looked on HRO’s site now and it shows $579.95 what a price increase!

The hygain AV-680 is really a good multiband vertical antenna. But two drawbacks. It’s costly and it needs to be guyed for high winds. There isn’t many antennas that do it all with good performance. This is one of a few. The AV-640 or the AV-620 are others if you don’t want to be on all the bands. The AV-620 is around $220 USdollars but only covers 6-10-12-15-17-20 meters and doesn’t need to be guyed

You can transmit with a 5 to 1 swr. Nothing will hurt the beacon. Don’t worry.

The 10 k resistor was mounted on the antenna feed line so static couldn’t build up. I was switching different antennas to the beacon. Different situation. Kinda the same problem. High voltage getting to the beacon. Harry is on it and he will find the problem.

Sorry Mike, rethought your answer. You are doing the swr check with high power.. That would work.

$6.00 sma attinuator is easy. How do you check swr and power in the micro watt range? If you are talking about the easiest way don’t do anything. Just do the math conversation

After hearing about what’s happening with the 10-80 meter desktop beacon,the only difference between the mid and high beacon and the 10-80 is the operating software. I don’t know programming but could it be the software? I think the ones that are shutting down are the ones used for the world wide WSPR project? I have both the mid and high desktop and all 4 beacons never shutdown by themself. AA6RF

Mike, I have a 15 meter beacon tesktop model going 24 hours a day for over a year in my backyard. Solar and battery powered. Its under a plastic barrel in the sun to keep dry when it rains and protect.Below freezing in the winter and over 140°F in the summer sun. Never had a problem yet and never had to restart.Sorry you have had bad luck. AA6RF

The problem I had with one antenna was it was a 1/4 wave elevated ground plane. No balun installed.. Nothing terminated between Radiator and radials. Just a open fed coax going to a switch box. It was building up static electricity on the line and when I switched to the desktop beacon the high static discharged to the input to the beacon. I installed the 10k half watt resistor across the feed point of the antenna or on the coax feeding the antenna. No more static build up. Hope this helps. It worked in my case. AA6RF

I have had problems that you are experiencing also. I don’t think the problems are with the WSPR desktop beacons. I switch antennas with an antenna switch. One antenna builds up static on it and when I go to that antenna it feeds back into the beacon and it shuts down. Restart and all ok. Happened many times. I know high voltage on the antenna will shut it down. Maybe lightning strikes in the area could trigger. I installed a 10k restistor across my problem antenna and over a year now with no problems. Good luck. AA6RF

Pierre, you don’t need a computer for the WSPR desktop to work. After you program the unit is good to go. I take it outside with a 5 volt battery and it starts up and transmits on the last setting that I programmed. If you programmed your WSPR desktop to 40 meters it will always transmit on 40 meters when you apply power. For that to change you have to reprogram new settings.If you are connecting to your computer and as you say it is graded out then you are not logged into the port. You need to close the app and restart the program. Sometimes this has happened to me. I just start over and it will work. N6RQW