The President Lincoln has been around for years, but still makes a good little monoband rig for 10m.
I was first introduced to the range when I went to Florida on holiday and bought a Uniden HR2600 for about £50. This is a 10m-only rig with repeater shift and about 10w FM/25W SSB output and I loved it.
However, it didn’t get too much use in the sunspot minimum years and I decided to sell it – what an idiot!
Anyway, I have never been able to find another one to buy, so settled on the President Lincoln. There are loads of these on eBay for around £120 - £180.
The Lincoln covers 26-30MHz in eight bands. It is very similar to the HR2600 but doesn’t have repeater shift.
Unlike the Albrecht AE 485S I reviewed earlier it does have continuous 100, 10 and 1kHz tuning. You don’t get the memory feature of the Albrecht, but you do get a built-in SWR meter and a scan button. It also has an RIT, mic gain button and RF gain.
Switching to the ham band (28-29.7MHz) I was able to hear everything that my Yaesu FT-2000 could hear, including beacons in Italy, Slovenia and Norway. I worked a couple of stations on SSB and got 57 reports.
I had a bit of a problem with mine. After storing it in the loft for two years the tuning control was a bit odd – in some positions it was fine, in others it would either not change channel or actually go backwards.
You can get new tuning control switches, but they are hard to get hold off. One US expert suggested carefully drilling a small hole in the side of the switch (between the green segments) and squirting in switch cleaner.
I managed to get switch cleaner in the LCD display while doing this and had to strip it out and put in a new strip of white backing paper, courtesy of some glossy ink-jet paper. It now looks like new again!
It took a couple of applications of cleaner while rotating the switch to different quadrants, but it now works perfectly.
In all, the Lincoln is a great monoband rig for 10m, but is ideally suited to SSB and FM simplex. You used to be able to order a new “Superchip” from the USA that would give you repeater shift, but at £50 plus it costs half as much as an average rig. The Lincoln is a bit bulky, especially compared with the Albrecht 485S and you can’t easily work through 10FM repeaters either, but it works well on SSB.
I was first introduced to the range when I went to Florida on holiday and bought a Uniden HR2600 for about £50. This is a 10m-only rig with repeater shift and about 10w FM/25W SSB output and I loved it.
However, it didn’t get too much use in the sunspot minimum years and I decided to sell it – what an idiot!
Anyway, I have never been able to find another one to buy, so settled on the President Lincoln. There are loads of these on eBay for around £120 - £180.
The Lincoln covers 26-30MHz in eight bands. It is very similar to the HR2600 but doesn’t have repeater shift.
Unlike the Albrecht AE 485S I reviewed earlier it does have continuous 100, 10 and 1kHz tuning. You don’t get the memory feature of the Albrecht, but you do get a built-in SWR meter and a scan button. It also has an RIT, mic gain button and RF gain.
Switching to the ham band (28-29.7MHz) I was able to hear everything that my Yaesu FT-2000 could hear, including beacons in Italy, Slovenia and Norway. I worked a couple of stations on SSB and got 57 reports.
I had a bit of a problem with mine. After storing it in the loft for two years the tuning control was a bit odd – in some positions it was fine, in others it would either not change channel or actually go backwards.
You can get new tuning control switches, but they are hard to get hold off. One US expert suggested carefully drilling a small hole in the side of the switch (between the green segments) and squirting in switch cleaner.
I managed to get switch cleaner in the LCD display while doing this and had to strip it out and put in a new strip of white backing paper, courtesy of some glossy ink-jet paper. It now looks like new again!
It took a couple of applications of cleaner while rotating the switch to different quadrants, but it now works perfectly.
In all, the Lincoln is a great monoband rig for 10m, but is ideally suited to SSB and FM simplex. You used to be able to order a new “Superchip” from the USA that would give you repeater shift, but at £50 plus it costs half as much as an average rig. The Lincoln is a bit bulky, especially compared with the Albrecht 485S and you can’t easily work through 10FM repeaters either, but it works well on SSB.
I spent an interesting Saturday afternoon in early May with a 10m whip and my Yaesu 817 in the car as static mobile, but didn’t actually manage to work anyone with 5W and SSB/CW, which surprised me. Perhaps 5W and a compromise (loaded) antenna is not a good idea. Heard lots though so it was all good fun. I'll try the Lincoln/Albrecht next time.
Yours truly owned a Lincoln President for 28MHz. It worked very well and worked lots of DX with a CB 1/2 wave vertical or horizontal dipole. One evening I recall working a station in India from the car when mobile in Cambridge on SSB. All good fun. I was never quite happy with the clicky tuning knob though which always felt on the verge of breaking. It's a shame you can't get them new still.
ReplyDeleteafter storing my lincoln for sum years im now unable to use anything other than 28.000mhz to 29.005mhz ???? all buttons work ok, i just am stuck in this frequency band, the PLL is ok, as is rest of board [ that i can tell ] any ideas plz. paul
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