East Timor Pilot Station Report for 9 October 2000
(edited for 160-related info...de W4ZV)
Noise has been a big, big problem on all bands but they finally found a big
source of it and the first check showed that it reduced the noise on 40
meters by 7 S units. Wow that is a big reduction. What they are finding is
that power lines around the shack have no solder or wire nuts and actually
are just twisted together and that has caused big time arcing.
Receive antenna. They are using two receiving antenna developed by K6SE and
they work fine. The problem has been the noise plus the fact that the
transmitting antenna they are using is a sloper from the top of the 220
foot tower so big xmting advantage. They have the wire for a Beverage BUT
it would extend outside of the compound and that means it would disappear.
Power failures; Many about dusk when people start using electricity. This
has caused the amp to go off air. The computers and exciters have an UPS
supply. They then go outside and throw the switch on the emergency
generator and that then takes an additional 4 minutes for the amp to come
back up. When they then switch from emergency power back to shore power
they go through the same thing. It is not just four minutes each time as
they wait a little while to see if the shore power in coming back on before
they go outside and throw the power to the shack from the emergency
generator. So when they disappear just have patience and standby.
CW Totals rounded off:
160 : 170
80: 460
Logs: It appears that this has been resolved and they should start showing
up on the web page in about two days. (That is good news)
Things can get lonely when living and working in a small shack so they have
adopted a pet. George the spider. George is about the size of your hand
and Thor (4W6MM) has told them to be good to him as his diet is mosquitoes.
Rod WC7N
wc7n@wave.net
http://www.qth.com/k7bv/TIMOR/
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