VHFcontesting
[Top] [All Lists]

[VHFcontesting] K1WHS 50 MHz Sprint

To: NEWS <newsvhf@mailman.qth.net>, "(Radio) VHF Contesting" <VHFcontesting@contesting.com>
Subject: [VHFcontesting] K1WHS 50 MHz Sprint
From: David Olean <k1whs@metrocast.net>
Date: Mon, 11 May 2020 09:01:43 -0500
List-post: <mailto:vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
I  was quite ill in 2017 so no ham radio for that year, then 2018 and 2019 was all fly fishing for brookies and salmon, so no ham radio those years either.  The fly fishing season is in full swing between early May to September, so no summer DXing!  The hamshack out behind my house has been dormant and unused for over three years. The mice moved in and all the bands are compromised. I did a bunch of work and have the ten meter stuff fixed. I started out fixing up the six meter stuff next.  I had to do some work on my diesel generator too, and it is working well now.   I had a cooling problem, but got that all fixed and all is well after three years of sitting idle. I rigged up a small solar panel and charge controller to keep the generator battery in good condition. That worked very well. I checked the VSWR of my four six meter yagis, and they all looked reasonable, but I had a huge loss in my switchig system. I suspected that the 6 position coax relay was NG, and had lots of loss on receive.

I started the sprint at 7 PM and was immediately aware that my hearing was definitely impaired.  Stations in Connecticut that are normally loud, were quite weak. It was very obvious.  K1TEO was 4 or 5 s-units. Jeff is normally S-9. Same for good buddy Ron, WZ1V. They were both rather weak here. I figure that six meters was down about 10 dB or more on receive.  I had huge problems copying most callers as they were barely audible and in the noise. In the Sprint, I did work one or two stations in FN20 in NY or NJ, but the usual result for me is many contacts in grids down into Maryland and the Washington DC area, and out to Buffalo and Toronto to the west. I heard none of that, so I was sure that my hearing was compromised. The good news was that there was a bit of sporadic E to the SW and west.  I ended up working  108 QSOs in 45 grids.  Not bad for being deaf! Sporadic E signals tend to be louder! Most of the evening was spent on SSB. I tried some CW but had  no luck there, so went back to SSB.  It was fun to snag some rovers out in the Chicago area. AC0RA/R, K0PG/R, K0JK/R, K9ILP/R, and K9PW/R all went in the log here. It was really great to hear Pete, K9PW. He operated from here many times in the September contests. I finally went up to the FT-8 frequency after about 0215 UT. I hooked up a laptop, and tried making some contacts. That was a chore as  the laptop was an old XP machine maybe 15 years old or more. The time was not set, as the BIOS battery had  long since died. At least my home made internet link was working. I run a 5 GHz link from my house to the hill shack.  I manually adjusted the time to get the computer to decode. That was tedious. I made a few contacts, and then made the mistake of trying to switch between antennas when the transmitter was automatically transmitting. That was a big  NO NO. You cannot switch coaxial relays under full power. (1200 watts on FT8) I wiped out the six position coaxial relay.  Instantly, I had infinite VSWR and when I quit the xmission, I had no receive at all in any position.  It was a really bad mistake as 6 position fast switching coax relays are as rare as hens teeth.  I was dead in the water.

The next day, I removed the coax switching matrix from the shack wall, and have it on the bench for testing. Only the six position relay is hosed. I am re building it and hope to get something back together soon.  In the meantime, I plugged in a power divider to the two top yagis. I immediately saw that the background noise came way up. It went from S4  to S8! This is all power line noise from Eversource in New Hampshire.  So it looks like there was a problem in the relays and not in the antennas. The power line noise is a huge project. Getting the utility to fix their poles is a constant process and consumes huge amounts of time on my part. It is very frustrating. In the past I had to get the FCC to threaten them two different times. My file folder on that is about 4 inches thick!  I would rather go fishing.

I am really happy with my results.  Having a 10 dB pad on receive was a good handicap. If I ever get the switching stuff fixed, I should be back in business.

73

Dave K1WHS

_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
  • [VHFcontesting] K1WHS 50 MHz Sprint, David Olean <=