Hello 222 fans,
There was a fair amount of activity on 222 MHz last night, even though
most of the participants had been beating up on the VHF bands all
weekend. Thanks to all who got on. W9KXI was on from Western NY. W1XR
in FM19 was there from Maryland. WZ1V (Good buddy Ron) was there along
with K1PXE in Connecticut along with KE1LI, who made his first 222
Activity Night appearance! N2SLO and N2GHR were lighting up Long
Island. VE2XX had a good signal from Montreal. N1DPM and WA1LWC took
care of Massachusetts. K2AEP was on from FN33 in Vermont. Then there
is Cornell, KO4YC, from central Virginia, just North of Richmond. What a
signal from Cornell. He must grease his antenna every night! I saw
plenty of activity on the KST Chat page. KJ6A is tearing up 222 from
western TN. I know he made a contact with AA9MY in IL. He does a lot
with ten watts, but will soon be adding some power to the equation.
There were a few others on. I know N1GC in NC gets on 222 often. I am
still hoping to get a QSO with him before winter sets in! N2CEI was over
at the N4SVC clubhouse in Florida and tried some skeds on 222. When
things slowed down at about 9:30 local time, Steve and I tried an MSK144
sked on 222. We completed in 18 minutes. It would have been much faster
if I had realized that I need to enter his call before I start
calling!! I just turned the software on and the computer, (not knowing
any better) started calling CQ. Steve copied my CQ right off so we
wasted a few meteors while I was realizing that I should enter his call
in WSJT if I wanted to make a contact with him.
It was a short night as we are all sort of burned out, but it was a lot
of fun for a short time, and a great way to have fun and exercise the
gear. Speaking of exercising the gear. I dug into my 432 receive
problems and made some headway. I had terrible VSWR on TX. My receiver
was getting clobbered by out of band signals and neither of my 432
antennas have good functioning rotators. I dragged an old HP spectrum
analyzer up and looked at the spectrum after hooking it to the 432
yagis. I found so many UHF TV signals that I thought I was seeing cable
TV leakage. It turns out that they are all over the air signals. Some of
them are pretty loud! Every UHF channel is occupied from 15 up to 41. I
think I saw four un occupied slots. The loudest is WGME on CH 15 (476
MHz) and is LOS from me and running 1 megawatt ERP. CH 17 from
Worcester, MA is almost as strong. I suspect that they are LOS from me
as well. That tower in Worcester is awful tall! So I am working on some
filtering solutions. Getting back to the VSWR problems, I found a bad
short jumper made of RG213. It had 18 dB return loss, but was properly
made.(?) I fixed that with a longer run of 1/2" Superflex inside the
box. There was still some VSWR there, and I finally isolated it to a
right angle adaptor. It looked OK, but the plating on it led me to
believe that it was not a MIL Spec connector. I swapped that out and
things started to look good. Insertion loss came way down and return
loss now looks good. All these problems are typical of growing pains
whenever you make mods to your setup. These kind of problems are usually
reserved for higher bands. I did not suspect that adaptors could be
flakey at 432! So now I will hopefully get 432 working with two antenna
systems available on the tower. The quad array of 25 el yagis is way too
sharp for a HamM style rotator, so I am swapping that out for a better 1
degree readout Prosistel. It has been on order for about 2 months. I
hope it arrives before cold wx sets in! The 2nd array is 4 x 15 element
yagis stacked one over the other to preserve a reasonable horizontal
beamwidth. I can't wait to try it. It also needs a new rotor. The HAM-M
on it is dead.
For improvements for the 222 station, I am thinking of installing a
refrigerator and re locating the microwave oven so I can enjoy the band
more. Again, Thanks to all who made an effort to get on. It sure
raises the FUN FACTOR for everyone involved.
73
Dave K1WHS
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