Hello VHFers,
Tomorrow is Tuesday and that is THE time for firing up your 222 MHz
gear, contacting your friends on the band, making sure it all works, and
all sorts of other benefits. The past week had the 222 MHz Sprint on
Tuesday, and all accounts seem to indicate that the evening was well
attended. Conditions in the North Country seemed very poor, but
activity was up over a typical Tuesday night. I have a feeling that
things will be even better propagation-wise. Most hams in the NE use the
ON4KST Chat Page (144/432 Region 2) to set up long haul skeds, others
can be used as well.
I have been doing a bit of beacon listening in the last two days and
wanted to report that the K1RT beacon in FN31IQ seems to be weakly
audible here in SW Maine for about 75% of the time. I do notice that
there is tremendous multi path on the signal. I am not sure, but I
suspect that I am seeing lots of reflections off of hills in the
vicinity of FN31IQ. I typically can see three signals when it peaks. One
time I saw six! There is also quite a range of QSB on the path. I have
a P3 panadaptor that is calibrated to approximate input signals in dBm.
Today I saw peaks on K1RT/b up to -110 dBm, or better than 30 dB above
the noise. The typical level for K1RT/b is near zero or below zero!
Those big swings are few and far between, but they do happen and that is
interesting. I know that N1JEZ and others have seen similar swings. As
far as I can tell, the K1RT/b beacon is on 222.060 MHz. I just wanted to
submit another beacon SWL report!
I made a few changes to the 222 station. I had an old linear power
supply that came from Meshna's in the 1970's I think. It was a brute
that could deliver 20 amps at 12 volts. Lately it was intermittent. I
suspected the small regulating plastic transistors were flakey. Meshna
had provided new plastic transistors to replace them all back in the
1970's. I finally decided to replace them. It seemed to work fine at
first, so I left it running on the bench with no load. About 30 minutes
later I started smelling burned phenolic and found the supply had zero
output and was hotter than a $2 gun. All the big TO-3 metal transistors
were shorted and each emitter resistor was burned open. I suspect
something failed and output voltage shot up. The protection circuit
shorted the output, and it was cooking itself! I looked at fixing it
but figured it would cost at least $25 so I found a Meanwell switcher
supply (made in Taiwan) that cost about the same amount as my repair
estimate. Instead of weighing about 40 lbs, it weighs about 2 lbs. It is
the size of a typical hard bound book. It will put out 29 amps. Just
what I need in my solar ham shack. The supply pulls 6 watts when turned
on. That old Meshna linear supply probably pulled 75 watts or more just
sitting there! I should have done this a longtime ago!
About a week or more ago, we had good EME conditions and I asked if
anyone was around to run a test with my newly connected up antenna on
the EME path. Well it seems that anyone and everyone who could get on
222 EME wanted to show up, so it turned into a great two evenings of EME
activity. It attracted a few horizon only non EME stations and they got
in the act and got a taste of EME as well. It all worked so well, that
I figured that maybe we should try to do the same thing each month when
conditions warrant. The first time, everyone was there except W5ZN who
had a dastardly mouse chew up his 12 volt preamp power wire. (I hope the
mouse got electrocuted and died a horrible and painful death. If the
voltage did not kill the thing, I hope he choked on the pvc
insulation!) Have I ever mentioned that I hate mice? K1OR missed the
EME fun too, as he was in sunny FLA, but the band was hopping with
everybody else. The next really good time looks like May 14-16.That
starts on a Friday evening. The moon starts coming up on Saturday
evening at about 7PM (2300) on the east coast, and Moonrise on the west
coast is at about 0300 UT or so, so the timing is pretty good. Does
this sound like a good thing for the active 222 EME types? Is there any
interest? We all get on at once!! We might get a few new stations
hooked if they can hear/ decode any of the big guys. K5QE and WA4NJP
have rather huge signals and polarity switching capability.
Feel free to throw in ur 2 cents worth on the 222 Activity email
reflector about an EME weekend. I also mentioned the recent 222 EME
weekend to N0JK, the QST VHF Column editor.
73 & CU on Tuesday night!
Dave K1WHS
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