Totally down for 1x a month EME on 222. I will be there with my manual pol
rotation setup looking for new grids and states.
- Jay N1AV
On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 4:03 PM David Olean <k1whs@metrocast.net> wrote:
> 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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