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Re: [VHFcontesting] [222Activity] Tuesday Night 222 MHz, the K1RT Beacon

To: Jay <whereisjay@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [VHFcontesting] [222Activity] Tuesday Night 222 MHz, the K1RT Beacon, and EME Activity periods.
From: Tom Whitted <tom@cwoh.net>
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2022 19:16:30 -0700
List-post: <mailto:vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
Hey Guys I am also good with once a month 222 activity also!!
I can be in for the Friday night Pass only.. Saturday at noon I will be headed 
out Driving to Ohio for Dayton Hamvention!!
But count me in for Friday night 
Tom 
N7GP
Ex WA8WZG..
 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 25, 2022, at 4:50 PM, Jay <whereisjay@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 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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