Hello 222 folks,
I am looking forward to this evening to try out my revised 222 receive
system. Yesterday, I climbed the 100 ft tower and removed the weather
proof box that held the TX relays and the preamp. It was working great,
but was being hammered by a CH 11 TV station whenever I aimed southwest.
(Guess where most of the activity is?) That CH 11 TV station is in line
with New York, Philly, and Washington DC. I could not use my tower mtd
preamp in that direction. So a new and bigger box was built up to
contain the cavity FET preamp. I had to steal the original power
connector from the old box so I did not have to run a new cable and
connector up the tower. Last night I swapped things out and finished
the wiring of the interior of the box, using that power connector
again. Then some tests on the NF meter that proved it was working. I am
seeing about a 1/2 dB NF through the adaptors and TX relays, which seems
about right. So I was up on the tower this morning, and checked for the
proper voltages with my trusty DVM. The last move was to connect up the
DC to the preamp once I knew that all was well, and then down the tower
to see how it worked.
There is no evidence of overload! In addition, the selectivity in the
frontend is so good that the CH 11 station does not even overload the
transverter. I was sure that I would have to install a filter to prevent
that, but the 25 dB of attenuation was enough to make it all work just
fine. I listened a bit to the K1RT Beacon on 222.060. I was hearing it
pretty well....a good sign. I tried elevating the yagis and saw the
noise level drop, so it is working. How well, remains to be seen, but I
am encouraged that my hearing problems to the SW are gone. Now I need to
try it out with real signals. I hope many make the effort to get on
this evening!!
I plan to be on 222.100 at about 22:30 or 22:45 UT. I will be monitoring
ON4KST as well as HB9Q Chat for any EME activity. At 0100 UT the Moon
will be southwest and at about a 45 degree elevation. It sets here at
about 0545 UT. It could be an exciting evening!
Be there and check it out!
Dave K1WHS
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