Hello VHF addicts
I am quite pumped up as much has been accomplished at the old Mumbo
Jumbo VHF radio location. (FN43MJ) I am embarking on setting up a
remote operating setup and the first order of business is to have 24
hour a day AC power available. I spent the day moving components and re
wiring new stuff in hopes of having some permanent power available with
solar panels and a bigger battery array. So now I have my new ground
mounted solar panels installed and powering a state of the art charge
controller. I also added another 300 AH of battery capacity for a 600 AH
total. I was working hard today to put the shack back together as it is
almost Tuesday and Tuesday means another FANTASTIC activity night with
wall to wall activity. It is a great time to check out your 222 gear
before the impending June VHF Contest.
Activity seems to be growing in the midwest and I am hoping that we get
some more SE activity. W4ZST was on last week and only worked two
stations. To make matters worse, those two contacts were on EME. He
worked no one terrestrially from EM84. If you are in the SE, please
make an attempt to get on Tuesday evening. I seem to have a great bit
of luck with meteor scatter down the East Coast. I would love to run a
meteor sked. KO4MA, N4SVC, and WA4GPM come to mind. The meteors are
calling folks!!
I will be QRV just before 23:00 UT or 7 PM on the East Coast. The
ON4KST chat page is a good place to set up skeds. The Moon will be in
great shape, but it does not rise until late in the evening. My Moonrise
is at 03:45 UT.
So please make an effort to get on even if for only a short time. The
more stations the merrier. Conditions will be fairly good in parts of
the SE and flat everywhere else. Still, a flat 222 band can be quite
exciting. I am itching to try some Q65 skeds to see if I can extend my
coverage over what is possible with CW. So far I have been unsuccessful
with extending my tropo range.
I spent today re locating my 1800 watt AC inverter, and re programming
my charge controllers so their characteristics are the same. I am
finally running both controllers into the battery bank. I noted that on
a rainy and cloudy day, I could actually get 30 amps of charge current
into the battery, so that is quite encouraging.
I hope to see you on 222 MHz Tomorrow.
73
Dave K1WHS
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