Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021

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G4KLB
Posts: 244
Joined: Wed May 28, 2008 10:46 am

Re: Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021

Post by G4KLB » Sat Jun 05, 2021 7:29 pm

Fantastic day out today, many bugs were found and improvement opportunity's identified, which after all is why we did it.
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G8GKQ
Site Admin
Posts: 2798
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 1:21 pm

Re: Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021

Post by G8GKQ » Sat Jun 05, 2021 7:58 pm

Yes - a really good day for me - a number of issues identified ahead of next week's contest. Thanks to all who participated.

Transmit and receive on 146, 437, 1255, 2395 and 3401 MHz. Some pictures below.

Dave, G8GKQ
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G4KLB
Posts: 244
Joined: Wed May 28, 2008 10:46 am

Re: Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021

Post by G4KLB » Sat Jun 05, 2021 8:54 pm

Also had QSOs with all of the above so just posting the missing one :D
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radiogareth
Posts: 1215
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 9:46 am

Re: Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021

Post by radiogareth » Sun Jun 06, 2021 7:30 am

Well that went well :-) Two-ways on all bands 2m-9cm except 23 where 35mW clearly wasn't enough ;-)
Various levels of questions from Joe public. Best of all was a very polite question from a young lad (with his dad) who said 'that looks very technical, may I ask what you are doing' :-)
Went for a look at Werther Down on the way home, but half way along the farm track was a BIG red circle sign saying "strictly no cars or bikes". Having recently escaped with a 'driver retraining' session I declined to explore further.
Onwards to Alton to pick up a nice surveyors tripod to provide secondary support for 9 and 6 cm gear to save swapping over.
9cms worked very well for a first, 6cms did not as laptop didn't seem to want to drive the Pluto and my RX wasn't setup/tuned for 5.765.
Got to sort an amp for 23cm and make additional roof-rack bracketry for the next event.
Gareth

G4FRE
Posts: 197
Joined: Fri May 26, 2017 6:57 am

Re: Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021

Post by G4FRE » Sun Jun 06, 2021 12:50 pm

My microwave shakedown happened on June 2nd with a trip to IO91GI. with G8GTZ and G1EHF. Having got the final ali plate to finish my new tripod the previous evening , it would be a good field trial

Had narrowband qsos on 47 and 76Ghz at 26 and 40km before lunch with G8ACE/P and G4LDR/P. After lunch had a 2 way with Noel on 47GHz over the 26km path to Stockbridge (after finally realising the wrong minituner antenna had been selected)

Four lessons learnt

1) a braking mecahanism is vital for microwave dishes
2) Minituner needs a mini not micro USB plug. Luckily G1EHF had a mini usb lead that I borrowed
3) I can run DATV without a laptop to run the minituner(I hadnt packed one!, just cannot confirm my transmitted signal is OK)
4) Protect the switches protruding from the Langstone front panel

After using Langstone for signal alignment, Noel gave me a demo of the Portsdown spectrum view using the pluto receiver, so a 2 way splitter is now fitted in the receive path coming from the transverter saving carrying one box man portable on 24/47/76GHz .
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The new tripod platform
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(Ignore the wrong band and locator!)

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