Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021
Re: Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021
Fantastic day out today, many bugs were found and improvement opportunity's identified, which after all is why we did it.
Re: Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021
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
Transmit and receive on 146, 437, 1255, 2395 and 3401 MHz. Some pictures below.
Dave, G8GKQ
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Re: Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021
Also had QSOs with all of the above so just posting the missing one
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Re: Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021
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
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
Re: Pre-contest Equipment Shakedown Saturday 5 June 2021
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 .
The new tripod platform
(Ignore the wrong band and locator!)
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 .
The new tripod platform
(Ignore the wrong band and locator!)