Activity weekend, 2m &23cms 10/11th Dec

[radiogareth]

So who is out and about or available on 2/23 for contacts this coming weekend? I can definitely work from home either day, or go portable on whatever day is the nicest weather (Sat/Sun).
Home is Bromley JO01AI with reasonable take-offs West round north to East or Portable from Woldingham IO91Xh with good to the North West round north to East.
Gareth

[M0DTS]

I'll be out portable on Saturday with 2m and 23cm TV.

Likely IO94LI.

Rob
M0DTS

[keng8vdp]

I'll be in shack both days on both bands IO93GM
Close to (j36 M1)

Ken G8VDP

[M0DTS]

Change of plans, I'll be going to IO94MJ.
Too long a run with the icy road to the other site.

I should be on site ~10am, taking 2m/23cm.
Hope to work someone!!

Rob

[M0DTS]

Scrap that again, not going out!!

Heater in the van is not working and below zero for 5 hours on the hill does not appeal!!
It would take me an hour or two to repair so I'll give it a miss, sorry if you were expecting a QSO today.

I will be on from home but only 23cm and 2m t/b.

Some detail: I have a Eberspaecher heater in there and it did not come with a fuel solenoid pump.
These solenoid pumps are very expensive so i bought an equivalent for a tenner, but it's got more flow than the original....
I added a 'pulse tuning box' which is basically an arduino that reads the pulses from the heater and manipulates them by a variable factor to compensate for the pump flow rate.
This is the bit that's died, the 5v reg has blown i think... it has worked fine for about 5 years without a single failure so a bit annoyed with that anyway that's how it goes!


Rob

[radiogareth]

Games here too Rob, my pump-up has got the chills and I think ice in one seal. Got it up in the afternoon sun yesterday but its now wrapped up in a LOT of big bubble wrap hoping it doesn't re-freeze. Its a Hi-Lo not a Clarke, so maybe different seal design. Might wrap a heating cable round it though as we are due more freezing for days yet. -5 this morning
Hope the heater is an easy fix, not just frozen diesel is it?
Gareth

[g8gtz]

Sorry I've not posted any intentions here but was out yesterday playing 122 and 134GHz - this meant standing around at the back of a tripod for 4 hours, none of the luxury mobile shacks we have for ATV, so I'm staying in the warm shack today!

BTW - we did manage a one way QSO over 37km on 122GHz running about -10dBm which is a new UK record

73
Noel - G8GTZ

[g0mjw]

I will be trying 29 MHz - I guess at least the IF is on 2m.

Mike

[radiogareth]

By gum its cold outside! Not above 0 degrees all day here in S London. I have had to wrap the seals area of my pump-up mast (10m Hi-Lo) with some low wattage heating cable and several layers of bubble wrap. Don't want to have to replace the seals due to frost damage.
But I did manage to mount my 2m beam on Friday and aim it at Justin G8YTZ across town. I fitted my recently acquired SSB Electronics preamp down the garden too and that provided a good signal back in the shack despite long cable runs. Testing with DVBS2 and DVB-T with 150 & 333 SRs provided easy copy despite the beam only being at about 3m AGL.
Tried the latest DATVEasy 2.12 and that was happy down to 66ks in both modes. Doesn't seem to like lower SR's but I have yet to read the .pdf which might reveal why. Intel encoding on a I7V7 laptop. It seems to be a couple of dB lower output than when driven by a Portsdown, but there is headroom in my amp so it does not matter much.
So some activity but no DX
Gareth