Video from 2012 NEWS BBQ

Last saturday I attended the Northeast Weak Signal Group annual BBQ and Microwave MDS test session. It's a great time, we almost always have great weather and the location is perfect. Lots of goodies for sale, I picked up a number of Items.

Here is a quick video I took of the microwave setups that people brought to test. I almost got irradiated by some 24GHz signals :)

Edit:  I also did a similar video back in 2007, that video is a bit longer and shows more of the setup and operation of the MDS testing. That video can be found here:

June VHF Contest 2012

This past weekend I operated up at K1WHS in FN43mj. We decided that it would be a laid back weekend and we would do a few repair jobs and take it easy operating. The weather was absolutely perfect the whole weekend and we had a great time. We several cocktail hours and did some pretty good damage on a bottle of Bombay Sapphire. It was a small crew, just 4-5 of us. Dave, KM3T, came up for his first time on Saturday and had a lot of fun working 2m and a big part of the 6m opening. 6 was open for a long period on Saturday and we were working guys all over. We called it quits early (11pm) and some of them started back up around 6am. I decided to sleep it and didn't wake up 'till 8am. We started right back into relaxation mode, only sitting in front of the 222 and 432 positions for 20-30 minutes at a time. 6 would open up for a little bit here and there, and then we ended up working a really nice opening to Europe. Art, K1BX, worked over 60 stations and numerous grids well into eastern europe. When that died down, 6 was really slow, so we decided to go out to lunch. We got back around 2:30pm and 6 was still dead, but soon opened up in a big way.

At the end of the day we had 1200+ Q's and 305 grids on 6m alone. Our score was somewhere north of 750k.

The only downer for the weekend was that we didn't have any microwaves. The rotor for the microwave stack self-destructed sometime last year and Dave had to take it down off the tower on Saturday. He thinks it can be rebuilt, we'll be back on the microwaves for September.

What frequency am I on?

As i spend more time in the microwave region, frequency stability becomes much more of a problem for me. While out in the field I need to be able to point my dish with roughly 2-4 degrees of horizontal/vertical accuracy, then be on the right frequency to make a QSO with the other station. If any of these variables are off I can potentially miss the contact and lose points. With the use of a computer program I can predict the azimuth of the Sun, point my dish at it, then be able to calculate my heading with use of a centerline. Now I only need to worry about frequency.

Currently my method of determining my frequency is to listen for a radio beacon. Around New England there are two regular beacons on 10GHz that I use; the Mt. Greylock beacon and the WA1VVH beacon. One problem is that the WA1VVH beacon is often down during the contest because Harry (WA1VVH) is home operating on the same antenna. Another issue can arise when you don't have a clear shot to the beacon location. This past contest weekend, on Sunday, I had the pleasure of operating with Mike, N1JEZ, who has a portable GPS stablized 10GHz source with him. It doesn't matter where you are, as long as you can lock to the GPS system you can produce a carrier at exactly 10,368.000MHz. My transverter drifts fairly heavily, upwards of 20-30KHz. Having that source was a lifesaver, I simply tuned around .000, calculated my offset, changed back to the frequency we agreed to meet on, then added back in my offset, voila!

My new problem: I'm not going to be operating with Mike, N1JEZ, next contest weekend.

I've been reading about the new DEMI/N5AC Apollo A32 synthesizer board lately, it is being touted as a replacement for the DEMI Microlo (Which is the source of my drifting problem). The only downside to the A32 is it's less than great phase noise, but is bad enough to really worry about? I took the plunge and ordered one. I'm not planning on installing it right away, I may actually just play around with it for a while and see what other folks find with it in terms of performance degredation. Then I had a great Idea, I could use it along with my 10MHz GPSDO to create a 10GHz portable marker! No more guessing at what my frequency is?

Then I realized that DEMI beat me to it and put together the A32 with a nice enclosure with a knob that has several presets. Check it out here! Again, I took the plunge and ordered one. I can envision using this for a number of projects, including using it to test my S-band down-converters from 2401 to 144MHz. It could really come in handy.

Now, both the A32 and WSSA require 10MHz external reference. I had built a GPS disciplined 10MHz oscilator based on the N1JEZ/W1GHZ/G3RUH board, so that was a good start. I also picked up a Thunderbolt GPSDO from Ebay, but it's been sitting on the shelf unused. Tonight I finally assembled the power cable for the Thunderbolt and managed to get it up and running, here is a pic of the unit and power supply.



With any luck, I should now have mostly solved my frequency accuracy issue, I'll always be able to calculate my offset from the marker. If the results come back positive for the direct Microlo replacement, I'll think about changing it out. The issue with going that route means that i have to have 10MHz with my rig, or run a cable from the Car. That isn't always convenient.....

Now, if DEMI ships my order within the week I'll be ready to go for the second weekend of the contest!

Conference Motivation

Conferences always act like a shot in the arm to me, they give me renewed energy to go home and get my projects working. This past weekend I attended the 35th Eastern VHF/UHF conference, sponsored by the NEWS group. When I got home this afternoon I decided to get motivated and put the finishing touches on my GPS Stabilized 10Mhz oscillator. This is the N1JEZ/W1GHZ/G3RUH design that was published a few years ago. I picked up a pair of boards and a pair of GPS units and got the system working on the bench, but never finished integrating it all into an enclosure. Here are a few shots:

There is a lot of extra space in the enclosure, I plan on making some additions to the box, including the incorporation of an Apollo synth board being sold by DEMI as the A32. This will allow me to generate weak signals, portable, from all bands 1296 and above. This is especially important at 10GHz, where is my current LO is all over the place. Having a 10GHz at a known frequency allows me to calculate my offset and at least be accurate in frequency.

I've standardized on the Anderson Power-Pole connectors, this is a chassis mount board that I borrowed from W1GHZ and used as board filler for an ExpressPCB order I did a while back. The serial port will give you access to the NMEA data from the GPS. I may give this a whirl with my NTP server.

The control board has 2x10MHz outputs, but I'll need one of them to feed into the A32 board. I could most likely split one of the connections but I need to see what the drive level is out of the 10MHz board.


And finally, my frequency counter thinks it's accurate. Of course, my freq counter hasn't been calibrated in years, so thats only according to *it's* LO.

Eastern VHF/UHF conference this weekend

This weekend I'm heading down to Enfield, CT to attend the Eastern VHF/UHF conference. It will be good to see some radio friends and hopefully make some plans for the 10GHz contest this coming summer. Pictures to follow soon!