2m transverter from Hungary. Working in combination with the Hiqsdr…
Category Archives: VHF
IARU Reg1 VHF (qrp)
Only a few QSO just for fun from Hirtstein JO60OM. I just wanted to try the DK7ZB Oblong at this location in parallel to our fieldday operation. Therefore i just had my FT-817 with me and annoyed a few people with my QRP signal. Because of the stormy weather it was not possible to use the full length of the mast most of the time.
DK7ZB Oblong in stormy weather at JO60OM
DH5YM in operation ;)
Odroid U3 WebSDR
I want to run a temporary 4m WebSDR. The software comes from PA3FWM and there is a binary for raspberry pie computers. The binary can run on any ARM CPU. I purchased a Odroid U3 which has a lot more CPU power. The picture shows the Odroid as well as the rtlsdr connected and a wifi stick used for connecting to my network. Running the WebSDR with 1MHz bandwith gives about 50% CPU load.
The board runs Lubuntu 14.04.2. I did not measure the current consumption on the 5V supply.
My aim is to put it in a box to the balkony.
Today i heard my first station on 4m with that setup. SV2JAO.
Marconi Memorial Contest 2014
Another contest from my home location in the Elbe valley this year. Again i used the 2m DK7ZB Quadlong antenna. Its doing surprisingly well. But this time i had 200W of output. Direction southeast was pretty good again. Now ODX was 9A4V. Thanks for the good ears down there ! Also other directions (except east) were working okay. That was mainly due to the fact that i used the reversebeacon network to gather spots generated by DJ3AK. Many thanks for that as well. Also DJ5AM (very close to my location) ran a skimmer which generated a few useful spots for me. My original plan was to run my own skimmer but that was not working due to setup issues. But the receiver of DJ3AK was really useful. Getting spot into the log-window, click to the call which tunes the TRX to the frequency and takes the call over. The macro and keyboard keyer functionality did the rest ;) East direction does not work because i am located at the east side of the Elbe valley and the hill is going up too high to get over there.
Marconi_2014_JO61VB
The map nicely shows the directions of the valley i can operate through with some exceptions of other stations from different directions.
A nice one was F8KID and HB9FAB, HB9TYU as well as PA4VHF and OZ6OL.
VHF contest from home
Due i was not able to join the DM7A activity from JO60LK this time i decided to try a few contacts from home in JO61VB. My location is in the Elbe valley at the eastern slope. I mounted a DK7ZB Quadlong antenna to my fibre mast installed to the balcony. Find some report on the antenna here: http://dh5ym.hopto.org/wiki/?p=1138
Only 50W were available from my FT-857D transceiver because the PA was in JO60LK serving as spare.
Surprisingly even with this tiny setup from a that bad location it was possible to make some DX contacts. I just operated about 4.5hours and got 57QSO with about 190km average.
In the map the directions of the Elbe valley are clearly visible. Especially direction of Poland i was not able to work anyone. I had the impression that relatively few stations were calling CQ. Maybe that was just related to my poor RX but possibly that trend continues to move from the microwave bands to VHF as well. Using ON4KST chat it was possible to arrange for some nice contacts in addition to a few random QSO.
ODX was PA1T with 535km. Others in top 5 are S59P, HA2U, DL0LN and OM3CPF.
Many thanks to all who had the patience to copy my qrp signal.
Sept 2014: QSOs from JO61VB
DK7ZB Quadlong for 2m
Martin, DK7ZB describes a horizontal, almost omnidirectional, 2m VHF antenna. Its leightweight enough to mount it to a fiber mast.
Its rather easy to build and fast to mount.
I used 4mm brass tube for the horizontal elements and 1mm antenna wire for the vertical elements. Therefore the resonance isa bit too high but this should not be a too big problem.
The pictures show the antenna on my 10m fibre mast mounted at the balcony and the S11 measurement data (calibrated to the input of a 15m Aircel7 cable).
Quadlong for 2m
Quadlong VHF reflection measurement
Marconi Memorial Contest 2013
We did not have enough operators for a DM7A operation from uphill. I did not want to skip the contest completely and therefore i did the Marconi Memorial 2013 for 6 hours on sunday from Triebenberg JO61XA. The setup was somewhat unsual. I used a portabel setup consisting of my FT-857D and a HL-200V/50 and a 11ele Tonna. I had to power the station from my 1kW gererator.
Before i was a bit sceptical about the capabilities of the setup because the FT-857D is definitively not made for VHF contest operation. But since i have a narrow CW filter and the station densitiy was quite low i was lucky and faced absolutely no overdrive of the RX and almost no QRM by closeby stations.
In the end i had a total of 120QSO with about 36500 points.
One of the first qso was the ODX with IK5ZWU/6 who had a surprisingly strong signal for about 830km distance. MNI TNX Walter !
Paddle, keyer interface, FT857, audio recorder, HL-200, rotator control