Some participation in the May VUS contest Saturday night and Sunday. Worked from home on 70cm and 23cm. Conditions were quite ok but few station calling cq.
July 21 VUS contest
During the time i was qrv i experienced very low participation from DL. Activity from OK was quite good. Some nice AP scatter QSO arranged via ON4KST chat but also random QSO. The SDR really helps to find the people when turning the antenna. Average of 270km/QSO on 70cm and 220km/QSO on 23cm are quite ok for me for operating from home.
Saturday evening 70cm. Rig HiQSDR+Iceni Transverter, 50W, 15ele.
27 QSO 7300p, ODX S59DGO, 610km.
70cm 21/07 – Kartendaten: OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA), DL4MFM log analyzer
Sunday afternoon 23cm during the last 2h of the contest.
Rig HiQSDR+MKU13G3, 100W, 36ele.
25 QSO 5500p, ODX S50G, 560km.
23cm 21/07 – Kartendaten: OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA), DL4MFM log analyzer
And i almost forgot: 1 QSO on 3cm with OK2A ;) Rig: FT790R2, Transverter, 10W, 40cm offset dish and W1GHZ feed.
DUR June 2021
17 QSO on 23cm and 2 on 10GHz. Quite good activity on 23cm due to ongoing Alpe-Adria Contest.
DUR 21/June 23cm result – Kartendaten: OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA), DL4MFM log analyzer
2021 June NAC 70cm
Rig: HiQSDR, Iceni Transverter, 50W, HA8ET LNA, 15ele
Result: 13QSO, 5900p, ODX SM6VTZ 820km
I drilled some additional holes into the boom of an old 21 Tonna fragment in order to mount the mast clamp. Together with a 2nd segment this gave 15ele with some suboptimal clamp mounting close to one of the directors. But better than my 5ele lightweight i estimated. It turned out to be right.
Some of the OZ stations where easy to work. OZ1DLD/P even in SSB. Outstanding signal from SM7DTE. ODX was again SM7VTZ with a rather short AP reflection this time. But i was happy to work him with my 50W qrp signal. An average of 424km per QSO is surprisingly good.
15ele made of parts from 21ele tonna
my 70cm “transverter in a box” mess. But it does the job.
Jun21 NAC 70cm – (C) OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA) – created with DL4MFM log analyzer
IARU June contest 2021
Because of some Covid restrictions still in place in DL there was the decission to remove the nigh time from the contest period in Germany. For me this was a very unfortunate decission since this is usually the only time where i can operate without interruptions or other assignments.
In the afternoon there was quite some RS condition. I tried to find some QSO partner on 6cm but did not succeed. I heard DB0FGB (JO50), DB0NCO (JN59) and a OK station calling. The OK station did not come back to my call and i was not lucky in the ON4KST chat.
Videos of the beacons received:
Then i switched to 10GHz. Usually i am limited to direction south because of problems moving the dish through the upper roof window. This time i managed to put the little plastic dish outside to work some station to the north. At least DF0YY made it to the log this way.
Dish for 3cm on the roof top direction north-west
Jun21 3cm – (C) OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA) – created with DL4MFM log analyzer
Rig 3cm: FT-817, old transverter, 10W, 35cm dish with W1GHZ dualband horn
Result 3cm: 7QSO, 660p, ODX OK1FPR 200km
Later i tried 23cm. 10pm local time was already close. But i was not sure if i would be able to do some more QSO on sunday. So i decided to give some points to others outside DL at least and continued for a while. In the end i did not switch on on sunday again.
Jun21 – 23cm – (C) OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA) – created with DL4MFM log analyzer
Rig 23cm: HiQSDR, MKU13G3, 100W, 36ele
Result 23cm: 19QSO, 4600p, ODX HA5KDQ 550km
NAC2m June 21
Short participation in 2m NAC.
Rig: HiQSDR, ME2T, 200W PA, 4ele
A nice SSB QSO with SK7CY, ODX PA0O 540km.
June 21 NAC 2m – (C) OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA), map created with DL4MFM log analyzer
DUR 21/05
2 of 3 hours from home. Quite good on 23cm. Some nice QSO on 9cm. Unfortunately no QSO on 6cm.
21/05 DUR 23cm Kartendaten: OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA), DL4MFM log analyzer
21/05 DUR 9cm Kartendaten: OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA), DL4MFM log analyzer
March 21 IARU contest
Since there were still heavy covid restrictions and no chance to sleep somewhere we decided not to go to JO60OM for multi-Op. I was planning to be part time qrv from home in JO61UC. Since i completed my test-setup of the Iceni 70cm transverter i was able to operate 3 bands, 2m,70cm,23cm. More bands are not possible because the mast is too short and 13cm is not ready yet.
Despite i thought different my main operating time was saturday afternoon. I started with 70cm because i was curious for this band that i never operated from home before. It started very slow, almost nobody qrv in the beginning. During the contest some nice QSO came on top with S59P and S57M. Keep in mind that this is only 5ele and 50watts.
70cm March 21, OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA), DL4MFM Log Analyzer
I later changed to 23cm and did some qso there. On 23cm it is a bit easier since i have 36ele and 100W. Many thanks to DL3IAS and DL3IAE for the ODX QSO via AS.
23cm March 21, OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA), DL4MFM Log Analyzer
2m i started in the evening after the kids were sleeping. Unfortunately the conditions were very poor and i ended up with frustrating 20 QSO.
2m March 21, OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, SRTM | Kartendarstellung: OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA), DL4MFM Log Analyzer
Overall the result was a bit disappointing with the highlights of the 70/23 ODX QSO and the fact that the 70cm transverter was working fine.
Iceni TX Gain / output power
The diagram shows the output power of my G4DDK-Iceni transverter in relation to the input power.
It is quite linear up to 3dBm input / 20dBm output and drops relatively hard above.
G4DDK Iceni TX gain
Some more about SAW filtered LNA
The 1090MHz filters arrived and i measured this variant plus one without filter.
Closer to the filter the response looks quite ok:
LNA 1090MHz
Far away from the passband the supression degrades. Especially very high frequencies pass the filter quite well.
LNA 1090M span 3GHz
This is the assembly with 47pF capacitors and a 27nH coil for supply of the MMIC. Below 200MHz does not pass the capacitors well. There is even some remaining gain at 3.4GHz although its a 1.6mm thick FR4 PCB.
LNA without filter