Good Condx

No update since before Christmas but not much of interest has actually happened here besides the last weekend where there has been some excellent propagation on the moon.
Worked BD9BU for what I know is a first BY-SM QSO.
7 new initials and several of them are single long yagi stations with a few hundred watts.
But the really nice QSO was with Ian MM0GYX who used a single 15 el and 100W which is nothing more than amazing that it actually works but he was quite easy to work and i hrd him at -26db

Besides from that I spent most of the time relaxing with the family in the Christmas and New Year break and some carpentry work in the barn.
I have also started rebuilding a Softrock Ensamble RX/TX for 630m that seems like an interesting band.
I trew up a 85m inverted L antenna and hooked it up to the electrical fence and the 80m vertical ground and I do hear very well.

Have also been out planning for a 4 square on 80m for next season and I found a suitable field that will not be used from September to April so I will use that.
It will be a temporary setup where I have the ground radials laying on top of the ground so I can easily remove it in the spring so the horses can use it again for their food.
Main problem is that it is 200m from the house and I will need to either sit in the barn to work or make a remote station between the barn and the house.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of you.

Friday night was the evening of miracles amd I got an early gift from Tom MX0CNS.
We actually manage to work with him using his 17el DG7YBN yagi and 60W at the feedpoint.

I forgot to save a screendump of the QSO so I borrrowed it from Tom but he was -27dB with me and a fairly easy QSO after all.
The most amasing thing to it all is that he also worked Peter PA2V with his 4 yagis.

Did also work my neighbor Tobbe SM7EOI on the moon and he was also strong.
Tropo signal was of course strong too but doppler was 700Hz so easy to detect the moon reflections and as I use SDR RX it was easy to just adjust the filter width to block the tropo signals out.

I wish all of you and your families a really merry Christmas.

Frozen

The antenna is completely frozen at the moment and return loss on the H Array is Close to 4 so not possible to work at this time.
Did work some last weekend and Adelio IZ2DJP who has a single yagi and 200W was -21 dB and good own echoes.
Plan to be on this weekend if the snow and frost melts as the open wire feed is completely covered with snow at some places.

Managed to program the OE5JFL controller too and it seems like the serial port on the computer was not working properly as it worked when using an USB to serial adapter.
Will continue later this week with the encoders and buttons so I can make the necessary changes of time and location.
I have the H bridges for controlling of both axis with PWM which will be a nice feature as the azimut axis sometimes moves too fast and a ramped start and stop would be really good.

Will take some time off work and relax after a very busy time at work where we have moved the whole office and all labs to a new location and someone thought it was a good idea to make me responsible for the whole thing. Puhhh.
Will do some carpentry work at the workshop in the barn and hopefully start the renovation of a rear axle to the summer car as it has a slightly bad bearing.

ARRL 2nd

SRI for no update but to much to do at work and at home with other stuff.

The total result for ARRL was 72 QSO and 37 multipliers for a total of 262 700 points which is more then double the score from last year.
Activity seems higher then last year and I still missed a lot of stations I heard which is inspiring for the future.
Worked a handful of single yagi stations with low power with the smallest I think was G3LGR with a 14 el DG7YBN and 200W who was -20dB with me.
Heard a few small stations that did not copy me so I need higher power then the 500W I used now and the Italab pallet PA is on hold at the moment due to other projects priority.

The only hardware issue during the two weekends was that I lost elevetoin indication on friday evening before the 2nd part but it was a poor connector and easilly solved.
Experimented a lot with the dual pol setup and it works exactly as predicted but I have some noise in the area causing problems in some cases but have not found anything while searching.
It can clearly be seen both in the SDR spectrum display and Map65 as pulsating or changes in noise levels in both time and frequency domain.
Need to continue searching as its quite irritating and lowers the RX performance quite a bit.

Had some problem with Map65 that stopped decoding after been on for a few hours and reporting to Livecq was irregular and missed a lot of stations from time to time.
To resolve it I needed to reboot the computer so I need to evaluate that further to figure out why it  happens.

Have been looking for a PA controller that is remotely controllable and able to monitor all parameters as my intention is to have the complete station remote controlled but have not yet found anything really usable.
My programming skílls is limited and a task like that should be to much and take to long time for me.
The search and work continues.

Low band

Nothing new on 70cm builds but I did put up my 80 m 1/4 vertical last week.
Its 20.5 m high and I did put out 80 radials 20m long and some 40m long ones too.
Have a tuning box in the bottom where I tune it at 3.79 and also a switch and a second matching net to allow operation at 3.5 as well.
Have an additional net for 40m but I have not put it in yet.

Have also spent some time building and trying to communicate with a OE5JFL controller I got a PCB to from SM7FWZ some time ago.
The board is based on ON4BCB design.
http://moonbouncers.org/Orebro2017/ON4BCB%20OE5JFL%20diy.pptx

I cant communicate with the controller but I think it is a faulty RS232 circuit that causes it and I have ordered new ones so I can continue.
The board only have TTL serial signals so I built a converter with a MAX232 but it seems to not react correctly on one channel so I hope exchanging it will help.

The new amplifier on 70 is slow progress.
Got the controller working but need to get it all in the box and connect it together and to make the 24V regulator and switches.

Besides from that I waiting for the rain to stop and higher dec. so one can work and also the last ARRL part.

Nothing new

Nothing has really happen since last weekend.
Worked some on the moon during the weekend but very low activity so mainly some tests with Bernie ZS4TX using different polarization.

Have continued with the Italab pallet amp I purchased a while ago but the progress is slow.
Did CAD and milled a PCB for the ON7EQ Arduino controller and put in screened box with feed through caps and inductors on the board that will hopefully work as RF sheild to avoid problems with RF on the input pins to the controller.

Will reprogram it later to also include the designer ON7EQ in the startup sequence.
I just did an initial test and tried to familiarize myself with the code.
The startup sequence fault handling seems to jump the 50V supply voltage because it never stops there as it stops on every other voltage or current measurement so I need to test some more another evening.

Have received the boxes for the preamp and balun but need to CAD and print a support for the balun before I can put everything inside and attach it to the antenna.
Hopefully the weather will be good in the weekend as now its very damp and wet so everything is soaked.

First part done

The first ARRL weekend is over.
It started with heavy rain Friday afternoon but it cleared up Saturday afternoon and the remaining of the weekend was fairly OK besides some snow Sunday.
Managed in total of 39 QSO's with some new stations and some worked before.
Think the activity was higher this year compared to last year and Sunday evening activity was very good with a lot of stations QRV.

I believe the smallest station worked was K1DS with single yagi and 100W or so.
One funny thing was Tobbe SM7EOI who lives 35 km away uses 4 * 11 el DG7YBN antennas hrd good but we missed to work before my noise became to high at MS when I beam into my house.
We can only work when doppler is high as the tropo signal is so strong.

Did make a switch box for the pol switching Saturday afternoon but it did not work on the RX side and the moon was on its way up so I left it with fixed RX H.
Did work XE2AT with TX vertical and RX horizontal and tried to call CQ a few times V but got no reply's.
Later on Sunday afternoon I found that the cable I used from the relay switching the two RX cables in the shack was short circuit so after replacing that it worked as planned.
The preamp for the V antennas had lower gain so the noise level dropped but it worked well.
Worked JE1TNL using both TX and RX vertical so the system works.
Compared a lot with HB9Q RX on livecq when I changed the TX pol and all times it shifted 90 degrees and a bit lower level on V as expected.

Worked Bernie ZS4TX who has the exact same array as I do and when he TX V he was like -10 with me and when TX H he dropped to -27 so a huge difference.
Listen a lot on Bernd DL7APV with different pols and at some point he was more or less gone when I RX V.

Experienced some noise from time to time and did walk through the house with my 817 with a rubber duck on but did not find any source of extra noise but need to continue the investigation as I believe I have something interfering.
Some times I can detect noise with patterns in Map65 both in freq and time domain.

Sunday evening I had problem with MAP65 hanging when trying the decode so I could only at few times report to livecq.
Do not know why and I have never experienced anything similar before but Sunday night it was constantly hanging.
Besides from that and some high VSWR when antenna soaked the station worked without any problems.
Need to find some good settings for CW until the next leg as I tried a few times but CW does not sounds pleasant with my settings at the moment so I did not work any.