Dear friends,
I understand that several developers are working on integrating OpenHPSDR mRX, Linrad, and Map65. Could someone on Moon-Net please summarize the current status of this effort?
Thanks,
W9IP
------------------------
Michael R. Owen, Ph.D.
Senior Systems Engineer
Saab Defense and Security USA LLC
Direct +1 315 634 3066
michael.owen(a)saabusa.com<mailto:michael.owen@saabusa.com>
5717 Enterprise Parkway
East Syracuse, NY 13057
www.saabusa.com<http://www.saabusa.com/>
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Hi Cowles,
I saw you numerous times calling CQ on 1296 Mhz and called you, but no
luck. Made about 12 23cm contacts with my little set up.
I have found that in numerous directions, I too am picking up new noise
sources on 144 over the last few months, which limited my operating ( I dont
do 432 yet). They come and go as the lights in various houses go on and
off. The noise level is S9+20 , at lower elevations, but even at higher
elevation the noise floor is 4 db higher then the past in all directions.
I have been working with my local power utilities, power quality group, to
determine the cause and they have come out with a spectrum analyser and
verified the problem and the source. They have been able to enter one of
the homes and it looks like a bad batch of LED Lights have been
installed.. The Power Utility is now working with the homeowners and the
LED manufacture ( Cooper) to replace the LED lamp ( 18) as it even
kicking back noise into the power line and back to the transformer.
This is going to be a growing problem for me , as there are at least two
other new directions , where I am now having the same broad band noise, so
more people in my community have switched to LED lamps.
In NJ, the Power Company is taking this problem very seriously and working
with the ARRL in identifying which LED lamp manufactures are not complying
with the FCC Part 15 requirements. I know of another EMEr in NJ, who
also experienced broad band noise generated by LED lamps. He and the
utility tracked it down to LED lamps in a house next door.
Cowles, I fear you trouble may be the installation of new LED lamps and
not a " new" Plasma TV.
73
Les
W2LPL
Hi everyone ,
I'm building my 10GHz EME station step by step and today the last missing
component arrived the TWT a YH1195 that produces 20 watts .
As I have no experiences with TWT amplifiers I have a few questions :
1. In RX sequence should the TWT power supply being switched off or
leave it on ?
2. Is there a heat-up cycle I need to respect before using it ?
I hope to have the station ready in a few months , the setup would be a 2,4m
dish and 20 watts .
Best regards,
Kenny ON4DPX
Hi All,
On the first night second leg, weather was clear and the moon was
visible. Everything was looking great, until I turned on the radio. When
I did, I noticed a very high noise level. I turned the array around and
the noise increased in the direction of my neighbor's house. I believe
my neighbor's new Plasma TV is the source. When their lights go off, I
notice my noise problem is gone on 70 cm. I can't get on 1296MHz at moon
rise due to tree blockage so some of the European's window is lost. In
spite of the noise, I was able to work DL7UDA, YL2GD, WA2FGK, NC1I,
UX0FF, UT6UG, YL3CT all on 70 CM.
Around 1:30 UTC, I had a slow decode on JT65B and after getting the new
station's call entered and generated, JT was all ready transmitting CQ.
Usually I just let the CQ field finish and let the program gracefully
make the transition. I did not want to waste a whole transmission
sequence, so I stopped CQ-ing and changed fields and then restarted in
mid stream. I forgot to lower the power before hitting the AUTO IS ON
SWITCH. Usually I have no problem doing this even without lowering the
power, but not this time. It glitched the LNA and my ears on the larger
horizontal array was history until I had time to change the LNA.
Since the activity at the time seemed to be a little low, I decided to
climb the tower and replace the LNA on the horizontal array. I was only
gone for about 20 minutes. When I came back in, the screen was full of
stations on the MAP65 display from the last 20 minutes from the vertical
array. I tried to track down and pounce on a couple of stations, but
most got away.
Around 5:00 UTC I notice the moon was high enough above the pine trees
to switch to 23 cm and I worked DL0SHF on CW. DL0SHF was very loud and
clear! I then worked FS6FX as a dup, and then VA7MM, OK1KIR, and before
moonset KL7UW.
The next day, Saturday, after getting some sleep I rebuilt the damaged
preamp for a spare while my Wife went out shopping. When she came back
home, she started complaining about not being able to get on Face Book
because the internet was down. I figured the local Router had just
locked up and needed a good reset and problem would be solved. I told
her I would fix it after dinner, due to having to go under the house in
the craw space where our service provider had placed the router. I reset
the router and still no internet. I then did some troubleshooting and
found out the router was working fine, it was a service provider issue.
Anyway we had lost out internet connection, which is how I time sync all
the computers. Talk about a bad timing, HI HI... on top of that, the
noise problem on 432 MHz was back! I tried to used WWV and set the
computer's time manually, but I had even a higher noise level on HF.
I finally found a cell phone app. that gave me the correct time. I found
that the main computer I was running JT on would gain about 2 seconds an
hour and one running MAP65 would loose 1 second an hour. I would have to
constantly make corrections every 30 minutes or so.
Also due to the loss of internet, everything except for off the air
(UHF) TV was lost. Since my Wife could not use her computer with Face
Book, she was forced to watch UHF TV. We discovered that during my JT
transmissions on 70 cm, due to the close proximity of the TV antenna and
my EME array, the TV preamp must have been overloaded causing the TV to
freeze for each 1 minute interval. I finally had to lower my power level
to around 300 watts to keep peace in the house.
At around 3:48 UTC I finally made my first contact of the evening on 70
cm with G4FUF. I shortly switched back to 23 cm. It was raining and
overcast, so my tracking camera was useless. I re-adjusted the arc on
the polar mount to reflect the ~1 degree lower moon zenith angle from
the night before and while doing a sweep found the ON0EME beacon. I went
to 1296.070 MHz and CQed, I worked NC1I, VE4SA, OK1YK, UA3PTW, and
UT5DL. Within a few minutes after moonset on Sunday morning, you guest
it, the internet was back on, and the high noise problem was gone.
This was a ruff year for me and some of my close friends who normally
help me out in the EME contest. Normally the last few years I have been
in the Multi-band, Multi-operator classification, not so this year.
David, AD4TJ who had great 2-meter EME station usually beating me by at
least 3 X the number of contacts, took a direct lightning hit this
summer. After the hit, he decided maybe it was not wise to have so many
cables coming the house. This resulted in the decision to forfeit
rebuilding his super 2-meter EME station. Richard, KR4V, my Elmer in
hamradio, was under the weather during this years contest and could not
help me with working the weak CW stations. Hopefully he will be back on
his feet and will be able to help me next year. With the new 1296 MHz
station, and the high CW activity, I think many more CW stations could
be had!
In spite of Murphy, I personally had the highest number of contacts
unofficially 53, in the past 16 years doing the ARRL EME Contest. There
seems to me to be more activity on 70 cm this year than in the past
years, and 23 cm was great fun! I still am very low on the learning
curve especially for 23 cm, so I hope to do better next year.
If I did not work you on the second leg of the contest this year, it was
not because I was not trying, I just had a lot of noise and technical
issues that prevented me from doing so.
Best regards & 73,
Cowles K4EME
This year was kind of a mixed bag on trying to work more stations.
Oct.31 2m local noise made eme impossible so I quickly decided to run
1296 when Moon rose to tree top level. I moved my 4.9m dish to the
starting azimuth to wait on the Moon and started seeing signals at
elev 9 degrees. But then my azimuth angle encoder showed no change
when attempting to move the dish and I lost about 45 minutes getting
it to display (cheap DIN connectors to the tracking unit). I found
K2UYH and HB9Q even though my display calibration had been messed up
and was able to peak on their strong signals to determine what my
pointing error was.
worked starting 0745utc:
K2UYH -18
HB9Q -14 then peaked to -1 with 7 degree az offset
OK2DL -4
ES6FX -10
PA3FXB -13
N1VT -18 in VT for WAS=8
QRT about 1000utc
Nov.1 2m noise was low at MR 0600utc
HB9Q -21H
KB8RQ -20H
UT5ZN/P -20H
D25UN -18H
LZ1DP -23H
RU1AA -19H
HA0DU -21H
NT0V -21H
YL2GD -22H
RU3GX -20H
PA0JMV -26H
QSY to 1296 at 0800utc
PI9CAM -1
OK1DFC -5
RA3AUB -11
W6YX -6
G4BAO -21
WA3GFZ -15
QRT at 1000utc to get some sleep. I woke about 1500 and spent about
an hour converting the dish to az range-2.
began 1296 at 1600 but missed the VK's who had quit by then:
UA6AHB -12
JA1WQF -16
VA7MM -16
UA9YLU -12
QSY to 2m at 1800 as dish was near end of az range-2
K6MYC -16H
W6YX -13H (dupe)
RA9LR
RV3IG -18H
UA3PTW -14H
ZL1REX -22V
RX8XR
RZ6DD-20H
SM5KWU -19H
7K3LGC -20V
UZ5DC -13V
ZL2ADU -24V
DL4FCJ -21V
UZ5DN
S56P -22V
YO5BIM -22V
HA1VHF -19V
SV6HRW
N3CYT
UZ5DX -20V
OE6IWG -21V
F8DO -26V
DK9WI -24V
2230 MS
Second WE: 2m noise was high on Nov. 28 so started with 1296 after
spending an hour to troubleshoot inoperable PTT to the dish. I found
wire that became unsoldered in a RCA plug and blew two fuses getting
the wires reconnected which slowed up getting QRV at 0510utc. I
tried working CW but took me half an hour to copy DL0SHF who quit by
the time I called him. Spent another half hour proving to myself my
CW skills had atrophied to pointless effort.
0610utc I began JT65c:
OK1KIR -15
LZ1DX -12
UA3PTW -12
KN0WS -17
EA8DBM -19
K4EME -16
QRT at 0900utc
1500utc QSY to 2m:
RA9LR (dupe)
K7MAC -13V
KE7NR -18V
W7GJ -15H
W7MEM -16V
JH2COZ -23V
UR4EWZ -15V
OH2BC -12V
R9CQ -22V
OH6ZZ -19V
YL2CT
YL2OK
stopped at 1800utc for local 2m SSB Net
Nov.29 0600utc angle encoder issues (again) which resulted in no
contacts and only seeing HB9Q.
QRT at 0900utc (local midnight) to go out to convert dish to az
range-2 for later in the morning. I did copy K2UYH -18 and KL6M -16
by chance after sighting the dish visually thru the clouds. Later in
the day I boresighted the Sun and found dish off 2-deg in az and
3-deg off in el.
Gave up and switched to 2m just before 1600utc:
VK5APN -15V
WA7XX -22H
ND0B -18H
then calling CQ with no other signals on the Moon between 1700-1900
(should have taken a nap)
RU1AA -19V (dupe)
DL25UN (dupe)
S53K -22V
S52FO -20V
DL8FBD -22V
S50P
MS and end of contest for me.
totals:
14 contacts on 1296
48 contacts on 144 (personal best)
73, Ed - KL7UW
http://www.kl7uw.com
"Kits made by KL7UW"
Dubus Mag business:
dubususa(a)gmail.com
I thought some of you might like to see this note from this week's AMSAT news:
+ Eimac Moonbounce Notes collection
Way back in 1980 when I first got interested in amateur satellites
and AMSAT, I wrote off to Eimac Corporation for their "Moonbounce
Notes" collection.
While on a household paper eradication campaign I came across them
and scanned them. I thought others might enjoy a look back at some
bleeding-edge ham activities from the mid-late 1970s. It's
particularly amusing to see how much effort was spent just tracking
the moon with the technology then available.
http://www.ka9q.net/moonbounce-notes
This is a raw collection of pdf files, but the file names are pretty
descriptive. Collect the entire set!
If anybody has any notes missing from my collection, please let me
know.
[ANS thanks Phil KA9Q for the above information]
I somehow got hold of a number of those Eimac notes in the late 70's, and it was the computer listings for moon position calculation by Lance WA1JXN (W7GJ) that got me started in computing myself, typing it into some automatic test equipment at work and getting output on line print paper, years before I had a Moonbounce station myself. It became a dream and an obsession to make a Moonbounce contact after that.
73
David GM4JJJ
To all my friends who know more about computers than I do!!!! That means everyone!!
I have 2 laptops one with windows XP & one computer with window 7 . I want to dedicate 1 laptop to EME ONLY.
No internet, no mail, no windows security updates, no antivirus of any kind. Just EME programs like WSJT, MAP65, HDSDR, SDRSHARP software's ect ect...
To keep the computer on time i bought a GPS receiver from China with USB cable & my friend Lucien F1TE suggested to use the software
called TRIMBLE which i downloaded already. but not configured yet.
So my question is which laptop would you use for EME ONLY & WHY??
Thank you guys for your suggestions. Much appreciated
Serge VE1KG
I hope many of you can send me some interesting pictures of your EME operation for the ARRL contest so that I can try to incorporate them into the QST article I will be writing with the contest results. Need high resolution please. Comments and reports are welcome too. I will also be reviewing your comments in the 144MHz EME newsletter and the 432 and Up newsletter.TNX es 73, Rick, K1DS
As expected, and probably in common with many others in NW Europe, the weekend was disrupted by very strong winds gusting here to >45mph. It was fairly calm at the start of the contest and I worked on 70cm CW G4RGK, I2FHW, OH2PO, UA3PTW and DL7APV plus CWNR DF3RU. then nothing so after 40 minutes I went to bed and got up at 0430.and worked WA6PY (single yagi) K2UYH, NC1I and OK1POI, called CQ for another hour to 0700. The wind then got up and we had gales all day and into the night. Today, Sunday, there was a drop in the wind forecast for 0500-0800 so on 23cm I was able to work OK2ULQ, DF3RU, S59DCD, SM4IVE, OZ4MM, W4AF, LZ2US, IK3COJ, VE6BGT, W1AIM and VE4MA/K7. then at 0800 the strong wind really set in again for the rest of the day. Total of 62 on 23cm, well down on prior years due to less operating and 9 on 70cm due to the poor wx restricting hours and the continuing decline in 70cm CW.
Thanks to all for the great QSOs.
GL 73 Peter G3LTF
