Message-ID: <000501c5322f$26584d20$2102000a@ibm>
From: "Dick" <knaap159@zonnet.nl>
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 19:09:28 +0100
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: LF: First QSO's on 136kHz!!
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Hello!!!!!

After more than one year of building, testing, rebuilding, questioning etc I
finally became
QRV today on 136kHz.
This afternoon I was QRV from 12.00 to 14.30UTC, and I was able to work the
following stations on 'normal CW' :

#1 DL3FDO, Reiner nr. Frankfurt  my first 136kHz QSO ever
#2 DF0WD, Wolf, well known, hi from Bielefeld JO42FD (work them often in 2m
contests, hi)
#3 G3KEV, Mal from IO94SH, best DX sofar somewhere around the 500km

In the beginning I had some troubles, mainly caused by the first
transformer,
an toroid transforming the 50Ohm from the TX to 135Ohm of the big coil.
This toroid of 58mm diameter ran very hot; to hot.....
Due to this I saw the antennacurrent going down while it became hot.

I don't know  why, because it should be large enough, I thought.

The orginal set up was 50Ohm line from TX, folowed by an toroid transformer
50--135Ohm,
connected to the variometer, and on top of the variometer the big loading
coil with taps.

I decided to change all, and put the whole thing upsite-down.
So the big loading coil is now grounded, the 50Ohm coax goes to a tap, like
1/15 of the total coil length,
and finally the variometer is on top of the whole circus between loading
coil and antenna.
This set up proved to be ok, and stable.
Antenna current was 1Amp.
I could not run more than 300Watt DC input, because the current protection
of the TX came in
at higher settings.

I was operating from my car and I could 'smell' the power sometimes, hihi.
Something somewhere inside the TX got "hot"............

I would like to thank all of you for the help provided the last year while
building my LF station.

Hope to work many of you in the future.

73 from Dick, PA4VHF (JO32eh)