Hi Heinz. I was pleased to read your message about your activities on LF
last weekend. I was also pleased that you could hear my signal at 539. I
always listen very carefully but did not hear anything from you. I have
a
very quiet qth but your signal did not stretch this far, otherwise I
would
have heard you and I have also visual facilites.
The antenna here, consists of two inverted L antennas back to back. Each
one
is 32 metres vertical and each one a top length of 80 metres. Both are
connected at the bottom and also connected to a large diamater 1.4mh
inductor and a further smaller inductor of 0.2 mh in series to the
earth/radial system for fine tuning the system to 50 ohms to feed to the
tx/rx. The matching system is at the base of the vertical and about 150
feet
of 50 ohm coax is used to feed the TX/RX in the shack.
The RX used normally an icom 706 with a 250 hz narrow IF FILTER and an
external DSP unit allowing me to narrow the b/w to 20 hz.
The TX is home built and consists of dividing 13.6 mhz signal from the
ic706 down by 100 to 136khz and is vfo controlled. The divider is
followed
by a driver and keyer circuit to feed 4 high power mosfets, then into a
LPF
matching device for 50 ohms. The tx is basically the G3YXM approach with
some alterations and is very reliable. The power output is adjustable
from
25w to 800w with my power supply, and I normally run just over 600w. I
have
a comprehensive radial system consisting of a network of insulated 2.5
mm
wire on the ground and some elevated.
I operate normal CW only on LF although I have computer facilites for
slow
cw and also psk31 plus all the other digital modes.
I am active nearly every day on LF and will listen carefully for signals
from OE land.
73 and good dxing de Mal/G3KEV
Heinz Schnait wrote:
The 450m wire antenna at OE5ODL, Ossi, is still up! Ossi had already
worked OK1FIG earlier this day. Meanwhile he has added some more radial
wires across the neighboring fields. We have made some antenna current
measurements with a non calibrated ampere meter, which showed a relative
improvement (absolute numbers not known).
At 1445 we went on the air and heared the finals of a QSO between DJ1ZB
and DK6NI. I called DK6NI but he was already gone. DJ1ZB, Ha-Jo, came
back and I also heared G3KEV (rst 539) calling CQ in the background when
DJ1ZB was not transmitting. I gave G3KEV several calls but no success.
At abt. 1455 I heared G4GVC cq-ing (rst 429), also no success. We then
wired up a second power supply in series to increase input voltage of
the final to 27VDC.
At 1630 I started cq-ing and worked DK6NI, Gerhard from Erlangen with
some difficulty (rst 339, he gave us 539). Thanks for your patience
Gerhard! Both G-stations heared before were stronger than DK6NI at the
time of our QSO. At 1645 I heared HB9ASB cq-ing and called him. He came
back to G3KEV and gave him a 579 report. No copy of G3KEV here at this
point of time. At our next cq the output transformer of the final arced
with a spectacular flash and went up in smoke.
In total we were on the air for maybe 2 hours of operating time, but
what excitement it was! I am going to wind a new transformer. I think
that with the increased output power a QSO between OE and G should be
possible. In general it seems that we have better ears than we have
voice. We certainly will have to upgrade our transmitter and we hope to
be on the air the next weekend. At least Ossi will be back as soon as I
get the transmitter fixed. It is a 45min drive from my home to OE5ODL
but I never regret doing the trip.
73 Heinz, OE5EEP
<[email protected]>
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