Microwave Activity Day, 02/05/2022

Saturday, February 5th was decided to be a Microwave Activity Day here in Arizona. Thanks to Barry VE4MA/K7 for organizing and getting people together. I decided to participate for first time. I’ve been working on microwave bands for few years and mainly as a rover station during ARRL VHF contest. For this day I decided to be active on two bands 5.7GHz and 10GHz. I’ve rebuilt them recently and it was a great opportunity to check them out. So the setup for 5.7 GHz and 10GHz are following:

5.7GHz – DB6NT G3 transverter (0.2w), DEMI LNA (20dB) and LPA (7dBi gain),

10GHz – DB6NT G3 transverter (0.2w), DEMI LNA (20dB), PE1RKI PA (10w) and horn antenna (17dBi)

Since this setup mainly used inside the car I had to modify for the use with tripod. Few hours and everything were ready. For IF I use IC-705 (have two of them) which was mounted right on same assembly plus GPSDO.

I decided to drive to near-by park, the beauty of park it’s elevated above the valley and plus it’s just half a mile away from my house.

I’ve got to the place around 10am and right away noticed other station already setup. That person was Emil W1GGM. So here we are and I set up my station right next to him.

Everything is ready and up running. To verify receive and directivity we used a White Tank mountain beacon on 10368.370MHz. Check and verification were successful. Now time to make a QSO.
First in the log was Barry VE4MA/K7 on both bands 5.7G and 10G, second Frank WBCWM (10G only), followed by N1AV (10G only).
After last QSO we decided to leave since there were no more active stations and Emil W1GGM experienced some issues with his setup. When I got back home I’ve heard that two more stations joined the activity and I wanted to work them. It didn’t take long to setup my station right inside the house on second floor. I have a big window with a beautiful view of the valley and city of Chandler. Quick check with beacon signal and I was ready to “rock N roll”. Few minutes after I made a QSO with Lionel W7MRF, another station in the log. At same time I saw on Slack that Patrick N6RMJ from DM25 worked N1AV from DM43 on 10368.1MHz. The QRB is more than 200 miles, what a great one! I decided to setup digital interface and try to work Patrick as well with Q65-30C mode. The heading to DM25 from my DM43 is 331 degrees. Antenna pointed and we started our sequences. Few moments after first decode and then nothing for more than 15 minutes. All sudden I decoded entire sequence (30 seconds), then decoded report and finally RRR with 73. Woo-Hoo, the QSO was completed. It was a best aircraft scatter QSO I’ve ever had and the best QRB (193mi/304km) on 10GHz. I was extremely happy since this just made my day complete! Working station almost 200 miles away right from the window of my house, what can be better than this.
My setup and antenna position during QSO with N6RMJ

I definitely enjoined this day and will participate in the future. Currently working on my 24GHz setup and just finished 122GHz. Will be active on those bands starting March-April of 2022.

Thanks.

Alex K6VHF

2/11/2022

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.