[MAMS] W9SNR Microwave Sprint Report

[Zack Widup]

Kind of the same for me. I think last year I was in EN50rl, which resulted
in a lot more distance points but fewer QSO's. This year I drove to EN52sa
west of Chicago to operate. This is a band breakdown:

5 QSOs on 902
5 QSO on 1296
3 QSOs on 2304
6 QSOs on 3456
2 QSOs on 5760
4 QSOs on 10368
2 QSOs on 24192

Best DX was with K2DRH at 149 km. My score was 1290 distance points.

Jim was one of the two people I worked on 24 GHz. The other was Pete K9PW.

I also developed problems. My 1296 transverter seemed to go deaf about
halfway through the Sprint. I never worked anyone on that band after that
because I heard nothing. I haven't had the chence to check it out yet but
it may be a moot point, as I'm building a completely different, separate
transverter for 1296 centered around the W1GHZ boards. I'm workng on
building a W5LUA/WD5AGO preamp design for that band. I hope to have that
done by the June contest.

73, Zack W9SZ

On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 1:17 PM, Jim <w9snr at outlook.com> wrote:

> This year's sprint had a lot of local activity on the higher bands (above
> 1296) but not much DX.  I made about the same number of Q's as in previous
> sprints but the distance score was much lower.  Early on, I made the
> decision to take advantage of the opportunity to make contacts on 2304 up
> to 24 GHz, at the expense of chasing the usual DX stations to the East.
> This was more fun for me.
>
> Thanks to pre-calibrating all my transverters with a frequency counter,
> nearly all contacts were made on or close to the expected frequency, even
> at 24 GHz. The one exception was a 3456 contact near the end of the
> contest, which was about 45 kHz below .100.  This exposed an LO frequency
> jump problem with my new, 20 Watt, 3456 rig.  I'll be looking into this in
> the next few weeks, although the ultimate fix may have to wait until I get
> a chance to do the necessary "surgery" on the new XVTR.  In the meantime, I
> can use an 1152 MHz harmonic generator to check on the 3456 LO freq.
>
> 3830 Score results follow:
> Call: W9SNR
> Class: Single Op LP
> Operating Time (hrs): 5
> Total:  QSOs = 36  Max Dist(km) = 204  Total Score = 2,019
>
> 73 - Jim
> W9SNR
>