[NLRS] Sat 10 GHz report

[Doug Reed]

I joined up with Donn, Gary, Gary, and John south of the cities and spent
most of the day at Highview Church near Chubb. As Donn said, signals were
weak most of the day and kept getting worse in the afternoon. Early in the
day I worked John, Mel, and Carol fairly easily but by 4PM it was starting
to take a lot of repeats. It was interesting to hear the way signals faded
in and out. Seemed to fade on a 1 to 2 minute cycle. After 6PM Gary LJC
convinced me to try headphones and that made copy much easier. 

Signals from the north were not very strong either. At least nothing near
as strong as the North Shore last month! I missed a number of contacts
because of timing when they had to move. I heard John K0FQA several times
but only made one Q, and heard Jim K0KFC several times but didn't make a Q. 

My over-the-winter things to do list must include finding a different way
to mount the transverter or at least reducing the coax loss to the feed
horn. It's crazy to have an excellent front end on the transverter but feed
it thru 3 dB of coax loss...... Doesn't do much for the power output either. 

And I think I'll feel better if I add a DC-DC converter ahead of the radios
to regulate the voltage coming from the batteries. John W0ZQ setup his that
way and it did seem to make an improvement for Donn. It would at least
eliminate one source of drift and worry. Although I must say that the Icom
202 rig is probably the least worried about battery voltage since it was
designed to run portable with a battery pack...... But some of the other
mobile rigs sure showed signs of FMing due to low battery voltage while in
transmit. 

If Bob W0AUS has a weak signal source with him today, I'll want to try
hearing it from a distance (Mounds Park to Capitol Overlook?) so I can
adjust my feed horn for minimum squint. All weekend I've been pointing
10-15 degrees left of everyone else and I want to fix that...... 

Hope to hear Mike OZN and any others I haven't worked already for unique
calls on Sunday! 

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.