[NLRS] KF0Q and K0NY 3.4 and 5.7 activity sunday - day late

[Matt Burt - KF0Q]

Did not hear much about activity for the 902 and up sprints – sorry if I let
anyone down – used my time to finish some open projects on 5.7 and tune up the
3456 gear.  Besides the wx was kinda lousy here – 
Spent most of Saturday building a portable dish mount for 5.7, mounting and
testing KM0T’s DB6NT xverter.  Things looked pretty good on 5.7 by late
afternoon. Sunday morning setup up my 2 Down East 3456 xverters PTT and TX out
for use with my Toshiba brick amplifiers.  Set up one xverter for 1W output.  I
tested each xverter with each brick and cranked the one brick up to 1W.  After
things were looking good I placed attenuators in the TX chain to drop the drive
level to 0dBm for the bricks.  Next I cranked up the power output of each brick
to 18A (~40W).  I do not have enough high power attenuators for my HP power
meter to go that high – so amplifier current seemed to be the best way for me
to assess this.

Just after 2:00PM Clare, K0NY stopped over and was outfitted with the 1W 3456
xverter and 45 ele end mount looper.  He used his ‘847 for the IF at 5W output.
 I set up the ‘706mkIIG for the 3456 xverter and 40W brick.  After I put the
112 loop on the rover rack we headed out for some testing.  Clare went straight
to EN33xw and I went to 44da.  Everything went great – signals were typically
S9 or better with Clare’s 1W on 3456 and my 200mW on 5760.  I had some trouble
with the SSB intelligibility from Clare so we switched to FM (signal too
big??).  Never understood what the trouble was – but FM was real loud any way
from all locations.  We traded locations with me in EN43 at 5:00PM for pretty
much the same results.  I completed the final qso from EN34xa real close to the
grid corners - not the best location but signals were still outstanding. 

Any way it was a great afternoon to test some new combinations of dish/looper
mounting and different combinations of PTT and IF rig interfacing.  Never used
the one xverter with the Toshiba brick, or ‘706mkIIG before.  Also good to test
the DB6NT 5.7 with the ‘290RII IF. Too bad we couldn't have done this 24 hours
or so earlier for the 902 and up - maybe next time :( 

Next project is to mount both Toshiba bricks inside alum enclosures along with
the ammeter and xfer relay.  This will make everything a little closer to “plug
and play” on 3456.  I may also mount the 3456 gear into one master “rover box”
(idea from KM0T) for the January test. Testing has also helped us with the grid
count too – I now have 5 grids worked on 5.7 and believe the same on 3.4 from
EN44da.  Clare is sitting at 4 grids each for 3.4.5.7 and 10G.

Side note – I attempted with KM0T on 3.4 and Clare on 5.7 and 10G but conditions
did not seem to support propagation with Mike at approx 230 miles.  Hopefully
we can accomplish this one day soon.  Tnx to KM0T for hardware etc and K0NY for
the portable effort!

73,
Matt
KF0Q
EN44ea