[NLRS] 10G Contest

[Scott]

N0AKC and I had fun during the contest.  AI9Z didn't have as much 
fun...still having troubles with his transverter so it's going back to 
DEMI for a check up this morning.  Hopefully, he'll have it fixed and 
ready to go before the second weekend of the contest.

We finally got K0AWU in the log from EN45eg.  He's been looking for EN45 
for quite a while, so he was fairly happy to get us in the log!  ;)  The 
signals were pretty weak, but we made it!

Thanks to the guys at Buck Hill as well...we worked them from all three 
of our stops.  We were surprised that we couldn't hear them from the 
site at EN45eg as it "looked" much better than when we worked them from 
my yard in EN45fa until both ends turned their dishes about 10 degrees 
North of the predicted path.  N0KP figures maybe it was rain 
scatter...then signals came up out of the noise to about 4 S units above 
the noise.

We did manage to work the rover pack when they were in EN33dj (we were 
in EN44dv) with very nice signals :)

Our longest path was with us in EN44dv to K0AWU in EN37ed at 180.5 miles 
(290.6 Km).  I think that's pretty good for a homebrew DEMI transverter 
with a measured 3.5 dB noise figure (according to DEMI).  Now I'm 
starting to think about adding an external pre-amp.  I think a monster 
may have been created here ;)

-- 
Scott N0EDV
http://corbenflyer.tripod.com/
Flying Corben Junior Ace - Building RV-4
Gotta Fly or Gonna Die