[NLRS] SBMS report

[tosca005 at umn.edu]

a/k/a "Murphy is my constant companion"

I won't belabor the circumstances that prevented me from using the couple 
of days I had set aside late in the week to get everything checked out and 
tuned up. But on Sunday, I was reasonably confident that I'd be good to go 
on both 5760 and 10368, since they HAD both been working OK when I put them 
away at the end of the summer last year. Yes, it's unfortunate that I 
seldom drag them out of storage except for the occasional contest, but 
that's (my) life.

The climb up Buck Hill was uneventful, though it seemed a bit bumpier than 
I remember it from the June and August contests last year. For a change, I 
was not late, and in fact N0KP and I almost played "chicken" at the bottom 
of the hill to see who would go up first. But I let him win. :)

My setup process was a little disjointed, as I got the 10368 system set up 
in what seemed like an optimal location, then set up the 5760 system, but 
then realized that all of my interconnecting cables between the two 
tripod-mounted systems were too short. (Due to the aforementioned lack of 
prep effort, the 5760 transverter is still sharing the IF rig and all the 
other paraphernalia from the 10368 system, instead of having its own.) So, 
I
re-positioned them in a manner that let the cables reach both systems 
without having the dishes physically obstructing one another. Then, the 
wind started to pick up, and I realized that I needed to lash things down 
better to avoid a repeat of prior years' flying dishes. (It's not the 
flight that is the problem, it is the crash landing at the end!) So, 
because of the limited tethering system I had, it was necessary to move 
everything again, closer to my SUV's open hatchway. OK, finally got 
everything into position, and realized that I had left the microphone and 
headphones at home! Arrrgh!!! I remember asking myself at least a dozen 
times, "what else am I forgetting to bring?", but I guess when a fool asks 
a fool for advice, he should only expect foolishness in reply. ;-)

Thankfully, W0GHz loaned me the microphone from his IC-706, and N0KP loaned 
me an extra set of headphones, and so I was in business (or so I thought).

The first set of QSO's on 10368 went reasonably smoothly, validating my 
belief that if it was working when you put it away, it SHOULD work when you 
take it out again to use it. My 10368 system has been remarkably reliable 
in that way over the years, not at all the finicky band I expected it to be 
a few years ago when I first took the plunge.

So, after the first round of 10368 QSO's with the rover pack, it was time 
to switch over to 5760. I moved all the necessary cables, pointed the dish 
the same direction as the 10368 dish, and could not hear a thing at first. 
In fact, I couldn't even hear N0KP when he transmitted a few feet away from 
me. Hmmm...
I started spinning the dial wildly, recalling that I had never written down 
the offset between 144.1 and 5760.1, whereas I already had one of the 
memories in the IC-706 programmed to tune 144.15280 to match 10368.10000; 
sure enough, once I had spun my dial down to around 144.130, I was able to 
hear Dave when he transmitted, so I figured my whole problem was my tuning 
being 22 KHz off during my first attempt to hear the rovers, but still no 
joy. I was unable to hear WB0LJC or W0GHZ when they transmitted either. 
Yikes. So I gave up on 5760 for the first rover stop. After all the QSO's 
were made on all the available bands by the rest of the hilltop crew, we 
had about an hour to go until the next rover stop, so I decided to try to 
troubleshoot the 5760 system. Well, to make a long story somewhat shorter, 
I discovered that my problem (at that point in time) was that my IF offset 
was even further away than I had thought. When I heard Dave with my IF 
tuned to 144.130, I was simply hearing his IF signal bleeding into my IF 
radio. The true IF frequency for my transverter's 5760.1 was really 
144.08468 -- over 68 KHz lower on 5760 than on 10368! Once I programmed 
that offset into another memory of the IC-706, I figured I would be good to 
go. I was able to work the 4 other stations on the hill who had 5760 with 
them, which boosted my confidence.

So, in anticipation of starting the next round with the rovers on 10368, I 
moved over the connector cables from the 5760 transverter to the 10368 
transverter, and waited a short time. Sure enough, the rovers showed up at 
their next stop, and Dave started working them, but to my shock, I was now 
unable to hear anything on 10368. Yikes! Using a borrowed multimeter 
(thanks AGAIN, Dave!), I traced the +13.8vdc power, and initially it looked 
like none was getting to the transverter. Fiddled with the wiring harness a 
bit more, and then it appeared that I would get an appropriate voltage to 
the transverter on receive, but that the voltage would drop to 1.5 volts on 
transmit. And either way, I could hear no change in noise level with the 
transverter turned on or off, so it was not even converting on receive. Oh 
well, I swapped the cables over to the 5760 system, figuring maybe I could 
work the rovers on that band. No good. I could not even get the power LED 
to turn on. So I guess my cabling is hosed up somewhere.

Anyway, by this time, it was after 12 noon, and I had a family commitment 
at 1 PM, so I packed it all up and headed home.

My contribution to the club score:
  10368 band
     12 uniques x 100 points ............  1200
      1 QSO @ 48 Km .....................    48
      5 QSO's @ 43 Km ...................   215
      6 QSO's @ 1 Km ....................     6
  5760 band
      4 uniques x 100 points ............   400
      4 QSO's @ 1 Km ....................     4
-------------------------------------------------
                                           1873 points

Oh well, I got some sunshine, fresh air, a little bit of exercise, the 
pleasure of the company of some of my radio buddies, and two more projects 
for the repair pile!

I hope you all had some fun out there last weekend!

73 de W0JT