[NLRS] PA3GIE 10GHz high power SSPA

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

Antenna aiming is critical.

I had it easy on the UP, just before leaving home for my round about 
trip to the UP, I was measuring relative noise figures for the 
transverter and transverter plus preamp so I had the AGC turned off on 
the reciever. For the first half day on the UP it was still turned off 
and then peaking by ear was really easy.

One problem these days is that the very find AGC of the radios hides the 
peak, and the bar graph s-meter has too coarse steps to be a benefit. We 
should campaign for users turning the AGC off and backing off on the RF 
gain manually for strong signals. Antenna aiming would be much easier. 
At home I have an external meter on my FT857 which has much better 
resolution, but I don't expect it to survive the rover situation and I'm 
sure its magnetic field would put more bias than the speaker magnets in 
any magnetic compasses in the vicinity trying to figure out direction.

On my September solo rove in Iowa every spot I used was on a road on or 
parallel to a section line so I didn't need (or have) a compass, but 
that's not true everywhere, even some places in Iowa have diagonal 
roads, but not many because for many decades legislation prohibited 
diagonal roads. With my GPS showing a destination of Buck Hill, its 
compass rose was good enough to get me close to the optimum path. And 
under some weather conditions and on long paths, the optically direct 
path is not the one with the strongest signal. There is refraction or we 
wouldn't get out to 200 miles without enhancements. It isn't always just 
vertical refraction. And then there are tall objects that may be useful 
as reflectors as proposed by Ben in the past couple years.

And on the UP a compass was generally useless because much of the 
remaining iron ore is magnetized from being deposited while molten in 
the earth's magnetic field. I knew the orientation of the road at Great 
Sand Bay and on Mt. Brockway and that was good enough for my reference.

73, Jerry, K0CQ

On 10/20/2012 10:09 AM, Barry Malowanchuk wrote:
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> I have 50 W on tropo.  Often having 50 W means that the 2 W station will find you, get lined up and then a QSO may be possible...even if its only on a tropo peak.  Unless 2 W stations are lined up they may never find the tropo peaks.  This is especially usefull on rain scatter as long as you dont get too sharp on the antennas ( stay to ~18 inz0
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> Barry VE4MA
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