[NLRS] ARRL UHF Contest 2016 cancelled

Sat Mar 12 20:58:25 EST 2016

On 3/11/2016 3:15 PM, Gregg Lind wrote:
>
>
> *"The Committee will solicit member comments in the near future, as it
> weighs several alternatives." *
>
> In trying to keep this positive - and try to keep the sport going and
> encourage growth and participation in the contest... I think this is a good
> action for NLRS to submit a recommendation to the ARRL.  There is good
> information in this email thread and lets collect it and make a
> suggestion...
>
>
> On another idea ---  I think we need a solution that make UHF more
> affordable and attainable to amatuer radio community.  I have a
> suggest proposal
> / solutions is finding a solution for transverter in a single package that
> will cover -- 222 MHz, 432 MHz, 903 MHz and 1296 MHz. Since I have started
> to do roving and getting involved I have run across a number of people that
> do not have the money or ability to setup transverters, but may enjoy the
> rover aspects or even fix site operation if a simple cost effective
> solution. This is a bigger technical commitment that most people this is
> a stretch to put 4 DEMI transverters etc together and relays, and multiple
> IF etc.... I have great Engineers and local VHF/UHF people to tap and get
> help form so I have access to people that can help me...  I have had the
> ability to purchase my equipment mostly DEMI used or some new. But for
> someone to buy into this your almost 600-900$ per band or build this it is
> a task..  Or even finding the equipment on the used market is not easy.
>
> I was thinking to promote this contest and get more people on the radio is
> there someone or a group may be interested in building or designing a
> solution for a single transverter and PA on these bands...  I think if we
> had a 4 band solution this would promote more contest involvement...

Paul Wade W1GHZ has published such a design collection and sells board 
for them.

It takes a lot of space to control 4 bands of DEMI transverters. The 
FT-736R gave four bands, of which 3 could be UHF, 220, 432, and 1296 but 
not especially cheaper or than the stack of DEMI transverters, and mine 
when I last turned it on had about 30 dB from MDS to AGC threshold so 
"local" signals at 100 miles were hard on the ears when the gains were 
turned up for weaker signals. Then its hard to maintain with the control 
cables to the modules useing a few strands of about 36 gauge wire to odd 
crimped connectors that break easily.

An ideal solution would use a simple HF single band SSB/CW rig for the 
IF (neglecting the potential for UHF FM contacts) with a slightly 
sophisticated LO synthesizer to develop the injection frequencies for up 
and down convertors. Gain stages and mixers can easily cover 50 to 2300 
MHz, filters would need switching. However the gain stage and mixer 
MMICs are cheaper than good RF switches so its often easier to switch 
only the antenna and the IF from transverter to transverter than to 
switch the filters in the transverter. There are MMICs like the PGA-103+ 
that have really great noise figures from a few MHz to at least 1.3 GHz 
that are not expensive.

Electronically it would be simpler to create a filter turret that 
cleaned up mixer products for both transmit and receive than to have a 
gaggle of individual transverters though the gaggle of transverters 
seems easier to accomplish, no bandswitching of RF other than the 
antennas if antennas shared bands. The higher the IF the easier it is to 
do the filtering. For that it might be advantageous to consider multiple 
conversions to move the image and LO further from the RF frequency to 
make for easier filtering. The limit is that mixers are the least linear 
part of the transverter being noisy on receive and most critical about 
too much drive on transmit.

73, Jerry, K0CQ
>
> On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 9:25 AM, Chris Cox<chrisc at chris.org>  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> This is rather disappointing news:-
>> http://www.arrl.org/news/view/arrl-2016-august-uhf-contest-cancelled
>>
>> Chris Cox, N0UK
>> chrisc at chris.org or chrisc at britishcaranddriver.com
>>
>> Next June join me in beating Multiple Sclerosis!
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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