The K6JEY EME Group

K6JEY 2 meter EME Group operation Jan. 1 and 2, 2010

The K6JEY group set up and went on 2 meter EME on one of the best weekends of the coming year. Doug K6JEY, Rein W6SZ, and John KJ6HZ operated.

The equipment was a TS 790A and a homemade 3CX1000A amplifier running 400 Watts.

The preamp was a Mirage going to two 12element K1FO antennas in the driveway.

A Tigertronics USB box interfaced with the JT mode computer and a pick off from the preamp went to a 2-meter converter and an SDR IQ receiver. The attached second computer monitored the band while a third computer demodulated signals from the second. While this system worked very well, using the JT Logger, seemed to give us better information.

In general, we think the performance of the station is optimized and the only real addition we can make is to be able to change the polarization of the antennas.

We made 17 contacts on JT mode:

DL9GP, PE1L, RL3BM, UA3PTW, SM5HUA, DK8ZJ, RX1AS, G4ZFJ, PA2CHR, N3IZW, RU1AA, I2RV, RK3FG, OM3BC, OH6ZZ, PE1LWT, OH6UW

We hope to be on each month on either 2 meters or 23cm.

K6JEY Are those syncs or not?

K6JEY Busy with all the JT65B tssks....

K6JEY two 12 element K1FO antennas pointing up

K6JEY 2008 ARRL EME Contest Story and Score

John, KJ6HZ, and I originally had an idea about a year a go to form a special interest group in the San Bernardino Microwave Society that would get together to do EME. Over the year, we made plans and brought people together than culminated in this year's score. About 4 weeks before the first contest weekend John, KJ6HZ, invited Rein, W6SZ to join the effort of getting ready. The crew this time was Doug K6JEY,John KJ6HZ, Helen KI6LQV, Bill N6NM, and Rein W6SZ.

The rig on the first weekend of the contest was as follows: A TS790A Transceiver, GS15b Amplifier with a dual 7289 amp on standby. We also had a 7-foot dish on a mount that was hand pointed. The mount was a remade Hercules tripod. The feed is a septum feed with a HB9BBD preamp at .16db NF. On the first weekend Rein, John and I ran on CW and JT mode and did pretty well.

For the second weekend, we put together a 10-foot dish with the same feed, etc. It was quite a project but proved very much worth the effort giving much better reports and superior received signals over the 7-footer. We also added the VR 5000 receiver and worked on an SDR radio for the wideband 10.7 MHz output. We had everything ready except the SDR radio. We hope to have it ready for next time.

Murphy hit us pretty hard though. First, the TS 790A came out of lock on 1296 MHz for hours the first night. . We knew of another radio nearby and borrowed it. In the meantime we used an LT 230S hooked to the TS 790A 2 meter port. We worked several stations with that. By the next night, the original radio had mysteriously recovered and ran without problem the whole night. Next Murphy struck at about 2 AM. The GS15b amp went up in smoke- literally. The transformer had developed an internal short. We had been running it at 400ma in JT mode CCS as we did in CW. The specs are 270ma. We will run a lot less power next time. I have since found a spare transformer and we should be back on the air with improved cooling for the Dec. AW.

Here is a listing of the stations we worked during the 2 weekends:

( No Internet connection in shack! Time synchronizing via GPS reciever. )

 Doug and Rein are mounting the dish. It takes about 15 minutes from start to finish. Rein built this great wooden mount. We put a glove and red duct tape on the counterweight support rod for obvious reasons. We have extensive markings on the dish and mount to make setup and takedown easier. Even the wrenches are marked as to what they are for.

 Doug, K6JEY Chief Operator, on the controls!

 Dish set up and ready, Bill made up the cables and did most of the dish pointing.

 The operating position in the garage/lab. GS15b amp on top and TS790A, DSP box on bottom and antenna in the street. The septum feed was made by Mike, KL6M. Thank you very much Mike, for supplying us with this feed. As we have to install the feed every time we setup the antenna, an alignment adjustment for quick feed centering is used.

Back of the dish with the variable weight counterweight arrangement. The blue tube on the left is the lunar sight tube. It is very smooth, Stable and easy to move around for the best view. 

 Rein W6SZ looking for JT65C mode sync. traces. The VR5000 is part of an SDR setup that is in process. We used the VR 5000 by itself as a band monitor.

 Rein W6SZ, Doug K6JEY, John KJ6HZ, and Bill N6NM

 Helen KI6LQV Lunar Ephemeris expert, tracking and refreshments and Doug K6JEY

From a 144 MHz WSJT session with 2 K1FO 12 element Yagis

K6JEY 144 MHz antenna - Street Position DM03tw

Helen KI6LQV in QSO with KB8RQ

K6JEY I2FAK OOO

K6JEY I2FAK RO

Doug K6JEY with mouse

K6JEY another view of the 2 meter EME antenna

K6JEY 2 meter EME antenna pointing east

K6JEY 2 meter EME antenna with old cross boom

K6JEY Straight Key Night 2009

NOTE:
This page was migrated from PA0ZN's nitehawk site to eme.radio on 2023-01-23 and some links, email addresses and other info may be dated / inaccurate