Wednesday, 17 October 2012

Well, I had a few more problems with the computer last night!!
I really should replace the older one, but that is a project for the winter. Fortunately, I run dual computers, so I will transfer control over to the HF computer.

My 2m WSPR is offline for a bit while I transfer over to the other machine, but in the meantime, I am working on a few antenna projects that I had started.

Where I live, there is a very definite antenna restriction!
My wife does not share my interest in radios and finds the antennas to be unsightly.
We did come to an agreement for the location of antennas and now I am allowed to have the antennas in the area of the chimney on the house.

Since that is a small amount of real estate, I have to put as much in as small a space as possible.

The shack in the previous picture will be Exhibit A.

The pictures below are Exhibit B. Yes, there are a few.
I am still working on tidying up the wiring, but you get the idea




These antennas are my terrestrial/satellite yagis, along with a dual band J pole and mobile whips for 6m, 10, 15, 17, 20 and 40.
The 146/432 antennas work very well.
The rest are compromises, but they seem to do quite well on WSPR!
HF is not a priority of mine since I would need to use a compromise antenna no matter what I ran.

The az/el is a Pelco 570 repurposed PTZ camera mount being driven by a custom interface based on a Basic Stamp 2.

This unit is a small one but could easily run a bigger array.
If it fails, I have a Bosch unit that is even beefier!
the interface is run by SatPC32 and manual control is only available via SatPC32.

2 comments:

  1. Hello, VE3TEF
    Nice job with VHF, UHF antennas at your QTH.
    I received you with a 5/1 on Sat. FO-29 on 29/12/12 at 14:11 UTC Locator : IM12mp
    My setup: Crossed Yagis for 2 m and 70 cm with 12.3 db and 14db of gain.
    The Transceiver is a Kenwood TS-2000X with Pré.Amp in on position.Power uplink 100w

    73 and a Hapy New Year
    CT3FM - Miguel

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Miguel,
      I had you about 57 until the bird took a tumble and went into the noise level.
      I am in the process of building a new uhf antenna since the gain of the 7 el is not adequate. We have over 40cm of snow on the roof right now so I am not in a hurry to get up there just yet.hihi

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