Microwave Activity (MAD) Day on November 2, 2024

Once again did the SLAMS guys try to spread some radio-activity in the Saint Louis area. It was a nice, warm day with temperature in upper 60's, blue skies .. perfect for family activities. Which turned out to be a problem, at least in the Pere Marquette park where Herbert, AF4JF went with his furry companion Darcey.

The plan was to try all our microwave bands between Eagles Roost (in the Pere Marquette park) in EM48rx where Herbert AF4JF was going to set up, Ron KO0Z who picked our favorite parking lot at the Community College in Cottleville in EM48qs and Harry WA0CNS who went to his favorite High Ridge, EM48rl. The distance between Herbert and Harry was about 34 miles, distances between Herbert and Ron or Ron and Harry were about half that.

Herbert had to cross the two rivers that separate Saint Charles, MO from Grafton, IL on a ferry. That was not exactly problematic, despite the fact that Herbert's car did not fit on a ferry (too many cars) and had to wait one extra round trip of that floating vehicle. Where are all these cars going?

.... of course, they all went to the Pere Marquette park. The parking at the park visitor center was completely full. So was the usual parking lot at the first viewing point at Eagles Roost where we usually park and operate from. Second parking at the Flagpole was crowded as well, so Herbert went to the next spot that we never used before because it was blocked by heavy foliage with no open view.

Surprise! The park people finally decided that "viewing point" has something to do with "seeing" and cut all the bushes that blocked the view. See following pictures. Even better, nobody from the other visitors expected this, so this parking was EMPTY.

This is South

Darcey supervising station setup

Herbert set up all his bands from 902MHz to 122GHz. Space in the back of the SUV is somewhat limited, so the higher bands (on tripods) were tested first and the lower bands with a logatithmic beam had to wait after the tripods were moved aside.

10GHz station in front

The topic of this MAD day was to test if we can make QSOs betweens us and Harry WA0CNS who was using his home made SDR transceiver PLUTO with Raspberry Pi front end, running only about 250mW. Not too surprising result - yes, QSOs with the PLUTO were made on 902MHz, 1296MHz, 2304MHz and 3400MHz. In addition to that also on 10368MHz using our "big" stations with 3W of power.

We were quite tired when we started the journey back home. All of us made it safely and added another chapter to the book of successful microwave activities in our area.

AF4JF waiting for the ferry to get back to Missouri and home

SPRINT Microwave

The SLAMS group was planning on combining the Microwave SPRINT contest with MAD Day (Microwave Activity Day) and with Pere Marquette park activation (POTA). Our plans have changed last minute and we ended up just testing our microwave equipment after months of winter storage.

Herbert AF4JF set up at the Community College near Cottleville, Missouri. Ron KO0Z on Kisker Road behind the close SSM medical facility and Harry WA0CNS went to his favorite place on High Ridge, MO. Ron worked me (Herbert) from Kisker Road and then moved to my location to work Harry. We used 1296MHz and 10GHz, QSOs were made on both bands. Harry WA0CNS used his multi-band SDR transceiver he built from SDR ADALM PLUTO and Raspberry Pi with a touch screen with about 200mW output power on 23cm. That was enough to work both of us on SSB although we were both running > 10W. Distance between us and Harry was 33 km (21 miles, EM48qs to EM48rl) and there is NO line of sight between these locations but we always make the 10GHz contact anyway.

AF4JF in EM48qs

Elevation profile between EM48qs and EM48rl (right side)

Another SLAMS 24 GHz Record!

Kudos are once again in order for Harry, WA0CNS and Dave, KB0PE!  Yesterday, 29 April on what started off being a foggy, hazy Monday morning, Harry made the trek to High Ridge, MO at EM48rl and Dave made the trek to Dow, IL at EM49ua to attempt a 24 GHz 39.7 mile two-way QSO.  According to Dave, they began transmitting around 9:40 am and Dave was able to detect Harry's signal but Dave reports there was deep QSB.  As the sun continued to climb in the sky, the fog burned off and both Dave and Harry were looking at haze along the path.  Dave is running a 3' dish with 4 watts and Harry has a "Banana " dish with perhaps as much as 200 milliwatts of output (Harry hasn't made it by Jim's yet to accurately measure the output).  At 10:13 am Harry and Dave worked each other using CW for a successful almost 40 mile 24 GHz QSO!  It is believed that this QSO is the first ever Illinois to Missouri 24 GHz two-way QSO!   Way to go you two!  Job well done!