As Ron KO0Z has just published in his posting, some of the members of the SLAMS group attended second leg of the ARRL 10GHz And Up contest today. We have not attended the first leg for various reasons, so we decided to take it light and only participate in one day of the activities. Some of our usual contacts went to the Great Lakes for this contest anyway.
As we published earlier this week, we have recently tried to use good tropo propagation to work Russ KB8U and Gedas W8BYA on 10GHz. We didn't make the QSOs, but it was close. Gedas W8BYA and Ron KO0Z copied each other S-8, but the propagation didn't last long to complete the QSO. Driven by this in our mind, we tried again and scheduled some tests with Gedas this morning. However, there was no propagation, no enhancement from Mr. Hepburn or Rain Scatter and we didn't make a QSO today. No problem, there will be more thunderstorms in the future!
We have picked a location at one of the YMCA gyms in Saint Louis, because it is close to the WB9PNU beacon and because we have worked stations from the direction to Gedas on this hill before. Following picture shows the horizon in the direction of 60 degrees:
Herbert AF4JF and Harry WA0CNS set up their stations for 10GHz and 122GHz today. Darcey (Herbert's dog) made sure everything was set up properly:
Speaking about 122GHz - Harry and Herbert both used the popular module from Australia with a radar chip on it. The modules worked well, but we will have to make some finishing touches to our stations - thermal insulation being one of them. The CW signal was a little unstable until Herbert covered the unit by Darcey's drinking bowl to lower frequency drifting. The units are GPS-disciplined by 1pps signal, but the short term stability needs to be improved. However, that didn't stop us from making our first QSO.
All this activity took place in the morning. Ron, KO0Z arrived at his location on the cliff in EM48rx shortly after 10:00 am and we made our contest QSOs on 10GHz.
Herbert and Harry moved from YMCA in EM48sq to the Community College in St. Peters (EM48qs) and later to the town of Wentzville (EM48ot) and mase several more contest QSOs on 10GHz. It was shortly after 1:00 pm when we decided to stop for the day and return home.
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