2010.06.14
What a great contest! It rained all weekend. We didn't see the sun till Sunday night around 6pm. The weather seemed to work wonders for 6m. Had nice long openings. Alisha ended up coming with us at the last moment. This made for some last second reworking of the new radio desk so I could get both of us in the back seat. My mother-in-law Jan helped me build a spiffy new desk that holds all the radios and acts as a laptop desk. It was super stable. N0LP/R lead the way and got us exactly where we needed to go. He also worked us in six bands in grids we normally don't get to work people in. Thanks Nick! Thanks also to my dad Ralph who drove thru so much mud for a total of 438 miles. The ICOM service trip for the 910h worked wonders as I had no issues on 1.2M. I do need to rework the IF switching unit so it's stable and rtg before the contest.
2010.05.19
Uploaded proposed rove plan below. Meeting w/ Nick(n0lp/r) this weekend to sort out more details. Dad is planning on driving this June! DEMI was very kind and repaired and shipped my 10Ghz Amp back to me ASAP! Thanks! Headed to the w0eea barn on 5/30 for more antenna tuning. Thanks to Dirk(n2pdq) for trading me the GTX900 for a Kenwood TK-931. I'll now have a dedicated 900M FM rig for comm w/ n0lp/r and others!
2010.03.09
Went out to the w0eea barn and tuned transverters with Jim and Lou this weekend. Good stuff. We got my new 900m, 1.2m and 10g transverters tuned up and rtg. I need to rebuild the transverter/rig shelf and get more stable space for the new xverters as well as provide a bulkhead for easy feedline attachment.
2010.03.04
All rigs/parts in for repair have returned from ICOM/Yaesu and appear to be ready to go. Still need to do some testing on them but otherwise gtg. Very hopeful that the SDR IF rig shows up before June, tho that will mean I have to make some adjustments to the power levels on the xverters. Hopefuly dropping IF power levels will save some battery power and increase performance. Ordered new 10g Amp from DEMI, so hopefuly that will beef up my 10g operation.
2010.01.25
Planning begins. Todo:
