Back on the Local FM Frequency on 23cm.

Today a local ham came here and assisted in getting the 23cm vertical up and running.

My X-7000 antenna is now mounted with the feed point 6m above the ground.

A quick test showed decent signals at a distance of about 40km, so the system is working well enough.

I can still hear the OZ7IGY beacon, even though it is horizontally polarized.

Now I need to get some more antenna work done before winter. 

Focus will be on 23cm, because it's a fun band and we need to use it or lose it.

Second band focus will be 6m, as we might get into an autumn season with very high solar activity in the comning winter half of the year

23cm Antenna Stuck.

 I need to check my 23cm antenna system again. 

I have a helical mounted on the mast with a small AR-500 rotator.

This has worked for a while, and now the antenna is stuck in (about) 180 deg. The rotator seems to turn, when I look at the antenna outside, nothing happens.

Oops!

As a temporary solution until I can get a rotator running, I am thinking of using my old vertical, the Diamond X-5000, so, at the least, I can work on out local net on 1297.500 FM. 

A local ham has offered to help with that, so in a few days I should have that up and running, at the least.

Now, if the rotator is ruined, that was a very short life span. We shall see what I can do. In the worst case, I will have to purchase a new (bigger) rotator.

NAC From the Hilltop Again.

Just back from the hilltop about 80m ASL again this month.

This time I picked up a local ham, OZ9GH, Jan, and we had some fun setting up and running a simple station with the 10W output and a 12 element Yagi about 3m above the hilltop. 

The hill is not far from Copenhagen in JO65CP (close to home, same grid), and contacts were made as far as SM6 and Northern Germany, around 200km. I estimate the conditions were average or a bit below.

A few local contacts were made on 1297.500 FM. 

One was using a handheld transceiver with 1W out, and a handheld home brew Yagi, I think it was a 5 element one. He was just readable, so congratulations to OZ13JK and thanks for a nice QSO.

I will do this again when the weather is good, it's fun doing hilltop operation , even if we have to carry everything up a steep hill.

I had the radio programmed for CW CQ call etc, and made a few CW calls and got response, the first time from a German station, and that was with the antenna in the wrong direction. My first German QSO since I restarted 1296MHz activity.

It's a fun band, and I am planning to improve my home station for better 1296 operation.

2m Sporadic E Today.

 This was a bit of a surprise.

I had the radio running on 1297.5 and the second receiver on 144.300.

Suddenly I noticed SSB signals coming on, and when I checked it was a French station. I managed to work a QSO with my horizontal omnidirectional antenna, my Big Wheel.

I did hear some Spanish stations, too, but not strong enough to make any QSOs.

This season has been a bit below normal to me, but I did manage to make Es on 2m, after all. 

I do need a better antenna bit higher up, probably a small 4 element yagi on a rotator.

Ancient Tablet, Part 2.

I received the battery for the old tablet, and got it mounted. Easy, as it already had the mounting bracket.

At first it would not switch on. A look inside found the culprit. The connector to the on/off switch was not connected to the PCB. Easily fixed. Then the next:

For some obscure reason the tablet "thinks" I will be installing a custom software, and wants me to use the up/down buttons to choose yes or no. I tried pushing the "down" button to restart the tablet ... absolutely nothing happened. Were the up/down button switches damaged at the first disassembly? It's possible.

The connection to the up/down button is hidden, so even more disassembly is needed to check and (if possible) repair the possible damage. If the switches are damaged, I can find some replacement, but some more mechanical work is needed, as I probably cannot mount a replacement switch inside the existing casing. We shall see.

It is possible that happened when I first removed the back panel. The tablet repair is on hold now, as I have other priorities, such as getting my antenna system upgraded.

If I can't get it working properly, it's always possible to use the battery for another device.

Ancient Tablet. Battery Dead.

 I have an ancient (2012?)  Samsung tablet, 7 or 8", I think that I would like to set up for monitoring some radio related websites. I finally located the charging cable, one of the long connectors, and tried to charge.

Result: The screen blinks with the "on/off switch"symbol, and has done that for a long time. 

Looks like time for a battery replacement. I found a local (in the country) supplier and looked up the battery. The search on their website did show a battery that looks identical, so I ordered one.

The battery I ordered has the correct connector, so I don't expect any trouble. Should it not fit into the casing, I can live with that, and do a makeshift casing. The screen is supposed to be in a fixed position, so it doesn't need to be carried around. If the battery is a perfect fit, I will re-mount the back panel. It has been bent out of shape in places, bit I don't need it to look pretty. Just functional.

At least the tablet had a battery that can be replaced, fairly easily.

We shall see how the repair goes when the new battery arrives, if I need to do a makeshift casing. I hope there is no software fault popping up because it has lost power. We shall see, indeed.

Idea Box: Passive CW Filter

I have been playing around with some older simple direct conversion transceivers and receivers for CW.

Some examples are the Pixie kits and the Rockmite kits, and some Chinese kits, like the "Frog  Sound".

All these have one drawback, the receiver audio is rather wideband and has a good deal of high frequency hiss.

There are a ton of excellent CW filters both active (more complex) and passive. I wanted something really simple, and took a look at this simple CW filter from YO6DXE: https://dxexplorer.com/passive-cw-audio-filter/

Take a look at his article, and his demonstration of the filter on Youtube (linked in the article). With a total of 6 passive components a simple, yet pretty good CW filter can be made. Two different resonalt frequencies, and variable bandwidth. 

It is a simple series resonant circuit with two switched capacitors for the resonances, and a potentiometer partly bypassing the off resonance frequencies. 

I love the simplicity, and in the video the filter demonstrated a good sounding filter effect. It may take a while, as I am busy with improving my QO-100 setup, but I will get to it.

For the inductor in the filter I have some old multi tap inductors that were used in tone signalling equipment in the 60s, 70s and 80s. sound perfect for my purpose.

Now I need time to build this, and I intend to add a simple (PCB module) audio amplifier, LM386, or the like, so I have speaker sound out of it.