CQWW CW on Solar Power, and My Challenge.

 The past week end I was very active on the radio front.

While I do not plan to send in a log, I made about 150 QSOs, giving many stations points for the CQ WW CW contest. All this happened with just 5W output, and the vast majority was done with my solar power/battery system.

Since the solar power input has been quite low the last few weeks, all the radios were connected to mains power in order to let the battery re-charge. At the same time I did not work too much radio.

After a few QSOs in the contest I decided to make this a mainly solar powered event for me. The IC-705 was reconnected to the solar power system and I worked all through the week end, with some battery energy to spare.

My QSO count with 5W this year is now 460. This means that the challenge of working 365 QSOs this year with just 5W (and no weak signal digital modes) has been met.

Now I extend the challenge to 365 QSOs this year with solar power (as well as 5W). This will be an estimate, as I did not count exactly when I started using solar this year. My preliminary estimate will be that I may have met that challenge, too, but I will work some QSO for the rest of the year. I expect to be fairly sure to meet the challenge this year.

Now what will be my personal challenge for next year? I see a few possibilities.

- maybe with an expansion of my solar power it may be possible to run the main part of the station on solar, with the exception of high power amplifiers. We shall see

- maybe I should make my first QSOs on the microwave bands (everything above 1GHz)

- I *should* finish some more kit building

- maybe I should build a more fully home brew TR/RX just for one band, and work some QSOs with it

- maybe run a challenge with even lower power, allowing for the use of weak signal digital modes

MPPT Charge Controller for Solar Power.

The battery had been charging a bit with a few sunny hours. I did not see a charge current much above 3A with the existing PWM charge controller.

A few days ago I changed the charge controller to a 20A MPPT controller. With decent sunshine the charge current then peaked at about 5A. Definitely an improvement. 

At the moment the system is still not connected to any radio, but the intention is to see if I can run the IC-705 on solar this week end.

Why the 705 and why this week end? The 705 is my go-to radio for running 5W,  it has a relatively low power consumption. I hope that there is sufficient juice from the solar system to run this week end. Further, this week end there is the CQWW CW contest, hopefully with plenty of opportunities to make some CW QSOs with 5W, and make a contribution to the 5W/365 QSOs this year. I still need another 60 to complete my challenge for this year.

If there is insufficient capacity on the battery I can use some other battery that has also been charged with solar power.

The main purpose is to have the vast majority of the 365 QSOs this year run on solar power. I estimate that I have probably done around 50 of them on mains power, so I stand at around 90% solar right now.

With the planned improvements I expect to run the 705 fully on solar power all year, and some of the other radios most of the year. 

The other test with the MPPT controller was to detect RFI/noise from the controller. As it is right now I have not noticed any noise, but the controller has not run full charge current yet. 

I do expect, however, that with a bit of filtering I can run this MPPT controller without creating a noticeable amount of RFI on the HF bands. More testes will be needed.

Solar Has Gone Into Winter Mode.

 The sun has been hidden (mostly) for quite a while. The battery I used is almost empty.

This is a good test of the system. The energy generated by the panels is simply too low for the load.

All the radio equipment is now running on mains power until the battery is (at least) 50% charged. That may take a while, as the days are short at 55 deg. North. More panels are definitely needed.

I will also have to make a test of RF noise generated from MPPT controllers. Those are definitely more noisy than the lower cost and lower efficiency PWM controllers. If I can reduce the noise to a sufficiently low level I will probably switch to MPPT. The expected increase of power is between 20 and 30%.

For now the battery receives a very low charge, simply because it has been cloudy for more than a week.

The existing panels used for charging are 2x 130W. 

I would expect to go solar again in mis February.

Yes, the station needs to be more energy efficient, and the battery/panel system needs to be improved. Still mush to do. Much of the indoor work should be done in the winter time: Monitor receiving system with lower energy consumption, and the bigger battery.