Maintenance

Yesterday I went to the remote station for some needed maintenance. In my last visit there I had changed radios, retiring the TS-480HX and installing a new IC-7100 in its place. The main reasons for that is that I was having repeated problems with one of the DC power supplies. And I also wanted to finally be QRV in VHF - see my posts describing my attempts at Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) QSOs.
The IC-7100 was chosen because of its detachable front panel, perfect for use with my remoterig system.

The problem was, when I came back to Rio the front panel was not lighting up. I double checked everything at the control point, and all seemed in order. The problem was at the remote end.

So there I went yesterday, and when I connected the control head directly to the radio it worked fine. Next I opened the remote rig and checked the configuration jumper wires and, bingo, two jumpers were broken.

Another check I wanted to make was if the LNA at the antenna mast was working, so I tuned to VHF and switched the amplifier on and off. The S-meter was jumping from S0 to S3-5 in all antenna directions. So I have a faulty LNA or is power supply. It is powered through the coax cable by means of a built in Bias-T in my Beko 2-m linear amplifier. The voltage reading at the amplifier antenna socket was 16V, a bit high.

Back home, I reconnected the front panel of the radio to the remoterig control box and it worked fine. I am back on business on HF.

Now I have to decide what to do about the LNA up there. I think I´ll bring another Bias-Tee to the station, feed it through a different 12V power supply and see what happens.

EME - first attempts

I am finally trying 144 MHz EME. I am using a IC-1700, with a 750W amplifier into a single M2 12 element yagi. Since I don't have  elevation control, I am limited to the moonrise and moonset windows.

I have been trying for two days now. I have called CQ, and my signals have been copied all over Europe. It was really exciting to see my call appear in livecq.eu:

So far I have had little luck in receiving. I suspect there is something wrong with my LNA, because I know I had some big stations calling me. Here is a print made by my friend Norbert, OE3NFC:

This is one of the stations that was calling me, UA3PTW. I really should be copying him! My transmission seems OK, good cables, connections etc. I use the same line for tx and rx, so either the radio or the LNA have some problem.

On the second day I finally had a decode, it was  PA9RX returning to my CQ, but I did not manage do conclude the QSO.


The adventure continues, I will have another try today at my moonrise, with the LNA off. Maybe I will finally finish my very first complete EME QSO.