Fernebo Bloggen

Unfortunately we will not operate NAC now in August. The air in Sothern SM3 will stay clear and lots of room for our neighbours on the band.

Today the lower 40m yagi has been prepared for lift-off. The director has been centered and ropes has been put inside the elements to get rid of the vibrations. Still left in the tower is the cables for the upper antenna. It has to be taken down before it is possible to make the complete stacking cables and matching for the antennas.

We are also planning for a new antenna configuration for the repeater located in Gävle. Right now the repeater has two 6 el yagis for the TX, one north and one SW. After some simulation and considerations we have decided to build 8 small 4 element DK7ZB antennas. We have made a couple of prototypes and the mechanical design is better than the 6 el Vårgårda that we use now. The antennas will be placed 4×4. The final directions are not sure yet, but probably south towards E4 and west towards Riks 80 and Sandviken. In the direction West we have possibilities to put at least two extra receivers.

For the 70cm repeater antenna project we are missing some small pieces of 20×20mm aluminium and the boxes for the driven elements. The stacking will be made of 75ohm cables.

Tomorrow some work on the Ericsson tower will take place. Paint the rotor for the 40m yagi and take down the old 15el CUEDEE 2m antenna and replace it with a omni-duoband antenna for 2m/70cm. This will replace the small 4el yagi used for the repeater RX. We will also have the possibility to inspect how that antenna has been affected by weather after two years in the tower.

SK6DW Team members are in about 230 degrees direction from Fernebo. Our tower end-stop (viritual), is at 225 deg. These guys made it into the log. http://www.sk6dw.se/?p=1308

Find the complete recordings of NAC here!

Otto Holm LA9UX has made a nice program to display the antenna lobe for your antennas. This is a good tool when designing a VHF Contest station. At SK3W we use the DK7ZB 6 element design, beamwith 46 degrees. Due to a very slow rotating tower, a second antenna directon would be nice…

Where to point it? Some people claim, “rikta norrut – det lönar sig”, but I doubt… Could Finland be a good target maybe? I guess that the most likely solution will be to use the old CUEDEE 15 el stack in the 42m tower, as a second direction.

The only missing parts in that setup is a Power divider and a good solution to switch the antenna systems. Any ideas?

Listen in to our contest operators. Have we missed any callsigns, recived wrong reports or locators? Please comments directly here on the blogg…

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Press the “Read More” to see the complete logfile and statistics.

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SK3W will be active tomorrow.
Look for us just below 144.300.
Use CW if no answer on SSB.

If you are able to make recordings of our transmissions, we would like to
share this on our Blogg. Please contact me after the contest…

Equipment as usual, 8x 6 el DK7ZB, 500 watt.

Above are the QSO maps for SK0CT and SK3W.

"Good activity and pretty decent conditions. High rate in the beginning, but missed lots
of stations in OH.
With a second antenna direction it would be possible to get a much higher score."

The amp (2xGi7b) worked perfectly as usual, 550 watts out. Antenna 8x6 el DK7ZB.

Contest: NAC 144 MHz                       Call: SK3W
Section: A                                 Loc : JP80JH
Date: 20080506
----------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Band | TOTAL   | QSO-POINTS | BAD | LOC-POINTS | QRB           KM |
|  144M |   71843 | 151  47343 |   1 |  49  24500 | SP4SAS       775 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------

----144M----144M----144M----144M----144M----144M----144M----

DX  Date     Time Call           Loc    Bnd  Mod  QRB   QTE
1  20080506 2010 SP4SAS         JO93XN 144M CW     775 164
2  20080506 2004 SP2IPK         JO93LR 144M SSB    744 169
3  20080506 2049 OZ1ALS         JO45VA 144M SSB    720 218
4  20080506 2034 OZ1DLD/P       JO45SK 144M SSB    691 221
5  20080506 1921 LY2BJ          KO25ER 144M CW     677 136
6  20080506 1903 SM2CEW         KP15CR 144M CW     661  22
7  20080506 1741 OH8PF          KP24KV 144M SSB    656  36
8  20080506 1918 LY2R           KO15VR 144M CW     655 138
9  20080506 1908 SM2VBK         KP15BO 144M CW     647  22
10  20080506 2031 OZ9KY          JO45VX 144M SSB    633 223

Worked Locator
JO45: 3 JO55: 2 JO56: 1 JO57: 3 JO58: 5 JO59: 2 JO65: 4
JO67: 4 JO68: 8 JO69: 4 JO75: 2 JO77: 2 JO78: 4 JO79: 4
JO86: 3 JO87: 1 JO88: 8 JO89:12 JO93: 2 JO97: 3 JO98: 1
JO99: 8 JP70: 8 JP73: 1 JP80: 5 JP81: 5 JP83: 3 JP90: 3
JP93: 2 KO06: 1 KO15: 1 KO18: 1 KO25: 1 KO29: 2 KO38: 1
KP00: 1 KP01: 2 KP02: 3 KP03: 5 KP04: 1 KP10: 2 KP11: 2
KP14: 1 KP15: 2 KP20: 6 KP21: 2 KP22: 2 KP24: 1 KP30: 1

Worked DXCC
SM  :106 LA  : 3 OH  :25 OZ  : 7 ES  : 4 LY  : 2 OH0 : 1
SP  : 2 YL  : 1

MODE: SSB=80% CW=19%
PROP: TR=100%

Operators: SM3XIK and SG3P

Link to results!

A loose capacitor was soldered and the 2m amplifier is QRV again. Now with a new power supply with a bit lower voltage than before, approximately 2100Volts compared to the 2500Volt on the old PS. When it proves stable, it can be re-wired to about 2700Volt. To switch on and off the amplifier is now very simple. Three buttons, fan / filament / high voltage. I got 500 watt output after some tuning.

Heard YU7AA call CQ several times, both on SSB and CW. Probably short E-skip, with fast QSB. Worked SM0EPO… All set for NAC 144 on Tuesday night. Look for us just below 144.300.

Antennas as usual 8×6el + 15 el.