[Fourlanders] Bored in EN75

[John Ackermann N8UR]

Hi Guys --

Hope your propagation at W4NH was better than mine!  I heard you on 6M 
at the very beginning of the contest, but it almost sounded like m/s as 
I would hear only a couple of seconds at a time.  Later on Sunday we 
almost worked, but I couldn't get your grid so it's not in the log. 
Then finally I heard you calling CQ again at about 7:30PM but once more 
it was just for a few seconds.

In short, 6M just didn't happen this year.  I ended up with 49 QSOs and 
31 grids, compared to 404 contacts and 138 grids last year.  I think 10 
of the 49 were on CW as that was what it took to get through.

On the good news front, the new hardware worked really well.  I used one 
of the OpenHPSDR "Hermes" SDR boards with a 10W amplifier from Apache 
Labs in India.  That fed my new TE-0550G amplifier which put 350W into 
the 5 element C3i yagi at ~35 feet.  The GaSFET in the TE amplifier was 
really important with this hardware -- the Hermes receiver is excellent 
but has a pretty high noise figure on 6M.  The preamp seemed to have 
just about the right gain and NF.

I got an MFJ 75 amp switching power supply to drive the amplifier, and 
I'm not impressed.  The switching regulator actually "chattered" with 
modulation (i.e., you could hear my voice coming from the PS case), and 
there were quite a few wandering spurs on RX.  I wish there were another 
source for a switcher at that power level (a transformer supply was way 
too heavy to bring on this trip).

The PowerSDR software (same as Flex uses, but modified for this 
hardware) was running on a Core II laptop.  The spectrum display let me 
see 50.090 to 50.190 so I could quickly pounce whenever a signal showed 
up, which was very seldom.  Every now and then I had some electrical 
noise and the noise blanker *totally* knocked it out.  The K9DUR Voice 
Keyer software interfaces with PowerSDR using a "virtual audio cable" 
and I used that for the endless unanswered CQs I sent.

Anyway, it was still a blast despite the propagation.  We're up here 
until the end of June, and I will be on 6M and HF (100W to a vertical) 
when I have a chance.  I'll probably be on for Field Day as well.

73,
John