[Fourlanders] EME Report

[w4zst at windstream.net]

Not a big report, but I think it is significant in our evolution.

We have had myriad problems with getting Johnny's 2m EME station set up here at my QTH.  Of course, none of it is anything WE could have done wrong!  We hold Murphy completely responsible for all problems.

Anyway, the first thing we found was the front end of the new DEMI 2m transverter has gone bye-bye.  I tested it, but wasn't up to trying to fix it so we sent it off to Steve and haven't yet heard back about it.  I feel sure that Murphy smoked the first stage somehow.  So I put my old DEMI transverter in Johnny's set up even though I don't have RefLock or split RX/TX output enabled on mine.  I ran it barefoot on 2m, checking into the 2m net and rag-chewing with Ray and such.  It was working great.  Even copied a FL 2m station on the Monday night net off the side of the beams, which BTW are Two M2 2mXP20's on an AlphaSpid AZ-EL rotator on Johnny's tower trailer in front of the shack at about 18' or so.  Everything has been working OK doing terrestrial local Q's.

For this weekends EME contest, I first just decided to listen only and set things up for that.  Johnny couldn't come up Friday nigh.  Then I tested the outside PreAmp and found that it wasn't hearing either.  So I put it on the NF meter (Thanks Mike for bringing it back to me at the hamfest) and it is also a Murphy victim.  I set up anyway just for listening during the contest on Friday night, using the RX feedline (LMR400) instead of the hardline for TX and also not having a preamp.

Ta Da:  Success.  I was able to easily see waterfall signals and decode them.  I copied 9 Eu stations and 5 US stations.  Some I even copied both sides during a QSO.  Unbelievable activity, sometimes seeing as many as 5 traces spread out on a single receive frequency!  It was something to see.  BTW, the receiver is Johnny's Flex 1500 and it was great on the net and also super here on JT with my old transverter and no PreAmp.  The problem (naturally there was a problem) was the rotator quit tracking in elevation and eventually the moon quit cooperating and signals were gone.  Crazy thing, the next morning, the rotator worked again, both manually and under Moon Sked control.

So, for Saturday night, I did some re-cabling and conniving and got set up to transmit also.  Still using my xvtr but now adding in Johnny's M2 SS amp and making it all work with a single feed line instead of Johnny's RX/TX set-up.  Got it all working and things were fine at the beautiful moonrise seen from there last night.  Johnny had come up to try things out.  No sigs early on, but when it got about 6 degrees or so, we found traces in the waterfall of K1JT himself and good decodes.  We watched and looked around some and found HB9Q calling CQ so we waited till he made one Q and then we tried.  Ta Da!  BIGGER SUCCESS!  We were pretty excited at the first Q with this system.  Only 3 sequences and no repeats.  I have pix of the JT screen if anyone wants to see it.  So by now, guess what?  The rotator quits tracking in EL and won't even go up manually (not under PC control).  Getting frustrating.  So by the time we gave up on trying to figure out what was wrong, after rebooting the controller, PC, radio, everything and still not able to get the rotator to go higher, we gave up and by then the moon was already too high to keep seeing signals and we couldn't manually track so we quit then.  

And of course, this morning, the rotator acts like a 'Dog that stole the biscuit'  (Who? Me!) and works just fine.  So this is a pretty perplexing problem.  Johnny is going to call the Alpha Spid guys on Monday and I'm going to try tracking tonight (even though the contest is over) with only the tracking software running so see if it still does the same thing.  That may eliminate a computer software interaction.  Anyway, damn that Murphy!!

Now we are waiting for the December weekend of the ARRL EME contest to get things going again and see what we can do.  Hoping that the xvtr comes back from Steve and the PreAmp back from M2 and put everything back together.

Bob and Johnny