[VHFcontesting] 222 Activity Night Wrap up.

[David Olean]

Hello 222 fans,

There was a fair amount of activity on 222 MHz last night, even though 
most of the participants had been  beating up on the VHF bands all 
weekend. Thanks to all who got on.   W9KXI was on from Western NY. W1XR 
in FM19 was there from Maryland.  WZ1V (Good buddy Ron) was there along 
with K1PXE in Connecticut along with KE1LI, who made his first 222 
Activity Night appearance!   N2SLO and N2GHR were lighting up Long 
Island. VE2XX had a good signal from Montreal.   N1DPM and WA1LWC took 
care  of Massachusetts. K2AEP was on from FN33 in Vermont.  Then there 
is Cornell, KO4YC, from central Virginia, just North of Richmond. What a 
signal from Cornell. He must grease his antenna every night! I saw 
plenty of activity on the KST Chat page. KJ6A is tearing up 222 from 
western TN.  I know he made a contact with AA9MY in IL.  He does a lot 
with ten watts, but will soon be adding some power to the equation. 
There were a few others on. I know N1GC in NC gets on 222 often. I am 
still hoping to get a QSO with him before winter sets in! N2CEI was over 
at the N4SVC clubhouse in Florida and tried some skeds on 222. When 
things slowed down at about 9:30 local time, Steve and I tried an MSK144 
sked on 222. We completed in 18 minutes. It would have been much faster 
if I had realized that I need to enter his call before I start 
calling!!  I just turned the software on and the computer, (not knowing 
any better) started calling CQ. Steve copied my CQ right off so we 
wasted a few meteors while I was realizing that I should enter his call 
in WSJT if I wanted to make a contact with him.

It was a short night as we are all sort of burned out, but it was a lot 
of fun for a short time, and a great way to have fun and exercise the 
gear. Speaking of exercising the gear. I dug into my 432 receive 
problems and made some headway.  I had terrible VSWR on TX. My receiver 
was getting clobbered by out of band signals and neither of my 432 
antennas have good functioning rotators. I dragged an old HP spectrum 
analyzer up and looked at the spectrum after hooking it to the 432 
yagis.  I found so many UHF TV signals that I thought I was seeing cable 
TV leakage. It turns out that they are all over the air signals. Some of 
them are pretty loud! Every UHF channel is occupied from 15 up to 41. I 
think I saw four un occupied slots. The loudest is WGME on CH 15 (476 
MHz)  and is LOS from me and running 1 megawatt ERP.  CH 17 from 
Worcester, MA is almost as strong. I suspect that they are LOS from me 
as well. That tower in Worcester is awful tall! So I am working on some 
filtering solutions.  Getting back to the VSWR problems, I found a bad 
short jumper made of RG213. It had 18 dB return loss, but was properly 
made.(?) I fixed that with a longer run of 1/2" Superflex inside the 
box. There was still some VSWR there, and I finally isolated it to a 
right angle adaptor. It looked OK, but the plating on it led me to 
believe that it was not a MIL Spec connector. I swapped that out and 
things started to look good. Insertion loss came way down and return 
loss now looks good. All these problems are typical of growing pains 
whenever you make mods to your setup. These kind of problems are usually 
reserved for higher bands. I did not suspect that adaptors could be 
flakey at 432! So now I will hopefully get 432 working with two antenna 
systems available on the tower. The quad array of 25 el yagis is way too 
sharp for a HamM style rotator, so I am swapping that out for a better 1 
degree readout Prosistel. It has been on order for about 2 months. I 
hope it arrives before cold wx sets in! The 2nd array is 4 x 15 element 
yagis stacked one over the other to preserve a reasonable horizontal 
beamwidth. I can't wait to try it. It also needs a new rotor. The HAM-M 
on it is dead.

For improvements for the 222 station, I am thinking of installing a 
refrigerator and re locating the microwave oven so I can enjoy the band 
more.   Again, Thanks to all who made an effort to get on. It sure 
raises the FUN FACTOR for everyone involved.

73

Dave K1WHS