[VHFcontesting] Tuesday Night 222 MHz, the K1RT Beacon, and EME Activity periods.

[David Olean]

Hello VHFers,

Tomorrow is Tuesday and that is THE time for firing up your 222 MHz 
gear, contacting your friends on the band, making sure it all works, and 
all sorts of other benefits. The past week had the 222 MHz Sprint on 
Tuesday, and all accounts seem to indicate that the evening was well 
attended.  Conditions in the North Country seemed very poor, but 
activity was up over a typical Tuesday night.  I have a feeling that 
things will be even better propagation-wise. Most hams in the NE use the 
ON4KST Chat Page (144/432 Region 2) to set up long haul skeds, others 
can be used as well.

  I have been doing a bit of beacon listening in the last two days and 
wanted to report that the K1RT beacon in FN31IQ seems to be weakly 
audible here in SW Maine for about 75% of the time.  I do notice that 
there is tremendous multi path on the signal. I am not sure, but I 
suspect that I am seeing lots of reflections off of hills in the 
vicinity of FN31IQ. I typically can see three signals when it peaks. One 
time I saw six!  There is also quite a range of QSB on the path. I have 
a P3 panadaptor that is calibrated to approximate input signals in dBm. 
Today I saw peaks on K1RT/b up to -110 dBm, or better than 30 dB above 
the noise. The typical level for K1RT/b is near zero or below zero! 
Those big swings are few and far between, but they do happen and that is 
interesting. I know that N1JEZ and others have seen similar swings. As 
far as I can tell, the K1RT/b beacon is on 222.060 MHz. I just wanted to 
submit another beacon SWL report!

I made a few changes to the 222 station. I had an old linear power 
supply that came from Meshna's in the 1970's I think. It was a brute 
that could deliver 20 amps at 12 volts. Lately it was intermittent. I 
suspected the small regulating plastic transistors were flakey. Meshna 
had provided new plastic transistors to replace them all back in the 
1970's. I finally decided to replace them. It seemed to work fine at 
first, so I left it running on the bench with no load. About 30 minutes 
later I started smelling burned phenolic and found the supply had zero 
output and was hotter than a $2 gun. All the big TO-3 metal transistors 
were shorted and each emitter resistor was burned open. I suspect 
something failed and output voltage shot up. The protection circuit 
shorted the output, and it was cooking itself!  I looked at fixing it 
but figured it would cost at least $25 so I found a Meanwell switcher 
supply (made in Taiwan) that cost about the same amount as my repair 
estimate. Instead of weighing about 40 lbs, it weighs about 2 lbs. It is 
the size of a typical hard bound book. It will put out 29 amps.  Just 
what I need in my solar ham shack. The supply pulls 6 watts when turned 
on. That old Meshna linear supply probably pulled 75 watts or more just 
sitting there! I should have done this a longtime ago!

About a week or more ago, we had good EME conditions and I asked if 
anyone was around to run a test with my newly connected up antenna on 
the EME path. Well it seems that anyone and everyone who could get on 
222 EME wanted to show up, so it turned into a great two evenings of EME 
activity. It attracted a few horizon only non EME stations and they got 
in the act and got a taste of EME as well.   It all worked so well, that 
I figured that maybe we should try to do the same thing each month when 
conditions warrant.  The first time, everyone was there except W5ZN who 
had a dastardly mouse chew up his 12 volt preamp power wire. (I hope the 
mouse got electrocuted and died a horrible and painful death. If the 
voltage did not kill the thing, I hope he choked on the pvc 
insulation!)  Have I ever mentioned that I hate mice?   K1OR missed the 
EME fun too, as he was in sunny FLA,  but the band was hopping with 
everybody else.  The next really good time looks like May 14-16.That 
starts on a Friday evening. The moon starts coming up on Saturday 
evening at about 7PM (2300) on the east coast, and Moonrise on the west 
coast is at about 0300 UT  or so, so the timing is pretty good. Does 
this sound like a good thing for the active 222 EME types? Is there any 
interest? We all get on at once!!   We might get a few new stations 
hooked if they can hear/ decode any of the big guys. K5QE and WA4NJP 
have rather huge signals and polarity switching capability.

Feel free to throw in ur 2 cents worth on the 222 Activity email 
reflector about an EME weekend. I also mentioned the recent 222 EME 
weekend to N0JK, the QST VHF Column editor.

73 & CU on Tuesday night!

Dave K1WHS