[VHFcontesting] [NEWSVHF] 222 activity night

[David Olean]

A very interesting evening for me, as all of my plans went down the 
toilet. I was working on my tower mounted preamp box all afternoon. I 
was trying to figure out what was going on to make the whole system act 
up intermittently.  If I transmitted and then switched back to receive, 
signals would appear immediately, but then would drop out after about 
250 milliseconds. The background noise level would drop. If I cycled the 
coax relay, all would return to normal. I suspected the coax relay was 
dirty. Anyway, I tested everything and gave the relay a clean bill of 
health. I also found that the preamp changes its noise figure if you 
lightly tap the exterior of the preamp.   Isolation of the relay was 
better than 100 dB and no switching transients between the TX and RX 
port was seen.   I put a new preamp in the box and tested it inside the 
box. All was OK thru the coax relay and several coax adaptors and short 
pieces of coax inside the box.  NF degraded about 0.1 dB which is 
normal.  I then climbed the tower with the updated box only to find that 
the preamp is dead on arrival.  It did not function at all!!  By this 
time it was too late to do any detective work, so I went home and 
nibbled on some tree bark and lawn clippings for my dinner and was 
feeling pretty down. I was late for 222 night back up the hill, and got 
started at almost 23:30 UT.  The system was working but without the 
preamp.  It does not hear as well as it might.  I did not do much 
calling and just did a lot of tunin and listening.  WA3EOQ asked about a 
sked and I tuned to his frequency and heard him FB calling me.  He was 
Q5 even with no preamp.  I am not sure why that was, but signals on most 
stations were not very strong.  Howard was weak but solid here.   Al 
W9KXI was very weak here. IT sounded like he was not running an 
amplifier! So why was WA3EOQ so good at 502 miles?   I guess that is the 
magic sauce of 222 MHz. I think I ended up with 15 QSOs and missed many 
of the regulars. I missed WA2LTM, WB2VVV and K2RMX on GB Ron's list.  I 
did work K3SK using meteors but it took me over 30 miutes to do it. He 
heard me quite often, but I heard very little from K3SK.  That makes me 
wonder about my receiver being deaf.  It might also have to do with my 
sharp antenna. I tried the wide LVA a bit with K3SK, but I worried that 
the restricted vertical pattern was bad for such a short MS distance of 
575 miles.  I know that my 144 LVA was only good beyond about 700 miles. 
Anything closer was difficult.

Hopefully I can get my receiver working again.  CU next week.

Dave K1WHS

On 9/3/2024 9:08 PM, Ron Klimas WZ1V wrote:
> Average conditions on 222 tonight, activity a bit lean,
> not surprising after a long weekend. Logged:
> WB2VVV FN41, WA3NUF FN20, W9KXI FN12, K1ZK FN34,
> W1AUV FN32, K1PXE FN31, N1LHP FN42, WA1PBU FN42,
> WA2LTM FN20, K1WHS FN43, WA3EOQ FM09, W1GHZ FN34,
> W1AIM FN34, K1TR FN42, K2RMX FN20, W2BYP FN13,
> and K3SK FM07. As always, thanks for the QSO's !
>
> 73 Ron WZ1V
>
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