KA6U Update - August 31 - 2330UTC

Tennessee Activation Complete

TN activation completed today with 25 QSOs.  Congratulations to NC1I and OK1DFC who completed 23cm WAS today.  They are the 3rd and 4th new 23cm WAS members during the trip.

Several Ops are also now in the high 40's for 23cm! 

Final activations planned for this Summer's trip.  Unfortunately due to Moon's declination no EU window:

• North Carolina -  EM96 - September 2nd 2000 - 2300UTC
• South Carolina - FM03 - September 3rd - 2100 - 2330UTC

I will visit these Southeastern states again, probably this Fall during high Moon declination.  In particular GA, LA, MS are on the list.

I plan to arrive home in Florida on Sunday September 4th after 113 days traveling.

Interesting operation today.

It was challenging in multiple ways but very interesting.  I learned several new valuable  things about portable operations, two activations from the end of the trip :-)

I found a great park to operate in today.  When I set up it was foggy.  Dish is pointed at Moonrise.  In the hour before Moonrise I was visited 3 times by various security personnel.  The first two said, great go ahead and operate.  The third told me to leave.  Even though the head person had said it was ok earlier I didn't feel like arguing with the latest visitor so I moved to my secondary activation site.  In 10 years of activations and over 150 spots this is the first time I was asked to leave.  It's OK I plan for this.  I am also happy there are people out there who care about security!

At least I have a couple of nice photographs.

W2HRO Paul, "Marketing Photos"??

The secondary location was the edge of a Lowe's parking lot with a great view of Moonrise.  From when I was asked to leave the other location until I was QRV at Moonrise at the backup location - 30 minutes.   I always have a secondary location plan.  Only used it once this trip so far.

The beginning of the activation went OK and I worked the usual big stations at Moonrise with good signal reports for me... But HB9Q -20?  something was wrong.

I made 9 QSO's quickly then nothing.  I was being heard great but I was deaf on RX.  I changed preamp, no change in RX, RX was degraded 10db, I could see weak traces but no decodes.

I verified pointing, everything correct.

Then I couldn't hear NC1I at 15 degree elevation at all.  I got out of the car and walked around.  I discovered on the other side of the parking lot about 400M away a cell phone tower with multiple carrier's antennas.

So, I moved the 23cm cavity filter from behind the preamp (recommended location) to in front of the preamp.  Immediate 10db improvement in RX and I completed with 16 additional stations in 90 minutes.  I was seeing herringbone pattern birdies which were probably cross modulation products in my high-gain preamp.  With the filter moved, birdies gone.

While this was going on the first generator stopped and I had to connect the backup generator.  The Ethanol we put in gas in the US attracts water.  Every 50 or so hours of operation the generator carburetor fills with water and needs to be drained.

When my RX improved I was able to decode 4 weak signals, all within 100hz of each other.  But not at the same time.  All four stations were calling "on my echo".  I asked the stations to spread out, but I think many operators believe if they call "on my echo" I will be more likely to see them.  That may be true for JT65 but it is not true for Q65 CFOM.  If multiple stations call on my "CFOM Echo" and their rigs are frequency locked their signals will be almost EXACTLY on top of each other.

When multiple Q65 signals are on top of each other, and they are weak, they don't decode.  There were some signals I watched for 2 hours but could not decode.

My station with a 2.4M dish is receive limited.  The dish is small, the feed is compact and lightweight (must be) and for a variety of reasons my RX is several db worse than a solid 2.4M dish with a full-size Septum feed.

Also in unknown remote locations sometimes I have noise that degrades RX.  As a result, when multiple callers are on top of each other, and signals are weak, they won't be decoded.

In the future when I see signals on top of each other, I will ask who is calling on my echo and I will ask them to call me on specific audio tones, e.g. 800hz, 1000hz, 1500hz, etc.  Q65 does a TERRIBLE job of multiple decoding, particularly for weak signals which is what I usually see.  Therefore if I know who is calling at what freq I can set a narrow tolerance, enter their callsign and grid, and speedup operations.

Overall a very challenging day that ended up great.

Thanks everyone!

73 Peter KA6U