KA6U Update - 0000UTC October 12, 2023

Thank-you everyone for your help and patience while I struggled with my 902 station this morning.  We managed to complete 10 QSOs with all callers after a two-hour delay.  Paul was able to collect some interesting recordings of interference impacting both Q65-60C and JT-65C formats.  We finally completed  by going to Q65-30C to reduce the probability of a sweeping interference signal corrupting the decode.

After we resolved the issues I saw the strongest signals ever from many of you.  Also received similar reports on my signal.  I was running 300W today at the feed.

I have arrived in Jamestown NY FN02 after a 9 hour drive from Maine.
I plan to be QRV from NY at 1200UTC October 12.

On October 13 I plan to go to Camden, Michigan that is at the join of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.  If we are lucky and have good conditions we may be able to do all 3 states in one day.  I would need to do two 30 minute moves between states.  Top priority would be Michigan then Ohio then Indiana.
  • NY - FN02 - October 12 - 1200UTC 902 EME
  • MI - EN71 - October 13 - 1300 - 1430 UTC 902 EME
  • OH - EN71 - October 13 - 1500 - 1630UTC 902 EME
  • IN - EN71 - October 13 - 1700 - 1830UTC 902 EME
I believe we will be ok for Sun noise on October 13th.  If October 13 doesnt work, I will come back to MI/OH/IN on October 18.

On October 14 - 15 I plan to drive to the ND/SD/MN border in EN15.  I have a spot on the ND/SD border north of Rosholt South Dakota.  I could do an activation there on October 16th.  I would then go to La Crosse and activate MN and WI.  I would do MN then cross the river and set up in LaCrosse, WI.

Next I would go to IL/IN.
The weather forecasts now are very good for all of those days.

I had three issues today that I think are resolved.  Will have time to test before the activation time tomorrow both Sun noise and Moon Echos:
  • Polarity switching relay was intermittent and also seemed to introduce significant loss on RX.  The relay is removed and I will manually rotate if I need to change POL but I dont plan to change, you guys can do the changes on 902
  • The rotator was getting out of sync with the controller.  I did a reset of the controller and the rotator started tracking correctly again.  I will watch this closely and any time I think signals are degrading will go out and check pointing manually
  • I believe the suggestion by Rod to route the control cables as far from the patch feed as possible may make a big difference.  I will experiment with that tomorrow.  I think it is possible that the dish performance was degraded several db because of how the cables were routed
I will do very limited 70cm on this trip.  I would like to do as many states as possible on 902 including multiple states in a day on 902.  The 70cm station takes too long to set up and tear-down, pack and move.  About 25 minutes to set up or pack.  The dish can easily be set up in 10 minutes from parking the car to on the Moon which makes moves and multiple states very practical.

Peter KA6U

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