It was a very windy, cold and miserable evening for the February SHF UKAC, and my first /P outing in 2017. I decided to venture out to what is becoming my go-to 23cm /P site at Remenham Hill IO91NM (51.537096, -0.854341), just one small QRA square north of my home QTH in Wargrave IO91NL.
The advantage of this site is that its extremely easy to get, it’s just 10 minutes drive from my house with good access, roadside parking and level ground. The downsides are that its a very noisy site with lots of cars whistling by at speed, and very open to the public. A couple of times I’ve had cars park up alongside me, and some strange curious visitors wander about which is not ideal! Its on top of a small hill about 99m ASL (nearly twice the height of my home QTH which is just 57m) with clear views on the horizon in all directions. The lay-is beside the busy A4130 between Henley-on-Thames and Maidenhead.
Set-up was quick, despite a strong gusting wind and the tripod was guyed with the 1m grid dish for 13cm mounted at about 2m off the grass verge. On 13cm (2320MHz) I use a DB6NT G2 Transverter which produces about 0.8W into a TP-Link 1M grid dish TL-ANT2424B Wi-Fi aerial. This works amazingly well its a 1:1 VSWR match and provides 24dBi gain, so about 200W ERP. First in the log was Neil G4BRK in Garford near Abingdon IO91HP at an easy 38km distant. Soon after I worked Neil G4LDR IO91EC near Salisbury at 70km for my only other QSO and ODX. I heard M0GHZ (IO81) and G8OHM (IO92) on 13cm, but they could not hear my QRP, I need more power at the masthead.
The 3cm dish was proving to be difficult to mount on the tripod and I had a problem with the fixing. Unusually I could not find the GB3SEE beacon in Reigate on 3cm which is always worrying as it means I don't then have a reference for the frequency offset which is usually about 19KHz high. It was now getting very windy and at this point I decided it was safer to be holding the dish by hand than have it fly off the tripod! I tried with G4LDR on 10GHz it was super difficult to keep a steady beam heading, but he was much stronger on 3cm than on 13cm. Neil could detect me but could not read my signal. There was distortion due to the bad weather conditions and no doubt signal scattering as the path is highly obstructed. My random dish alignment probably didn't help! I was using the FT-290R, barefoot DB6NT G2 transverter with 0.15W output into a 60cm offset dish, so about 150W ERP. At least this site holds useful potential for other SHF UKAC outings and future QSO attempts.
If the Wx is better and I can make some station improvements on 13cm and 3cm (re-boxing both transverter systems to add various sequenced RF amplifiers and LNA's) I hope to return to this location again in a months time for the March SHF UKAC with more power and a better chance of success.
The advantage of this site is that its extremely easy to get, it’s just 10 minutes drive from my house with good access, roadside parking and level ground. The downsides are that its a very noisy site with lots of cars whistling by at speed, and very open to the public. A couple of times I’ve had cars park up alongside me, and some strange curious visitors wander about which is not ideal! Its on top of a small hill about 99m ASL (nearly twice the height of my home QTH which is just 57m) with clear views on the horizon in all directions. The lay-is beside the busy A4130 between Henley-on-Thames and Maidenhead.
Set-up was quick, despite a strong gusting wind and the tripod was guyed with the 1m grid dish for 13cm mounted at about 2m off the grass verge. On 13cm (2320MHz) I use a DB6NT G2 Transverter which produces about 0.8W into a TP-Link 1M grid dish TL-ANT2424B Wi-Fi aerial. This works amazingly well its a 1:1 VSWR match and provides 24dBi gain, so about 200W ERP. First in the log was Neil G4BRK in Garford near Abingdon IO91HP at an easy 38km distant. Soon after I worked Neil G4LDR IO91EC near Salisbury at 70km for my only other QSO and ODX. I heard M0GHZ (IO81) and G8OHM (IO92) on 13cm, but they could not hear my QRP, I need more power at the masthead.
The 3cm dish was proving to be difficult to mount on the tripod and I had a problem with the fixing. Unusually I could not find the GB3SEE beacon in Reigate on 3cm which is always worrying as it means I don't then have a reference for the frequency offset which is usually about 19KHz high. It was now getting very windy and at this point I decided it was safer to be holding the dish by hand than have it fly off the tripod! I tried with G4LDR on 10GHz it was super difficult to keep a steady beam heading, but he was much stronger on 3cm than on 13cm. Neil could detect me but could not read my signal. There was distortion due to the bad weather conditions and no doubt signal scattering as the path is highly obstructed. My random dish alignment probably didn't help! I was using the FT-290R, barefoot DB6NT G2 transverter with 0.15W output into a 60cm offset dish, so about 150W ERP. At least this site holds useful potential for other SHF UKAC outings and future QSO attempts.
If the Wx is better and I can make some station improvements on 13cm and 3cm (re-boxing both transverter systems to add various sequenced RF amplifiers and LNA's) I hope to return to this location again in a months time for the March SHF UKAC with more power and a better chance of success.