On Easter Monday I met-up with Dave G1EHF for a coffee at a local Farm Shop car park to test 47GHz. It was cold with a few snow flurries, so we quickly set-up with the gear at 4 meters apart to start with. I soon found Dave's beacon and then his main system which was very loud on SSB and fully quietening on NB FM.
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| My First 47GHz Car Park QSO (Photo: G1EHF) |
I've always wanted to try 47GHz (6mm) the next band up from 24GHz, and the opportunity arose when Roger G8CUB mentioned that he had a spare system he was willing to loan out. Last December I picked up Roger's spare equipment which consists of a converted PASOLINK 50 Transverter producing 0.5mW into a NEC 40dB 30cm PF dish with a 434MHz IF. Before today's test I'd checked the RX by receiving the 8th Harmonic of 5.886MHz generated from my Pluto SDR. The PASOLINK 50 is a similar system to Dave's except he uses a 432MHz IF.
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| Extending the distance to 30 metres! |
It was great to check frequency alignment and have my first 47GHz QSO and we exchanged 59's and IO91MI, before extending the distance to about 30m across the car park for a second contact. Like my first QSO on 24GHz, I used my picnic table to support all the equipment. I've already fashioned a mount to securely attach 47GHz to my 24GHz tripod which will help with accurate pointing. This is important as the dish has a very narrow beamwidth.
When the weather gets warmer I'm looking forward to increasing the range further to 5km and 10km and maybe more when the contest season starts in early May.