Last holiday day

 

Yes, this was the last day of my 3 weeks off the job. Before this holiday I imagined a sea of time to spend with the hobby. But it turned to be just a few hours in the last 3 weeks. There were so many other things I had to finish and of course I spend time with my family because it is their holiday too.

But today I wanted to spend some radio hobby time. You see, I constructed a new shack......well not really. It is near the antenna tower though. It is our new (used) garden shed, primarily for my XYL but we can join her as well of course. It is ideal to conduct some experiments from. Like testing the portable gear.

I do not operate portable often. And so the equipment isn't used for a long time. I changed some things like adding a upconverter to generate continious 13,8V from my portable battery. 11V is just too low voltage to keep an output of 5W from the FT-817. It is the grey box below the red battery. I wanted to test if it generates more noise as normal (it didn't). Watching the photo I now realize that I have to get rid of all the unnecessary connectors and cables I don't really need.

So, I thought to test the MLA (Magnetic Loop Antenna). Homemade a few years ago after many experimentation projects. It is simple, with a unique homemade reduction and added a tune indicator with the use of a simple FSM (Field Strength Meter). It always worked well, but now I had some tuning problems, like something was loose or broken. But at some point it worked. Listen to 20m first, couldn't hear a single SSB signal although I received SSTV on 14.230 well. And signals over S5 on the FT8 channel. Down to 40m it goes, I received OE8XDX and DB7LG as only ones on SSB. Not really strong but very good to understand. I tried to call them a few times but had no luck. From what I heard is that they struggled with low signals as well. 

So, I though something was wrong with the antenna again. And tried to tune it with the full 5W FM carrier on it. Suddenly, probabely due to the high SWR, the LCD screen went blank. Did I blew the final? Oh no, every time I switched PTT the radio went off. I saw only 8V on the voltage meter at the display now. Something was wrong with the battery I assumed. After some measurements I quickly determined that the fuse in the cable from the battery to the upconverter had blown. It was a 2A fuse and probabely the high SWR made the current to the final too high. I had no other fuse so it was end of the experiment with the FT-817.

Hopefully there is nothing wrong with the FT-817. I didn't test it yet. I should buy another internal battery as well since the original one is useless after so many years. I can charge it but it will be drained after a few minutes again.

I wanted to see what the problem was with my MLA first now. And quickly discovered a bad solder joint at the pick up loop. Have repaired it now. Hopefully it will not break again. In case it brakes again I will have to solder the coax directly on the pick up loop.

I then discovered an old battery in the garage. Quickly measured it still had some juice inside. 

I decided to give the W5OLF 1W 30m WSPR transmitter a go. Had some excellent results in the past with it. But it seems propagation was not in my favour today. I was only spotted by a German station and an Italian station after some hours. 

Well, you can't have everything. Sometimes you're lucky and sometimes not. At least I had some radio time and enjoyed it. I have to improve some things to get everything working again. And, I don't really like it, I probabely need to connect digimodes to it to make a QSO with someone these days. Or I have to wait for a SSB contest....which will give me some more chance...