Last weekend some more things got done at SJ2W. On Friday me and SM2XJP paid SM2DMU a visit. We picked up a bearing which is used as a guy wire ring. He used it on one of his towers but unfortunately it fell down a few years ago and one of the rings was left over since the parts of the tower that weren’t damaged, was enough to be guyed at one level. Thus we could take it and I will drill a few new holes in it to match our current tower. So we thank Rainer a lot for giving us that guy wire ring along with 10 pcs of M12 A4 stainless steel threaded rods.
I also noticed that when I drilled 15mm holes in the H-beams it was too small. I thought it was M14 but unfortunately it was M16, so now I have taken them up to work again where I will drill the holes bigger so it fits properly.
I also got some work on the house done and hopefully in a couple of weekends it will be done for this year and it will be all radio work from now on.
I left my phone at SJ2W, so I might be hard to get in touch with until Friday when I will be back. That also means no pictures, since I use the phone to take them.
Today I built a preamp with a GALI-74+ amplifier from mini-circuits. It seem to work well, about 24dB amplification and according to the specifications it should have 2.7dB Noise-Figure and IP3 of +38dBm. That is specified at 1 GHz though, I am not sure what we can see at 1-30 MHz, but hopefully it works well. I have also gotten all the 500m of RG-6 that I ordered so now we will put up a vertical about 600m from the TX antennas and see how much QRM we get when listening on the same band as the run station.
To be continued…
Let me know how it works out on HF with the GALI-74+.
I always liked the idea of a simple monolithic amp IC to make a HF RX preamp but I seem to remember experts rejected these MMIC’s – like W8JI if I remember well. Too long ago to remember the reasons (intermod?).
Don’t worry when it’s dirty, the datasheet says it’s “Aqueous washable” 😀
Yeah, I will keep you posted. I will write on the web page how well everything works. I don’t know if I will have time to test it this weekend, but it will be tested before the snow arrives. It is a must nowadays to be competitive in M/S to be able to do inband QSOs. For example in CQWW SSB and CW last year we spent probably 6-7 first hours on 40m running NA and barely working any mults because of high rate.
It will probably require lots of training before it works well, but it will be a fun experience and maybe in the future we might expand the antenna system to a beam and a few beverages. We will see…