Various stuff has happened lately

SM0W, SA0AZT and SM0SHG came up to spend the weekend at the lab at work building antenna switches and I finished up the openASC-boxes for SK0UX. It was a lot of fun and we got lots of stuff done. They still have quite a bit of work to do but they got with them the openASC boxes as well, so now there are three stations in Sweden using the openASC system, SK0UX, SJ2W and SK3W.

It also seems like I am claimed #1 Europe on 20m SSB in WPX SSB which is a lot of fun!

I also did some tests to test if the theoretic Q-value of the PI-filters we use in amplifiers correspond to measurements done with the VNA. It did not match at all, I got the values 4 times higher when having Q-value of 12 on the VNA compared to the theories. However I need to do more thinking and testing on this to figure out why. Maybe somebody can explain? I used the -3dB bandwidth to calculate the Q-value.

I also spent time cutting metal for the power supply for the amplifier project. I’ve collected some material at work which would have been thrown out and used it for the amp. I also bought some wheels that will be mounted to the amp which limits the weight of it to 400kg, but I should have quite some margin πŸ™‚

2 Comments.

  1. Lennart Grahn

    And me, so happy in March when I received the WPX certificate for “… winning the 2012 World Wide WPX Contest SSB for the Singe Op High Power 20 Meters division for #1 in Sweden”.

    My idea this year was to defend/justify the position one more time. Everything went well during the contest, until I heard you. And I started to wonder, if he is in the very same category as myself? Ofcourse you are! But good news for me is, it’s *only* 21 positions between us, and I doubled (approx) my score this year. Will you manage to do the same next year?

    SM2IXM
    /Lennart

  2. Haha, I doubt I will have any chance to double my score πŸ™‚ However it was fun to probably win Europe and it was quite close to the European record, so maybe next year I can give it a try to beat it.

    Cu in the contests!