Spring, bees, work on the Inband coax

   We had got another fine weekend full of work. Very big thanks to Petr OK2ULQ and Palos OK2PMU for the support. We can now use CATV coax for inband and beverages! On Sunday we checked bees and had also some BBQ :)

 

 New currants from my grandfather and inband coaxes..

 Bees :)

On the way home :)

ICOM IC-7600 : NO TX power - repairing, part 2

   I lost RF power on my ICOM IC-7600 a few weeks ago. I ordered BGA-616 MMIC from BY and today I could repaire it. I was also thinking about some protection. MMIC was maybe damaged from the front - too high input signal? I have decided to add two antiparellel diodes. Because of voltage for PIN diode switching I had to add capacitor in series. Connected to R210 - R209 point. I do not know if it could help or not, but it does not have any bad effect on the signal distortion. I measured output signal on the J201 connector. There are harmonic signals from TX one on 14 MHz. Look at the pictures. I also measured output signal spectrum on 14 MHz with 110W output power.

Output spectrum on 20m with 110W of RF power

signals on J201 - BGA616 output, TX on 14 MHz

* add +3dB ... I used 3dB ATT

signals on J201 - BGA616 output, TX on 14 MHz + diodes protection

* add +3dB ... I used 3dB ATT

EA RTTY test OL9A, spring is coming... work, work

    Spring is here! We hope! :) We planted a cherry tree last week which started our 4th trees' line. This week I was alone at QTH. I was feeling really ill but I had some planes... First of all there was problem in the kitchen. I removed the sink and glued the desk. Than I placed sink back on silicon paste.

 I do have a lot of planes with the INBAND system. The main problem is the coax line. We have to go through the field and than about 200m via the old unkempt wood. Our inband will be just for RX and I use old army 75 Ohm coax. There wil be antennas for all bands and wifi remote switching - more in the next articles :)

 Bees are already working faster than me! :)

   And finally there was EA RTTY contest!  I wanted to run EA PSK contest before, but I was ill :( I was not feeling well in RTTY part too, but I had run! :) WX was nice so I spent a few hours in the wood with the inband coax and than setuped the station. Conditions looked fine during the first day and I made 292 QSOs. As the last times... made W6 CA stations was more easy than EC stations! We have to play with another antennas for that !?! I waked up in 3:00 UTC. Just looked at my IC-7800 waterfall and turned around in the bed :) Scope was simply black. The same after 30min, next 30min and and.. Band opened in abt 05:00 UTC but really slowly and not as well as I expected... QSOs had too big QSB and I am sorry too many stations I did not logged into log. The same NA later afternoon, no big opening! Only a few stations with WC " vibrating " sound from EC. Anyway nice contest and nice rare DXCC on RTTY. Thanks all for call! Just one thing at the end. I wanted to go for the new record, but it will not be easy with the change of rules - now all QSOs are 1 point, before change there were 2 points outside own continent? CU next time!

 

* plus one EAP for HQ, log did not know it?