information about Ham Radio equipment
May 08 2017
Last weekend I’ve performed some antenne maintenance. The LNA’s for 144 and 432 MHz are in place. I also mounted a small 15-elements antenna for 1296 MHz (23cm). During the contest last weekend I was able to make a QSO with Belgium, Germany and England with only 10 Watts of power and no LNA. I even …
Apr 26 2017
Today the preamps for 144 and 432 MHz arrived from Wimo. They are manufactured by the German SHF-Elektronik and powered via the coax-line (My Icom IC-9100 supports 12 volt over coax). Both units have a VOX unit so no need for a seperate PTT-line (for now). Now I only have to find some time to …
Feb 05 2017
Today I’ve made some progress by replacing the antenna tower on the roof. It’s now rotatable. The Diamond X6000 has been replaced for the X5000 so the total length doesn’t exceed the 5 meter due to regulations to keep it license free without the need for a building permit. The 9-element LFA for 144 MHz and the …
Oct 18 2016
The new ATV station for 6cm consists of: 23cm UniTX transmitter for 1400 MHz uplink DG0VE Frequency multiplier DG0VE amplifier: 60 mWatt > 600 mWatt Final amplifier: 150 mWatt > 14 Watt SMA coax relay to switch between TX and RX RX converter 5,7 -> 1,0 GHz with pre-amp Some sensors for temperature, fan control, …
Aug 06 2016
The Hytera MD785(G) DMR transceiver works great out of the box, both analogue as digital. But there is one problem. Noise coming out of the speaker. Even when the tansceivers audio gain botton is set to zero. When the squelch opens, noise can be heard. There is no way to fix this in the firmware …
Jul 14 2016
Since last month I’m QRV on 2302 MHz to, with help from the LZ5HP transverter. Next is to build an SSPA based on ex 3G/UMTS equipment. The modules and 24VDC PSU is there. I only need to find the right heatsink.
Jun 29 2016
Developments for DMR and D-Star hotspots go fast. I already owned a UHF hotspot from PE1PLM which fits on top of the Raspberry Pi. With custom firmware, this also works with MMDVM software thus DMR. A new toy is the BlueStack, developed by PE1MSZ and sold via CombiTronics.nl. Put the DVMEGA (UHF) transmitter on top of …
Jun 10 2016
To work more portable on UHF+ and SHF (and to have a nice transceiver to feed the LZ5HP 13cm transverter) I’ve bought an Yeasu FT-817nd at the Hamshop. Within two days, the 0.5PPM TXCO arrived from England via Ebay. I bought tis unit because the IC-9100 isn’t a great transceiver to use with HF. As well as …
Oct 29 2015
A few months back I switched from a magnetic loop antenna to a vertical one. There were two main reasons to do so. The first one is the ability to be able to remotely tune the antenna. With the I3VHF-loop I wasn’t able to. The second reason was to have support for the 80 (and soon …
Sep 15 2015
The last post has been a while now. I was busy preparing the annual Balloonfoxhunt and helping Mischa (PA1OKZ) out with expanding the PI2NOS repeater system. Last week a package arrived from Hamshop, the distributor for the DV4mini USB stick in the Netherlands and Belgium. Time to start playing around… What is the DV4mini The …
Apr 20 2015
I’m busy building an inverted L antenna. Going about 10 meters up and 10 meters horizontal. This gives me the possibility to work on the 80-meter and 160-meter band, using a CG-3000 tuner. I’m currently using about 2x 12 meters of wire as counterpose. This will be a bit more in the near future, but …
Apr 13 2015
Some pictures from the MLA-T Magnetic Loop Antenna. You can see the stepper motor (with 1:600 delay), the feedlines from the N (Yes, N, not PL) connectors and the extension capacitor with shunt for operations on the 160-meter band.
Apr 11 2015
PI6ATS, a locat ATV repeater, has a new VHF-antenne. The operators used an old indoor horizontal loop / halo antenna for audio reception on 144.7625 MHz. This wasn’t the best situation, since many people had a way stronger signal on 13cm then on VHF, if the repeater could receive a signal (1750 HZ tone) at …
Apr 11 2015
After cleaning the garage yesterday, I found the – after one year still boxed – MLA-T Magnetic Loop Antenna. Hope to have time this weekend to test things out. First thing to do is find a good point to fix the coupling loop, since this model has no gamma match like mentioned on the Wimo …
Dec 08 2014
Last week I’ve received the first hardware to do some comparisons between several wireless links we’re going to roll out in 2015 to create a HAMNET-backbone in the Netherlands. For testing I’ve ordered a Ubiquiti Nanobeam M5 with 40mm dish (25 dBi) and a Mikrotik SXT Lite5 set. Both operate on 5 GHz only and …
