This is even more Bonkers than before!

Well,

You may recall my recent declaration "it doesn't get more bonkers than this", well, perhaps it might.

My latest interest in bouncing RF of Meteors has expanded a little. I've decided to have a bash at this insanity at higher frequencies so I have bough myself one of these:

http://www.innovantennas.com/lfa-benefits.html

So, today the mast came down and the antennas came off:

A new stub mast was installed and the 2M beam constructed. I chose InnovAntennas because the beam I have for 4M and 6M seems so good I thought I would stick with what I know. The quality is excellent and the ease of assembly was superb.

There's no connector at the feedpoint of these InnovAntennas to minimise losses and mismatch, so you prepare the coax thus:

Anyhow, there's a new antenna atop of the mast:

To accompany the antenna I have also bought the matching amplifier of my 4M and 6M amplifier, the Gemini 2 from Linear Amp (DX Shop):

Initial tests show no unwanted interaction between the antennas and an excellent low SWR on the new beam.

The amplifier is delivering a good 300W on 144MHz:

So hopefully I can have a good play.

Cat's been keeping a watch on proceedings:

Fun, egh?

Meteor Scatter - You can't be serious?

Well,

Meteor Scatter has for a long time been established as one mode of radio communication (this is bouncing signals back down to Earth off Meteors) used by the elite. You used to need a large hill, about 10-12 Gigawatts of power and a huge antenna system for your chosen band.

Not any more.

The amazing modes in the WSJT family have made MS more accessible to Muppets like myself.

So, after modifying a few switches and cables in the Shack, I have my TS590 routed to my Linear Amplifier that I acquired back here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/how-much-power.html

This now allows me to run full legal UK power on 6M to the 4 + 4 element antenna I got here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/thatll-never-work-will-it.html

So, I then did some research and found this excellent talk in video format from the recent RSGB convention, this is GW8JLY talking about his MS experiences on 144MHz:

http://vimeo.com/77358505

I also have downloaded, printed and studied the WSJT user guide. Here are some screen shots of my MS experience from this morning:

So the bit I have circled in the image above is the signals from DL5WP, you can clearly see a burst of received signals. Here is the other window in WSJT7 showing the decoding of those signals:

There's also a chat room for MS nutters here:

http://www.on4kst.org/chat/index.php

Where you can arrange QSOs and discuss MS stuff.

This morning I've worked DL5WP in Germany and S59A in Slovenia.

Thanks Chaps!

JT what - Ah, JT9!

Well,

A while ago I had a play with JT9 - its a cousin of the popular JT65. JT65 was designed for V/UHF comms and JT9 was designed for L/MF. Now JT65 has proved popular on the HF bands generally, and , for example on 20M, you would find JT65 with a dial frequency on USB of 14.076. Now, JT9 is typically found 2KHz above this, so on 20M this would need a dial frequency of 14.078.

The latest and greatest piece of software from the gang that develop the WSJT software, more specifically WSJT-X, have now included a bi-lingual feature! The software can receive both JT65 and JT9 at the same time!

To do this you need a radio capable of a wide RX - 4KHz required here for the full spectrum of both types of transmission. I have completely failed to find  way to do this with my FT-DX-3000, but have managed to get the FT-DX-5000 configured to do this.

I hoped to do this in PKT mode, but the width is fixed at a maximum of 2.4KHz in this mode, but in USB you can set the bandwidth to 4KHz (I struggled to see this full bandwidth in the waterfall until I remembered that I had a 3KHz roofing filter in line - doh!).

So, here is a screen shot from the latest WSJT-X:

including my first JT9 QSO with CT1FBK - thanks Miguel! The JT9 signals are to the right of the blue line at 2500Hz in the smaller window with the JT65 signals to the left.

Now, most (if not all) commercial SSB transceivers include an audio filter in the TX path, this means that the radio cannot generate the tones over the necessary spectrum for both JT65 and JT9 with a single dial frequency. To get round this the software includes CAT interfacing and you run the radio in split mode, using VFO A for RX and VFO B for TX. When you TX in JT9 the dial frequency on the TX VFO is altered and the appropriate tones generated.

Simply genius!