12/17/2002 | KI7N/5 For me, the start of the 10 GHz and up contest is marked by my attendance of a North Texas Microwave Society meeting in the spring of 2002, several months before the contest began. I had always been interested in operating at 10 Ghz and above, but I never quite got there. The club was organizing a DEMI club buy, and I decided to participate in the buy, and commit to a 10 GHz DEMI x-verter that could be used with my FT-817. A few short weeks later, during another NTMS event in April, Al, W5LUA handed my unassembled DEMI kit to me. When I got home and unpacked it, I thought, wow, how will I ever deal with these pipe caps. After all, in my one bedroom apartment, all I had for tools was a simple soldering iron, and a few common hand tools. So, I set the DEMI kit aside for about 3 months while I pondered this problem. I finally went to Sears (where else?) to buy a tap and drill set to prepare the caps. Then, my friend Bob, WA5YWC, invited me to his place in Plano where he had a standard heat gun. This did the trick. My pipe caps were in place on the 10 GHz RF board. Within a few weeks, I had the LO board, RF board, and the front panel board complete. Now all that was needed was tuning and testing. My friend John, K5ZMJ, helped me get my filters tuned at his place. Shortly thereafter, I went to Al's place to check the noise figure, and do some final tweaking. It was in Al's garage where we tested my x-vtr and 817 together, along with a small horn antenna that I borrowed from WA5VJB. Everything worked, so I was ready for the contest!

I operated as a rover since I wanted to see how the 10 GHz band operated as I drove further and further from the Nortel building in Richardson, TX, where N5PYK and WA5YWC were operating. I was using a 2-meter HT as liaison on a simplex frequency (as well as 2-meter SSB). To my surprise, I found that the 5-watt power output of the 2-meter HT was weaker to the Nortel Building than using only 10 mW into the small horn antenna on 10 GHz. I later found a Technical Correspondence piece written by KK7B to explain this: Does Path Loss Increase with Frequency? Jan 1991 QST.

Getting on the air for this contest proved to me that one can get on 10 GHz with simple equipment, and a great deal can be learned along the way. Much was learned about microwave circuit topology, assembly techniques, and 10 GHz propagation. I am grateful to my friends at NTMS for helping me to get started on this band. I have included one photo. This photo shows my simple setup sitting on my car while parked alongside Interstate-35E, just south of Dallas, TX. The FT-817, which completes the station, is not seen in the photo.

One hint for next time: I was using the FT-817 not only as my IF for the 10 GHz station, but also for 2M SSB liaison. I had to convince people on the primary 2 Meter SSB liaison frequency to switch to my HTs FM frequency while I switched the FT-817 for use as the IF. Having another 2M SSB rig to dedicate for 2M SSB liaison would have been very helpful. In fact, I think a few contacts were missed because I was off of the 2 Meter SSB liaison frequency for extended periods of time while using the 2M SSB rig as my IF. -- KI7N