12/12/2006 | WA5WCP Greetings from the small dish category: The second weekend of the contest was better. Even though there were dupes, I ended with 15 QSOs on 1296 MHz, all on CW.

Worked: G4CCH, HB9BBD, VE6TA, K5JL, SM4DHN, K2UYH, K5GW, K0YW, G3LTF, F2TU, WA6PY, OK1DFC, OK1CA, OZ4MM, and OE9ERC. HNW a bunch of other guys..

As I only had 5 Qs from the first leg due to a lot of reasons, I checked my system and changed a couple of things: The second weekend I was running WD5WGO's / VE4MA style feed with scalar ring. I wanted to get a few comparisons with the Square Septum with scalar I had been using up till now.

Also checked my xmitted power with a directional coupler at the amplifier out and at the feed. I had been using 200 to 210W indicated on the Bird 43 with a 1GHz slug, and I knew it was not absolute, so this was the check with pretty interesting results: I was actually getting about 230W at the amp... Also, I had replaced the flex link to the dish just before the first weekend and the first moonrise of the second weekend apparently I was using 45W at the feed! Fixing the flex link gave me 135W at the feed which is probably what I have had all along.. even during the NE trip I most likely had less than 150W at the best! Needless to say, this will be improved.

The optimization of the new feed on sun noise gave maybe 0.25 db more than the square septum with scalar. I also covered the central hole of my dish (was open for all operations up to now with maybe 0.5 db sun increase) and also found an improvement due to a SMA to N adapter that was not the best. Bottom line was that I am seeing more than 1db more sun/cs than before and it seems that I heard a lot more stations during this second weekend of the contest. First moon rise sounded more like the low end of 20m, and even with low xmit power this first night, I had 10Qs!.. . I think I am hearing better, but my signal is probably not as strong and the trade of best feed position for xmit versus rcv is on going.. The big stations were very loud.. 3S plus above the noise! All measurement of Sun/SC were with a GR-1236 and DEM 1296-28 xvtr.

I found this contest was great fun.. even thought I didn't do as well as last year, slowly I am coming up a learning curve and the EME bug is biting big time. A number of improvements are being considered before our next "on the road" adventure.

73s and thanks to all the guys that keep on trying to dig us small guys out of the mud. My fun meter is still pegged at max.

Paul wa5wcp

10 ft, 0.3db nf, 135W and not sure which feed I like best.. yet. -- WA5WCP