06/19/2009 | WA2FGK The week before the contest, I spent 8 hours on one of our towers rearranging our 432 quad so I could raise the 5 and 10 gig system. We got the dish and amp box up top on Saturday morning. I turned everything on and at 18:00 Z I started operating 50 megs. Six meters was hot so I stayed there until a guy asked me to QSY to 144 megs. I throw the 8877 on and saw no high voltage.. Ouch
To make a long story short, a mouse built a nest in our 4,000 volt power supply, and blew out my rectifiers.. It took me several hours to replace the rectifiers and a resistor. I put the HV back in place and now I have HV but no power. Turns out resistors blew out in the Henry 3002 amp. I never got the amp working until 10 am local time on Sunday morning.. BTW, I used this amp all winter working hundreds of stations on EME.. Well since the contest was a total wipeout, I relaxed and ran until it was over. I finished just short of 600 contacts which was terrific since I was off for 8 hours of operating time..
I want to apologize to everyone I had skeds with..
This was an improvement over the January VHF SS.. I was iced up and could not operate at all..
Six has been open so it's time to hunt DX
See everyone next time, GOD willing
Herb K2LNS
Station mgr for WA2FGK FN21
One last item. I was tickled pink to have worked quite a few guys on 10 gig. A new band for this ham radio op of 52 years -- K2LNS