Tag Archives: Station Building

Antennas, Featured, General, Newsletter, Space, Station Equipment

EME Station 2.0 Part 5 – Control Cables and Rotator Controller

Snow is coming to New England this weekend so we wanted to get the control cables run to our new EME Tower before the ground is covered with snow. The project involved installing a Utility Enclosure…

Source: EME Station 2.0 Part 5 – Control Cables and Rotator Controller

We made some more progress on our 2m EME Station Project this past weekend. We began by installing a Utility Controller on our new EME Tower. With this done, we next ran three control cables through the conduits between our shack and the Tower. The control cables connect to our Azimuth Rotator, Elevation Rotator, and a planned MAP65 Switching and Preamp System.

Green Heron Az-El Rotator Controller
Green Heron Az-El Rotator Controller

With the cables run, we connected our Azimuth Rotator to a Green Heron Az/El Rotator Controller in our shack. This enabled us to get our Azimuth Rotator configured and tested.

You can read more about this part of our EME Station Project via the link above.

The next step in our EME Station Project will be to assemble the antennas that we have on order from M2 Antennas Systems and install them along with an H-Frame and related gear on our new Tower. We are hoping that the winter weather will allow us to get this done before spring.

Fred, AB1OC

Antennas, Featured, Field Day, General, Newsletter, Station Equipment

Winter Field Day VHF+ Preparations

We are continuing to make progress on our preparation for VHF+ Operations at Winter Field Day (WFD) 2020. We had a lot of fun on the VHF+ bands at WFD 2019 and we are planning to add some more bands for our operation this year.

New Winter Field Day VHF+ Mast

Jamey AC1DC Next To New Winter Field Day VHF+ Mas
Jamey AC1DC Next To New WFD VHF+ Mas

Jamey, AC1DC an I put together a new mast and antennas for the VHF+ bands this weekend. Our new mast comes from Max-Gain Systems. It is a little over 30 ft high and is guyed at 2 levels. We can rotate the mast at the base using the arm-strong method. We’ll be feeding the mast with LMR-600 coax.

Winter Field Day VHF+ Antenna Details
VHF+ Antenna Details

Our VHF+ mast holds yagi antennas for the 23cm, 33cm, and 1.25m bands.

M2 Antennas 222-7EZ Yagi for Winter Field Day VHF+
M2 Antennas 222-7EZ Yagi

Jerry, K1OKD and I assembled a new 220 MHz Yagi for this setup last weekend. We are using rear-mounted yagis on our mast to simplify mounting and feedline connections and to keep the overall weight on the mast at a reasonable level.

With 50 – 100w in, these antennas will produce 450 – 2500 watts of effective radiated power.

Transverters and Transceivers

33cm Transverter
33cm Transverter

The Transverters for our VHF+ station have also arrived from Q5 Signal. The unit shown above is for the 33cm (902 MHz) band.

33cm Transverter Rear Panel
33cm Transverter Rear Panel

Transverters upconvert transmitted and downconvert received signals from one frequency band to another (ex. from the 33cm band to the 28 Mhz or the 10m Band). They also typically include a power amplifier stage that generates 25w – 50w of output power on the target band.

Our station will use transverters along with an Elecraft KX3 Transceiver to put us on three VHF+ bands as well as to add an additional 100W HF Transceiver to our WFD Setup. We will also have an Icom IC-9100 Transceiver to cover the HF, 6m, 2m, 70cm, and 23cm bands.

The Winter Field Day Team is planning some station testing sessions in the near future to get all of our HF and VHF+ rigs ready. All Nashua Area Radio Society Members are invited to join us for these sessions to learn more about the equipment that we use at Field Day. We’ll post information in our Field Day Forum and on our Calendar as these sessions are scheduled.

You can read more about our plans for Winter Field Day 2020 in Jerry’s article here on our Blog.

See you at Winter Field Day!

Fred, AB1OC

Antennas, Featured, General, Newsletter

EME Station 2.0 Part 4 – New EME Tower Is Complete

Our goal for this phase of our EME Station Project is to get our new tower up, install the Azimuth Rotator and Mast, and run the hardline and coax cables for our antennas from the shack to our new …

Source: EME Station 2.0 Part 4 – New EME Tower Is Complete

We got our new 26 ft EME tower up this past week. The new tower is a hybrid free-standing/guyed design and will support our planned 2M EME Antenna System.

This phase of our project involved:

You can read all about this phase of our project via the link above. The next phase of our project will include running control cables and installing a control cable junction box on the tower, hooking up and testing the rotator, completing our grounding and bonding system, and preparing to install the antennas and tower electronics when they arrive from M2 Antenna Systems.

Fred, AB1OC

 

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