July 17, 2020
I was looking for a project to keep occupied during these strange times and taking up the 222 MHz challenge seemed like fun. It took a few months to get all the pieces to Montana, and to build up an amplifier, but I think I'm ready. Tomorrow I'll set the station up out at a friend's ranch, tune the Yagi for best SWR, and see what we've got.
Basically the station is a IC-7300 serving as the 28 MHz IF, a Q5 transverter, and a 800 watt LDMOS amp based on a W6PQL module. The antenna is a 20 element Yagi graciously supplied by N9HF. I'm missing a pre-amp, but the transverter has a decent noise figure, and I should have one soon.
Update: It's alive! The pre-amp arrived, I debugged the station and fixed a bad "N" connector and so far have worked five stations on a combination of meteor scatter and tropo out to 918 miles. On moonbounce K1OR, N9HF, and N0AKC have been worked.
Immediate plans are to haul the gear up to the Beartooth Plateau (WY, DN54fw) for the August Perseids meteor shower and make some noise.
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| My first 222 Mhz EME contact with K1OR. |
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| The bench test was successful. 4 watts drive = 700+ watts out. |