March 30, 2024
The new amp rocks with in excess of 500watts, so I threw the station into the truck and drove northwest to Canyon Ferry Lake for moonrise on March 25th. The 902 noise was down, the wind was down, the moon came up, and I failed ... again. I had lots of callers including W5LUA with his best of band signal, but I heard nil, and was heard by none. Hmmm, that's a hint - I'm not on frequency.
Sure enough, at N1AV's urging, I checking the local oscillator settings in the SG transverter. I was only 24 Mhz off frequency. The change of one, stinking, shorting block was the cure. Note to self: RTFM, it's only four pages!
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| A pretty, too quiet, early spring evening on Canyon Ferry Lake DN46fj. |
I re-grouped and on March 27th, from my local operating spot here in Bozeman, I made four 902 Mhz EME contacts. This gave N1AV his 50th State for W.A.S. award #5 on 33cm, and I added a sixth band to my EME exploits. Others worked were W5LUA, W2HRO, and KU4XO.
Noise is still an issue, but the road to the mountain cabin north of Yellowstone Park gets better everyday as the snow and ice melt off and the mud dries out. That has to be a great spot to get away from the RF smog. I'm looking forward to operating from that high, off-the-grid perch.