SK0QO Club Meeting with Coffee

The Löfbergs Lila company, one of the biggest Swedish coffee roasters, is the owner of a restored Citroën van from the 60´s. With it they travel to public places and letting people taste their coffee brands. This time, on May 19, they visited the ham radio club SK0QO meeting on Gålö south of Stockholm. Before this visit banners were set up in city centers all over Sweden. See photo above.

Photo above from Löfbergs Lila on Facebook

It was a nice and sunny Saturday and radio activities were moved outside.

This stump hosted a military HF all mode 20 W portable transceiver, 

the Hughes PRC-104 from the 70´s.

No problem having a QSO at this short distance :-)

Back From the Future

Yesterday I had a very very strange dream. A young man knocked on my door, presented him as Kjell, SM05FOB and told me that I am his dad´s grandfather´s son and that he had been on a DXpedition to the Moon recently. He is looking for the ancestor of Linda, W88DX, who disappeard with her sailing boat shortly after a QSO with the DXpedition. So he now asked me to find her ancestor and bring with me her QSL card as a back from the future memory from the Moon adventure. An adventure to celebrate 100 years since the Millenium.

No time for a talk with my close future relative as he just vanished away in front of me. Believe me or not, but when I woke up this QSL card was on my bedside table! It is nice to know that they are still using printed QSL cards 88 years from now. Maybe time machines are invented at that time? As one scientist has explained: You cannot walk forwards and at the same time walk backwards. I now believe that this is a wrong statement :-)

To Radio: W88DX/mm QSO # 00294 Recorded at: AMSAT SUPERSERVER M-2 Confirming our Moon - Earth Mobile QSO

Operator: SM07EPU, CHARLIE Remarks: TNX FB QSO DR LINDA!  NICE 3D-VR VIEW FROM UR SAILING BOAT. CUAGN! QSL: PSE QSL QSL Man.: SM51ANN, BERT, VR-email: SM51ANN@@SSA.SE
E-DAY	E-MONTH	E-YEAR	E-UTC	BAND	RST	2-WAY MODE
2	January	2100	22.03.17	47 GHz	59	3D-VR AMSAT SPACELINK-4

SK0CC/Lunar Mobile DXpedition Info
QTH	Moon, Taurus Littrow Valley, 20.16 deg N, 30.77 deg E.  See 3D Picture. The valley is located on the southeastern edge of Sea of Serenity and was formed when an asteroid or a comet, big as a mountain, hit the Moon nearly 4 billion years ago.
Rig	KENYAEICO RF Processor UBX4O. The most advanced amateur radio RF processor available. Capable of all amateur transmit and receive modes in all bands. The modulation mode used for the 3D Virtual Reality contacts was SS-VOFDM-2048QAM. Output power 5 W on 47GHz.  HassNik 3D-VR processor PIX908 with full global view. Resolution 12,000 lines within 90 deg global view. Transmission rate 8.6 Gbit/s. LOGGER BOB-VIII 5643 TB RF-recorder &  QSO-Logg Server linked to AMSAT SUPER SERVER M-2. GEABB Micro Fuel Cell He2-B4 power supply.
Antenna	HyCush Active Beam Flat Panel Antenna YAG54-2. 45.5 dBi on 47 GHz.
Space - Earth Link	47 GHz up/downlink to AMSATMOB III, the AMSAT Satellite Network for Mobile Ultra-IP Communications at all locations on Earth.
Lunar Rover	The 128 years old Lunar Rover from the Apollo 17 mission was found by the DXpedition on December, 2099 and took 5 days to restore, equip and be ready for operation. The LRV was designed and built by Boeing and NASA´s Marshall Spaceflight Center. The terrestrial empty weight is 210 kg and 32 kg on the Moon. It is battery powered and maximum speed is 10-12 kilometers per hour.
DXpedition	On December 11, 1972 the astronauts Eugene Cernan, Mission Commander, and Harrison Schmitt, Lunar Module Pilot and Scientist in Geology, landed on the Moon, while Ronald Evans, Command Module Pilot, was parked in lunar orbit. Listen to this voice recording when Cernan took his first steps on the Moon. This Apollo 17 mission marked the final of the Apollo program and was the most successful. They stayed for 75 hours on the Moon, traveled 36 kilometers with the Lunar Rover and returned to Earth with 116 kilograms of lunar samples.To celebrate these brave men and to make it possible for radio amateurs on Earth to contact radio amateurs on the Moon by utilizing highly advanced communications technology, a Swedish amateur radio expedition was established. Expedition members are members of the Swedish Amateur Radio Club Station SK0CC, founded in 1971. In total 763 contacts were made from the Lunar Rover and 7,543 contacts from the base camping site. The success of this DXpedition was made possible by the generous assistance from NASA and personnel from the U.S. research center Base Alpha 1A on the Moon, by donations from organizations, the industry and from thousands of radio amateurs.
Historical Sources	Lunar Surface Journal - Lunar and Planetery Institute

Extremely High Frequencies

Some hams are breaking new frontiers by going up to extremely high frequency bands. In Sweden, Per, SM0DFP is one of the few. Last autumn Per set a new Swedish distance record on 47 GHz. The distance was 55 km over the Baltic Sea with 599/599 reports taking advantage of sea level ducting. The wave length is only 6 mm. The day before the first QSO between SM (Sweden) and OH0 (Åland Islands) took place on 47 GHz. The distance was then 44 km. On the other side on Åland Islands was Pertti, OH2AXH located with his 60 mW QRO (!) portable station. Per is a very skilled technician and also a contester on 1296 MHz and up. On this occasion also the first SM-OH0 QSO on 24 GHz took place. I do not have any info about Pertti´s background, but I suppose he can be ranked in the same division as Per. What took place at Per´s locations can be seen in the video below.



SM0DFP fixed station (JP90jc)
24 GHz: 0.5 W, 40 cm dish, 40 m a.s.l.
47 GHz: 0.2 mW, 25 cm dish, 8 dB NF, 40 m a.s.l.

SM0DFP portable station (JP90jc)
47 GHz: 20 mW, 20 cm offset dish (TX), 25 cm dish (RX), 5 m a.s.l.

OH0/OH2AXH portable station (JP90sf and JP90vc)
24 GHz: 1 W, 40 cm dish, 2 m a.s.l.
47 GHz: 60 mW, 25 cm dish, 8 dB NF, 2 m a.s.l.

Per is a member of SK0CT, an Ericsson Amateur Radio Club, located in Kista 10 km NW of Stockholm. Please visit Per´s interesting pages on the SK0CT web site, the section SM0DFP/Propagation for further reading.

I never reached higher frequencies than in the 1.3 GHz band. This was my setup in the living room (!) in beginning of 1978. I managed to have one QSO with the 1.2 m dish. The transmitter end stage was a homebuilt diode tripler. The diode consisted of at least 20 together soldered 1N4148s. The output power must have been in the range of only 1 mW. I think the QSO distance was ca. 40 km. Please note the 1 5/8" coaxial cables running over the sofa. Of course my wife did not like this setup, but my kids seemed to do that.

This is a terrible dish construction from the same year! It never worked. Now looking in my old logbooks I found that I had a QSO on 1.3 GHz on 15 June in 1978 with Per. I was on a hilltop and the antenna was of a helix type. My distance record on 1.3 GHz is 600,000 km set on 12 October, 2008, but this was via the Moon! The antenna then was a 1.8 m mesh dish and with 70 W at the antenna input.
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Getting rid of plasma-tv noise

In my previous post I described the terrible disturbing noise from a plasma hd-tv in the neighbourhood. Today I tried to reduce this noise by using an active magloop antenna for receive only and compare it with a car mounted whip antenna. The magloop is of a commercial military surplus type. It has an in-built HF amplifier which needs 20 V DC supply via the coaxial cable. One advantage with a magloop is that it does not pick up electrostatic noise, e.g. from a plasma tv. When pointed to a transmitting source  better reception can be achieved. I performed the comparison on the 7 MHz band. The result is shown in the video clip below. In the end of this clip you can listen to a pile-up for Kenth, SM7CMV/p in a nature reserve (JO75ak) in southern Sweden, 428 km away from my QTH (JO99bd). I managed to have QSO with him on CW. The car antenna was used for transmit and the magloop for receive. I got 599 and I gave him 559. I used a manual coaxial switch to switch between antennas. I was a little bit afraid of that I possibly would do something wrong so that transmit power (50 W) would pass to the magloop amplifier output. Also if the amplifier would be harmed by the strong near HF field from the car antenna. But nothing of that happened:-)


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Beware of Plasma TV´s

Beware of plasma tv´s! They are intruders on our HF bands! My neighbour is the lucky owner of a 50" plasma hd tv. This tv makes it impossible for me to use the hf bands. I have tried different antennas. A big antenna makes the situation even more worse than illustrated in the video clip above. I have read that it is almost impossible to cure this situation. I will not bother to tell my friendly neighbour. I am sure of that he then will throw away his tv. For sure, it is more important that he can use his tv than I can use my ham radio station. It is the manucturers of these bad designad plasma tv´s to blame.
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HP 1741A Oscilloscope

Performed some simple tests (see video clip below) with the Hewlett-Packard 1741A Oscilloscope (100 MHz) and collected information.

Hewlett-Packard Journal September 1976 (PDF)
1741A Oscilloscope Operating and Service Manual (PDF)

I did not check the HP Active Probe 41800A 5 Hz - 500 MHz together with power supply HP 1121.

Agilent 41800A Atcive Probe - Operation Note (PDF)

Kjell & Company, a Swedish electronics shop, sells a cheap, ca. 40 USD, oscilloscope 100 MHz probe set called Uni-T oscilloskop-prob.
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Mini Boombox

Sometimes it is good to have better audio quality and higher sound level from devices like smartphones, tablets etc.. Logitech has developed a small powerful loudspeaker with interesting capabilities. It is called Mini Boombox. The audio can be wireless connected by Bluetooth (A2DP profile) or by cable. As it has an in-built microphone it can serve as speakerphone together with e.g. a smartphone. I have tried that with an iPad 2 and Skype. The Bluetooth range is rather long. I could have the Boombox staying connected to my iPad 2 in my kitchen even when bringing it up on second floor. In my car I have used the speaker Bluetooth connected to my Ipad 2 when navigating with the Garmin Navigator app. As I am a birder this small powerful speaker will be nice to use playing bird songs to lure birds, possibly being watched or photographed. Soon it is time here to go birding for owls!

The Mini Boombox has an in-built battery, which can be charged from an USB output or from a wall charger (is supplied). Charging time is specified being 4 hours for 10 hours of operation. In Sweden the price for a Boombox is ca. 100 USD.
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