PA0O ham radio

FW0NAR/P    7031 CW  op de valreep    very good ears   in a lot of QRI again

listening  3512kHz  for ZK2C  nothing heard this morning Might have been the last chance  this  FB expedition  ends 17-2-2012 Bad luck all the earth magnetic disturbances   since the good 80M copy of VP6T  it has not got good again. heard very clear 539/549 signal  ZL3NB  working G's  at 3505  RX loop direction  S-W  long path On the TX antenna hardly detected in the noise WSPR 28 this morning 2012-02-16 10:04   PA0O   28.126166   -17   0   JO33hg   1   VK3XPT   QF22nd   16426   78 2012-02-16 09:12   PA0O   28.126178   -1   0   JO33hg   1   A45WT   LL93   5462   106   2012-02-16 09:24   PA0O   28.126176   -20   0   JO33hg   1...

No VK at all this morning. The solar magnetic storm cleared all. Yesterday morning  ZK2C  7012kHz CW  not easy  Great expedition. It will be difficult to get them on 80m tought I heared some weak CW this morning at 80m 3512  ???  must have been my imagination still hangover from the marathon CW PACC run? During PACC Sunday morning I heard FW0NAR at 40 CW very very weak on the K9AY loop working to EU possible I was to late local 10:30 already to have success.  They could not copy me ( PA switched on) I had to  play lumberjack to improve my firewood stock. Heavy job took all evening. Then saw there had been some aurora. Possible i missed some signals at 70MHz. Got some new tuning C  Arco462 and Philips Teflon types. Tried to improve the performance  of the BLF177 Amp Not really could improve it. But could leave out one tuning C  without drop of performance. The Arco462 in the top middle seems to be redundant....

Ben wel een beetje murv nu. CW only en Low Power /K3 power live scores   alleen PI4TUE  en PA6V   lieten de live score zien. http://www.getscores.org/live/

Few days later I changed the coils in the lowpass filter. Almost doubled the inductance from the RFsimm calculated values. Also thicker wire used 1.2mm .  And the Spraque C's replaced by an Arco 80pF compression type trimmer. Now the heat developed is much lower and the efficiency increased to about 50%. Great tool RFsimm99  but still I need to do the old solder work to change real components and test again.  Now the only wish is  having a bit more gain it needs >10W drive for full output.  I can not let out the 1Ohm parasite stopper at the gate. If so i see  oscillations. I tried a wire trough 1 ferrite pearl   with 3 ferrite rings no drive power came through!  1 ring i had power but the ring got hot! Messured 1 wire gives about  70nH (at 500kHz)  Those tiny rings do a lot more then thought! The BLF177 takes a lot RF gate current at low impedance.   A few days  I let it rest it was useless to continue the trial ...

I did replace my old BLX15 power transistor with a modern Power MOS device. The BLF177   the BLX15 has 6dB gain only at 70MHz. While the BLF177 should have over 20dB. After a few days  trying all I could think of to get stable power out of the BLF177 MOS   at 70MHz  the result was  2 melted tuning C's. It sure can generate power this device  but I did not manage to let it  work at the wanted frequency. Many combinations of L and C  where tested. The original circuit was  used for 50MHz relatively  close to 70MHz.  I did not expect major changes in the L and C's  in use. The   2 stage low-pass filter should be almost the same. Of course the bias circuit is different   but simple only a pot-meter to get about 3V at the gate for 500mA. The BLX15 needed the 0.7 PN diode in parallel to get a 500mA bias. I have  edited  an input file with the scattering parameters from the specificati...

423 km to OZ7IT 624km IO90 Will the sunspots left us just before the PACC?  28MHz closes just 2 days before the PACC? Last year just 1 day after the PACC  28 opened.. PACC  next weekend   but propagation  has been  very poor last 2 days.  only  VK6XT  was left  on 28MHz  and very  short open to USA.     80/160m  very poor     160m suffers  almost a radio blackout.    Hope it will improve for the weekend ..