G4BAO.COM
Microwave Amateur Radio Station, Waterbeach. 8km North Of Cambridge JO02cg
To Contact me:
Skype johng4bao
E-mail john at g4bao dot com
Welcome to G4BAO's Amateur Radio Website
Microblog, 3rd February 2012
Been a while since I waffled on the website, but nothing really exciting to report, what with Christmas and all that. Thanks to the CUWS for hosting my talk "The Bodger's Guide to Amateur Microwaves" last night at Caius. The slides are available to download here, and I'm told it will shortly be appearing on the Camb-Hams YouTube channel. Had a great time and was inmpressed with the enthusiam of the under-30s in that group. There is hope for the future of our hobby!2012 GS3PYE/P Camb Hams DXpedition Recently I've been making plans to take a serious 10GHz station to The Isle of Mull, IO66VH between April 28th and 5th of May as part of the 2012 GS3PYE/P Camb Hams DXpedition. I would guess that IO66 has not been activated on 10GHz before but I could be wrong. Keep an eye on the Camb-Hams website for details of operation. Thanks to Dave, G4HUP who's lent me the "bits" to put together a 10Watt station. The deal is, I build it, use it on Mull then give him back a working system to bolt on his mast. More activity from JO02 will then follow hopefully!
Hardware I'm working on modifying some QRO 1900MHz SSPAs for 13cms. I plan to donate these to EME2012 as raffle/door prizes and publish the mods in due course. I've submitted a paper on this work to EME 2012, so it may get chosen, who knows, the competition for papers is very tough with over 30 submitted so far!
I'm also starting modifications to some Band III Harris SSPAs for 144MHz for the Camb-Hams and CUWS.
Activity news
On 9cm on
22nd November in the SHF UKAC I finally worked Ralph G4ALY
(IO7ØVL) 365km via aircraft scatter. Ralph is always a consistent signal
on 23cm here in Waterbeach, but 9cm has always eluded us. The path is over
On 3cms there have
been some winter rain scatter produced by storms in the
On 24GHz, sadly it’s been a case of listening for beacons. The Martlesham team very kindly re-oriented the GB3MHK 24GHz horn to point at me, and I’ve started to receive it over a very obstructed path when conditions are suitable, mainly via rain scatter. The beacon is currently low of its nominal frequency at 24048.817MHz and remarkably is inside the equipment room pointing through double glazing!
On 10 and 24 I use a 45cm Sky dish, with the W1GHZ dual band feed; on 24GHz a Thales transceiver unit housed in a box along with the DB6NT 12GHz multiplier and a Relcom WR28 waveguide relay. Control is via a PIC controller housed in the 10GHz box just under the dish.
Still haven't repaired my 23cm system antenna (too damn cold!) so no activity on that band until next Spring when I also plan to return to 70MHz.
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