[amsat-bb] new dish up

[Jerry Pixton <jpixton@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,

Got back from two week trip and my new Phillips-Tech Parabolic grid antenna 
was waiting. It is the larger model, SPG-36, dimensions are 32" by 27". 
Spec says 24dB gain, linear. So I got it up on the tower Saturday along 
with a SSB UEK-3000 downconverter and AS-3000 antenna switch to protect it 
from my mistakes.

Yesterday I got to "play radio" for Father's day. So I was able to copy 
several passes of UO-11 about 4 S units above noise level. Have about S5 
noise floor with UEK-3000 turned on. Used the attenuator on the FT847 to 
bring noise floor down to about S1. Then last evening I was able to copy 
telemetry from AO-40 with good CRCs and squint around 30 to 40 but range 
was only 25K or so. I was so excited I forgot to see how strong the signal 
was. But by the time squint got past 40 then no more good CRC.

Will clean up all my haywire lash-up this week so I can get some better 
measurements.

AO-40 sounded just as good on S band as it used to before Xmas on my old 
Cushcraft VHF antenna.

Now to think about a helix feed for this thing. That 44 inches of RG-213 
cable from the dipole feed to the Pre-amp has got to be very lossy.

Jerry, W6IHG
------------------------------------------
Dr. Jerry R. Pixton, PIXOS Designs LLC
http://www.pixos.com/designs/
jpixton@shentel.net
------------------------------------------

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