Re: [amsat-bb] AO40 portable

["Art Goldman" <artg@xxxxxxxx>]

Here's another portable option: My friend Steve, WB5GTS, built me a 10 turn
helix. It's wrapped around a fiberglass rod with a piece of PC board as a
reflector. Gain on a network analyzer is about 13dB. The feed is an SMA
female on the PC Board. I hooked that to my 3733 thru a Male-Male SMA
adapter and N connector. The 3733 is taped to the end of the fiberglass rod.
It's a nice, light compact setup. I'll try taking some pictures tomorrow and
posting them.

To test it, I taped it to my az-el boom and compared it to the DEM
preamp/downconverter combo I'm running off the Parabolic grid reflector.
Theoretically, this combo should blast the little helix away. 24dBi antenna
gain; 15 dB preamp gain; 20 dB conversion gain.....read on.

This is strictly subjective, but the signal from the DEM combo has a noise
floor of 3dB, and the beacon at 0230Z was S6 a my location. I switched to
the helix. The noise floor of the 3733 was S1; the beacon was S3. I'm still
scratching my head.

So, portable operation is definitely possible. In fact, yesterday I almost
made a contact using my dual-band Diamond vertical as the 435 uplink
antenna. I forgot I had switched it to the 847 UHF connector earlier in the
week. The station I was calling definitely heard me, but I couldn't get my
transmit and receive synced in time and he went to another station. I
discovered the antenna switch today.

Of course, after I got things straightened out, I made several nice European
contacts, all on S1. The signals tonight were amazing.

Now, figure the odds of me convincing the XYL to let me take the satellite
station with me on our Alaskan cruise........

73s,
Art N3OY

----- Original Message -----
From: Keith N6ORS <k2@pe.net>
To: amsat <amsat-bb@AMSAT.Org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 9:22 PM
Subject: [amsat-bb] AO40 portable


> Hi Guys,
> Well I went portable to a hill in a nearby park today (8/7
> 23:45 Z)
> setup the gear , an 847 with a drake and an 18"dss dish,
> didnt expect to hear
> anything till the sat got to about 8 deg.. Picked up the
> beacon immediately
> at about 4deg.  (MA64)  . Heard all the strong qso's  easily
> and one 'VERY' strong
> sstv signal (@ 2400.350).  the copy was fine  for contacts
> if i had brought
> along an uplink antenna but this was just a rx test.  Good
> thing i didnt bring
> all the stuff.  The wind was so horrific that i had to hang
> on to my 18" dish
> the whole time . My pack of cigarettes blew away then the
> lite fell off the
> cigarette in my mouth and fell on my shirt  which
> immediately burst into
> flame from the wind and while i was sending cw on my chest
> trying to put
> out the fire my dish took off and rolled till it hit the end
> of the coax.  when
> i retieved it i found the feed mounting had sheared off so
> that ended the exercize.
> But the trip was a success, with a small uplink antenna im
> sure AO40 portable  can be
> very fruitful , at least using S1.
> Good luck all,
> Keith N6ORS
>
>
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