2017 VUSHF season in JN61

This Spring/Summer I have two new bands to play with: 1296 MHz and 10 GHz.

23cm setup for now is a single 55 elements F9FT and a transverter made by LZ5HP

This transverter has a power of 2 Watts and it’s placed on the boom of the Yagi, I’m building a 100 Watts power amplifier based on the project of K5TRA (pcb by IK0EQJ, tnx!). I would place it on top of the mast in the same box of the xverter. It’s still WIP.

Anyway two Watts are enough for a 23cm AirScatter QSO if on the other side there is someone with big ears like IK3GHY.

With Giorgio IK3GHY we had also a nice Rain Scatter QSO on 10 GHz, the first part of this video was recorded by IK3GHY. It’s interesting to note the effect of the scatter on the demodulated telegraphy tone, the single frequency generated is spread in a good part of the rx filter producing a Morse code modulated noise, funny to hear and similar to the Aurora effect on the VHF bands.

The same day, but beaming to a different scatter point, SSB QSO with I6XCK. The effect on the Cesare’s voice is the same as CW.

On 10 GHz a remarkable QSO and my personal ODX was with ED4SHF/6 in JN10wm, QRB 750 km. The QSO has been recorded by Silvano I0LVA.

144 MHz ES worked a new country, 5B4VL in KM64 (Cyprus) and a new square KO37 thanks to YL2OK in Latvia.

On 6m TEP not a single QSO around the equinox days but worked several ES openings mainly toward Asia with good signals from Korea, China, Philippines and two new countries E3 (Eritrea) DXCC #198 and C6 (Bahamas) DXCC #199.

DS4EOI Corea in PM47

C6ATA Bahamas in FL15
The audio file has been recorded by C6ATA

This is the first year of heavy use of the JT65 on 6m for terrestrial QSOs. I think it’s a great tool to promptly detect the openings but it’s too slow to make contacts and several times the dx station is workable only for few tens of seconds, often enough for CW.
The gold rule is, if you hear the JT65 tones on the headphones, you’re wasting time and propagation.