28 February 2011

Back to SATs! (2)

Well, there were some problems with my antenna setup of last week... one of the problems is that I have replaced the sepparate rotor controls (Yaesu G-400RC and Kenpro KR-500) for a all-in-one Yaesu G-5600B (note that I have replaced only the control box, which I bought used some years ago). I have done this in order to control the rotors from the PC easily, as the G-5600B control includes internal relays and has buffered positioning signals.

But one problem is that it is a South referenced control... and my antennas were North referenced. This was not hard to fix :-)

Then a worse problem arised, as there was some miscalculation on the 2m elevation antenna and one director collided with the 6m boom from about 50ยบ elevation... not a good thing!

In order to fix the bent element, I needed to access to the 2m Yagi. But it was too far to reach. So I modified the antenna position by displacing the elevation boom. Current positioning is shown on next picture, with the elevation antennas pointing to sky:


I have also reshuffled the rigs on my main radio station position, so now I have a rig devoted to SATs (Yaesu FT-847), another for Earth work :-) (Yaesu FT-736R) and another for local work (Kenwood TS-790E). Of course, all of them could be used in the others roles, but this is my first approach.



I have ordered an AMSAT-UK LVB Tracker Kit (I have ordered the cheapest one, as I plan to do a custom case and add my own display and buttons) and will work also on the FT-847 CAT control from a tracking program (I will look for a program which cares about Doppler)

So, all in all, things are progressing!

73 JOSE EB5AGV

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hello Joe, just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed your internet offerings over the years and i`m glad to see that you`re still alive after the pandemic and still publishing great repairs and electronics projects and of course your personal building projects like the ham shack. Good luck and 73`s DE Al Campbell KD6CFE Southern California.