DF9CY Christoph Petermann

What a success !

I first setup my portable station in our garden on the evening of 16 April. In parallel I watched the live video stream from Arecibo in the internet. I early knew, that their PA was broken and so I did not receive any EME signals. But when they turned to CW, I immediately could copy them. Weak but Q4 .. Q5. So I decided to take the equipment to the AFT (Aschberg Frühjahrs Treffen), a local Astronomy Meeting, on the evening of 17 April. Just before the event started, I gave a short lecture about what this meant. I had about 20 listeners. The signals from Arecibo came strong enough in SSB that everyone around could understand what they were telling. I estimate, there were more than 50 visitors coming and listening to the noise and the voices of the operators at KP4AO.



The station I used was my IC820H, about 2m of RG58 cable, a GaAs-Fet amplifier with a noise figure of about 0,6dB and a short 10 element antenna on a tripod. The moon was well visible all the time. While others were listening I took the chance and observed the moon through a 12" Dobsonian telescope.

More images of the event on the AFT

Look at the Short Video of my setup
Somewhat more detailed write-up of the event.

Echoes of Apollo is an event to remember the landings on the moon in the late 60s and early 70s. This event brings a large number of amateur radio stations AND science stations to be active.

Look here : Echoes of Apollo
and here : WorldMoonbounceDay

Times in April:
Apr 16 1645 - 1930 UTC
Apr 17 1740 - 2020 UTC
Apr 18 1840 - 2125 UTC

Posted by Christoph Petermann

OK, this is now the new entry place of my homepage !
I hope you like it
Comments are very welcome.

Posted by Christoph Petermann

Everything is running again ! The shack is like new now. Its fun to be in there.

50 MHz EME
20. March 2010 : I have setup my "new" used notebook with WSJT and I was able to copy W7GJ with a good signal during the moonset hours. Signals reached -17dB in 2.5 kHz bandwidth.

144 MHz EME CW
27./28. March 2010 : I had hoped to work at least one of the guys in CW, but that did not go this time. I tried to get at least SV1BTR and called him many times over a period of 2 hours or so, but ... So I decided to switch off the PA and connect a 144/28 MHz converter and my SDR-IQ to the antenna. Using Linrad that was fun. I "saw" sometimes 10 or more (weak) CW stations in the CW section, but with all those birdies (hundreds) I had my difficulties. So I stayed again with SV1BTR and IK3MAC and in most cases I could see the QSO partners producing a trace on the screen. Not bad for a 2.5wl antenna. Tonight neighbour's TV is switched on producing spurs every 50 Hz all over the CW portion of the 2m band. Too bad.

144 MHz EME JT65
19. .. 28. March 2010 : 2m is running again EME wise. I copied a number of stations (ca 25) and was able to QSO with JM1WBB, JH1MHE, I2FAK, EA6VQ, KB8RQ, UA3PTW, OH7HXH, I2RV and RX1AS. Also copied was the expedition 8Q7QQ (MJ64) which is using a single antenna and 400w.

144/432 MHz
7/8 March 2010 I did some listening in the VHF/UHF contest just for checking if the rig was "healthy". The rotator did not run at first and it needed some attention.

40m
Further experimenting with the SDR-IQ rx and Linrad software with digging out weak DX stations.

Posted by Christoph Petermann

Last weekend while staying a weekend with my father I took chance and I visited long time radio friend Johannes Wilke, DK2PH. After having had an eye on his antennas for 144 MHz EME, 50 MHz and shortwave and his radio station, we (me and my little son Michael) sat there together with Hans' wife ragchewing and having some fine cake with tea and coffee for a long time. So thanks for that pleasant afternoon.


Hans DK2PH and me


Hans DK2PH busy at his VHF station


EME Antenna (4 x 16el I0JXX)

Posted by Christoph Petermann

The shack room is looking like new; I am still waiting for the table and some other furniture to be delivered. Bad weather prevented me from from transportation of that stuff.
Until then I am not really QRV.

The only thing I do is listening with the SDR-IQ - that is fun. As there are no tables and chairs in the room I sat down in Japanese style on the floor. I purchased a used Dell Latitude D820 notebook which has almost no unwanted radiation. The noise floor on the bands is looking very smooth and I made a lot of experiments using the SpectraVue software as well as Winrad and Linrad. The latter digs out a lot of stations on 40m. But it took me some time to get it running properly. I can't really await getting my station reassembled and testing the SDR-IQ on EME on 2m. I also tried WSPR with very good success on the SDR-IQ and the new notebook, which is running on Windows 7 - 32 bit. This combination is very much more sensitive than the Softrock 6.1 RXTX with my desktop PC.

Posted by Christoph Petermann

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2010 to you ! See you then !

Posted by Christoph Petermann

Most things are out of the shack room for the refurbishment; so almost no activity.
WSPR
31 December 2009: WSPR is operational on most days. After my shack is almost empty for the refurbishment, I have it running receive-only with the new purchased SDR-IQ. This little box does a fine job. I find it as sensitive as my TT RX320D receiver and a lot better than my Softrock. But I will switch off WSPR soon, do the refurbishment and set up the whole station again. See you then.
3 December 2009: WSPR (now version 2.0) still running most nights on 40m

Posted by Christoph Petermann

This is it ... I purchased a direct sampling receiver from RFSpace (U.S.). You could have seen me playing with this receiver throughout the past days. I still did not find out all things I can do with it. So there is XMAS time now and some days off work. Good time for experimenting.

Posted by Christoph Petermann

After almost 13 years time has come to make some renewal in my shack room. This means removing everything, new paint, a new carpet, some new furniture and installing all stuff again. During that time I will have a FM 439 MHz rig running put into a bag keeping dust away. The shack is small measuring only about 7 squaremeters but I already filled 8 big boxes and you do not see a big progress ... So I hope to have everything running again in January '10.

Posted by Christoph Petermann

144 MHz MMC
7/8 November 2009: 46 QSOs on 144 MHz with ODX 772 km in MMC.

10 GHz EME
7 November 2009: See the story in another entry.

WSPR
24 November 2009: WSPR (now version 2.0) ran almost every night on 40m with the softrock. Activity is increasing and this is interesting to see how propagation behaves really.
6 November 2009: I ran the WSPR on my Softrock RXTX for several nights with 0,5w of output power. This was very successful with my signal heard woldwide again. The 40m activity day on 4 November produced a stunning activity.

Posted by Christoph Petermann