Tag Archives: Mainz

Aircraft scatter – very special

August 27th, 2012

In the evening I had the dish pointing to the moon to perform some echo tests. After finishig that, there was some office work to do. The pc was still tracking the moon and showing the spectrum around 1296.030 in a waterfall diagram. After a while I noticed a strong signal at .050 keyed in F2. It lasted just for a few seconds before it disappeared. I watched the display and could see it every now and then with various signal strength. Very soon I identified it as HB9BBD. This beacon is always very strong here – as long as the dish is turned in the right direction (175°), but at present it was pointing to the moon with an azimuth of 130° and an elevation of 10°. While thinking about that, I was looking at the moon outside the window, hearing the signal coming up in QSB and seeing a plane passing the moon.

Since Frankfurt airport is not too far from my QTH in Mainz, planes are passing by in a wide variety of altitudes. Using planefinder.com I was was able to find a correlation between reflections and planes flying in certain heigths, distances and directions. May be it will be possible to use aircrafts not only for forward scatter. If anyone is interested to try aircraft side scatter, please contact me. It could be helpful, when obstructions like noise sources, buildings or mountains are blocking the direct path.

A new dish

April 30th, 2012

I have assembled the 3 m mesh dish (f/d=0.45) I obtained from RF HAMDESIGN within one day. After another hard days work the new dish and a Spid BIG-RAS/HR rotor are mounted and ready for use now.

Thanks to Niklas, Armin and Charlotte.

First tests on 23 cm will be performed soon.

Back on air again!

January 19th, 2012

After being qrt by family and business reasons for nearly twenty years, I started in July 2011 in activating my irish call sign EI8HH on 50 MHz. Since January 2012 I am qrv again as DJ5AR from my QTH in Mainz.

The way working on the microwave bands has changed. No more CQs for hours and hours, but a fine chat at ON4KSTs server to make skeds on the bands wich provides much more efficiency than the way, we tried to make QSOs twenty years ago. A SDR makes it possible to display a spectrum of the band on the screen in a waterfall diagram. What a huge comfort compared to the old times. So it is no problem anymore to find somebody for a sked on 23 or 13 cm. Soon after setting up the old equipment for 1296 MHz I managed to work a couple of new squares and had my first QSO ever over the alps to Italy. It was amazing to hear the strong signal of IK3GHY with my 1.2 m dish.