AmateurRadio.com

It was balloon foxhunt day today. A yearly event I always try to participate in you can find some more information on http://www.ballonvossenjacht.nl. I always try to improve my station to connect via the balloon transponder. And as always try to get my call into the logbook on 80m. Well, the propagation was very low today on 80m I could hardly copy PI4VRZ/A who was this time on USB instead of the normal LSB. But I finally managed to get my call into the log. I wanted to improve a little since last year so I removed the rotor from below my vertical and placed it on a tripod with on top horizontally my dual band Maspro beam with about 5 degrees elevation. Overall I noriced about 3dB improvement in favor of the Maspro beam. Not bad considering it was on about 4 Mtr above ground behind the house and the vertical nearly 6 Mtr above ground with free sight to the south. Last year I recorded a QSO between PD5DP and G4RUL, this year I succeed to make a QSO via the transponder with G4RUL. So I made a improvement for shure. I did use both radios to see the difference between the two antennas instantly. I noticed that all radio equipment was covered by a pile of dust an the Icom gets very old it switched off twice without touching anything and FM output was only there after 30 minutes. But who cares, I’ve been radio active again.

You can find a small video here