Hello All – I guess it’s been a few weeks since posting again, between another new job and a few other things I just haven’t been as active here lately. Hopefully in the next few weeks after the holidays settle down we’ll be getting back to it! In that time though I’ve been beginning to piece together some plans for the upcoming January Contest – if I change nothing else, I’m at least planning on building a new operating desk..
I’m planning on just sticking to the local 4 grids again, doing 2 on Saturday, likely FN02 and FN12, and 2 on Sunday, FN13 and FN03.. I hesitate to put any time-frames up however as if the Bills are still in it – I’ll be calling it a bit early in my day to go back and watch the game..
I’m hoping to sit down for a little bit this weekend and work through my 5ghz transverter so I’m a full 10 bands roving, however at a minimum I’ll be 9 bands – 50mhz through 3400, plus 10ghz. Rigs will be the IC-7100 for 6m, 2m, and 70cm, ID-1 for 1296, and then the IC-705 and FT-818 driving transverters for 222, 900, 2.3g, 3.4g, and 10g, with antennas likely being a Halo on 6, an LPDA on 2-1296, an independent beam for 900, loopers for 2304 and 3400, and a dish for 10ghz. If I have 5ghz going, that’ll likely be a panel as I’m only running a monoband feed on my dish (that was a poor ordering choice).
The other project I’m hoping to have completed before then is an H-Bracket to be able to offset the loopers from the main mast a little bit. This has been on my list for a little while now, and honestly shouldn’t be too time consuming to get done, I just haven’t prioritized it at all. Number one for me at the moment is streamlining my operating positions though – I’ll have one of the transverter setups in the front of the car for the lower band positions, and one in the rear to easily setup with the dish to operate – by this time next year it should be a FTX-1F in place of the 818 in most scenarios, the new Yaesu equivalent to the 705 (I preordered day of announcement, so I’m looking forward to getting to play with that a bit).
I’m considering integrating a smaller PC into my setup as well, the 15″ Laptop I have in there is great, but it’s a little big for the space that I’m working with – I’d like to scale it back a bit. I purchased an ASUS ROG Ally for Gaming, and I’m actually wondering how I might be able to use that in my setup in some way that may be functional… the only problem is that it’s designed to be handheld, so it’s really small. Running logging plus WSJT-X on an eight inch screen might be a little more than I’m bargaining for as far as space saving. I wish I could design something to work well with an iPad, because my 11″ iPad Pro would be perfect for the job..
I guess we’ll see what the contest actually holds as I really have thrown radio on the back burner for the last few months, really since July I haven’t done a whole lot. My interest always ebbs and flows, usually from Dayton time through Field Day I’m all in, and then it goes by the wayside for a bit, and then in Winter (post hunting season) it’s back through the contest at least.
Roving On 