Category: sm7sjr posts

I got myself a new toy today. The NanoVNA v2 (50kHz-3GHz Vector Network Analyzer Antenna Analyzer)… I am looking forward to play around with it.

OK so I bought a Sitemaster, Anritsu S331D. I have fel the need for such an instrument now and then, and all of the sudden it got a bit urgent (Perseids is closing in and I have some cable/antenna work left before I am QRV for real).

We had our annual small VUSHF meet and greet, this time it was my turn to be the host. So I welcomed SM0LCB, SM7GVF, SM7GEP, SM7THS, SM7WSJ and SM7THS at my QTH.  It was a full day of talk about or current setups and some “ancient” history of ham events and such. Really nice.

From left to right: SM7GVF, SM7FWZ, SM7WSJ, SM7THS, SM0LCB and closest to the camera is SM7GEP.

From left to right: SM7GEP, SM7SJR, SM7FWZ, SM7WSJ, SM7GVF and SM7THS

Showing the noise floor increase while switching to my dipole for 40m and my vertical for 40m. Also make note of signal levels and number of signals. Big difference. The dipole is very close to my house and the verticl approx 120 metres away.

So life is too short for QRP? I ordered an Elecraft KPA-1500 PA today. At the same time but here in Sweden I ordered a Yaesu FT-991A. I am one radio short since I sold my Kenwood TS-480 several years ago.

I have updated my firmware to protocol 2 in my ANAN-200 and are now running Thetis instead of PowerSDR. I have not fully explored it but it looks nice (uses a lot more CPU though). Seems nice to be able to use for instance SDR-Console with the ANAN-200.

Well well. I am getting established in my new QTH. I am looking into getting towers and antennas back up again. Since I am doing it from scratch I will go with new setups, more info to come.

My home station is QRT! I will relocate in June 2018. The move goes to my remote QTH in JO87EB, so not far but still I am QRT for the moment.

Since I am about to disassemble my 5m dish soon, I am trying to run as many 23cm EME qsos as I can. I figure I will be QRT by the end of March or something like that. Will put microwave EME on halt for a while, but will most likley be back again some day.

I have been playing around a bit with the SDR-rigs. Currently using ANAN-200D and ANAN-10 from Apache Labs and a SDRplay RSP2pro. Both Apache Labs rigs are running simultaneously with an instance of OpenHPSDR each, both feeding VACs to WSJT-X, WSJT and other software. I discovered a good page with lots of info for Apache Labs rigs, by W1AEX, http://www.w1aex.com/anan/anan.html#lost  . Found in my links widget here on this site.