Screendrops from Dubus 10 GHz eme contest taken on Sat 27th March 2010

 


These pictures were taken using a 2.5m dish that is a little battered and was not in any case manufactured for 10 GHz use. On the previous day of the contest, the sun noise increase was 4dB (about 8 dB short of what it might be expected to be!) . Signals were weak, but the CQ's were easy to copy, even if I missed the actual call signs. It proved quite easy to aim the dish, aided by a mirror glued at 45 degrees to the back support behind the dish. There were signals present pretty much all the time I was listening.

It all proved to be a satisfying  experience!

Conclusions and follow-ups: Calculations show that a properly adjusted 0.8m dish should give a couple of dB better performance, and John G4BAO had a spare 85/80cm dish going begging, so a fully adjustable feed arm was made up for this. Using the same LNB (from ebay) that was used with the 2.5m dish, resulted in a noise increase also of 4 dB, which was encouraging. This dish is quite shallow, and looked like it would require a similar beamwidth LNB as a digi-dish, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that an elderly 9.75/10.6 GHz Cambridge LNB poduced a 6.5 dB sun noise increase. The dish with this LNB is shown here. All that is needed now is another eme contest or activity day!