[amsat-bb] Re: repost from ARRL letter - DXCC on UHF!

[i8cvs]

Hi Nate, WY0X

In addition to their amazing EME success they don't need to be "Bad Guys"
because they don't need to put in orbit the moon !

73" de

i8CVS Domenico

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nate Duehr" <nate at natetech.com>
To: "amsat-bb" <amsat-bb at amsat.org>
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 10:48 PM
Subject: [amsat-bb] repost from ARRL letter - DXCC on UHF!


> Wow.  Mostly by EME...
>
> I thought this group would find this amazing...
>
> ==> GERMAN HAM CLAIMS FIRST DXCC ON 432 MHZ
>
> The world of Amateur Radio DXing has passed a new milestone: On Friday,
> June 6, Jan Bruinier, DL9KR, of Niedernhausen, Germany, worked his 100th
> country on 432 MHz (70 cm) via moonbounce (EME) and CW.
>
> Samek Zdenek, OK1DFC, and Hofbauer Zdenek, OK3RM, were getting ready to
> go on an EME DXpedition to Macedonia. Before they left, Samek asked
> Bruinier to help test out the equipment; Bruinier gave him a beacon,
> aiming a signal off the moon. According to VHF guru and conductor of
> QST's "World Above 50 MHz" column Gene Zimmerman, W3ZZ, this is done by
> transmitting a series of CW dashes and then stopping to listen for the
> signal to return a little more than a second later. The moon averages
> 384,000 km from the Earth; radio waves travel at ~300,000 km/sec.
>
> After one of these transmissions, Bruinier was excited to hear Samek
> appear on frequency with a 549 signal. Thus, after an exchange of calls
> and reports, Bruinier's 100th country on 432 MHz was in the log. Once
> his QSL cards are confirmed in the near future, he will become DXCC #1
> on 70 cm.
>
> Bruinier's 70 cm EME operations began in 1977. He had followed the
> exploits of the early EME pioneers in QST, operators like KH6UK, W4HHK,
> W3GKP and W1FZJ who was conductor of the "World Above 50 Mc" during much
> of the 1960s. Jan and his family moved to a semirural location in
> Germany in 1976 where he could put up decent VHF antennas. Working
> initially on his own, he built an array of 16 ten-element quagis
> (antennas with single quad loop driven elements and reflectors and 8
> Yagi directors) following the design described in QST by Wayne Overbeck,
> K6YNB (now N6NB). After a few false starts with other tubes, he obtained
> an Eimac 8938 and built a near-legal limit amplifier. The station
> exciter was a set of Drake twins as an IF strip using homebrew
> transverters with an increasingly sensitive group of GaAsFET
> preamplifiers, always working at the state-of-the-art.
>
> As time progressed, Bruinier built a bigger amplifier capable of running
> 1500 W continuously to deal with the high duty cycle found in EME
> operation -- long, slow CW with two minute transmissions at a time --
> and receiver systems that yielded noise temperatures of 60 kelvins that
> could detect 7 dB of noise when he pointed his array into the ground. He
> eventually transitioned from the quagis to an array of DL6WU design
> Yagis fed with 1-5/8 inch Heliax, currently having a gain of 28.4 dBd.
> For comparison, this is slightly more gain than the 28 foot Kennedy
> parabolic dish has at 432 MHz.
>
> According to Zimmerman, the range of contacts covered by the 70 cm band
> is less than 1000 km; even under the most enhanced conditions, it is
> less than double that. "To work the 100 entities needed for DXCC, EME
> communications are essential. EME is the most demanding form of
> operation there is in Amateur Radio," he said. "Every single aspect of
> the station must be optimized: The equipment, the antennas, the feed
> lines and most particularly, the talent of the operator. Even 1 dB may
> make the difference between a contact and no contact. Bruinier's
> achievement was accomplished the old fashioned way -- by dint of hard
> work, excellent equipment, big antennas and many, many hours on the air
> looking for new countries and not missing many, if any, DXpeditions to
> the many countries where there is no 432 MHz EME activity."
>
> Bruinier told Zimmerman that many people going to many countries on all
> continents made this award possible: The Five Bells Group, the Yota Sawe
> Group, Michale Kohla, DL1YMK, and Monica; Bernd Mischlewski, DF2ZC; Mark
> De Munck, ON5FF (now EA8FF); Bernhard Dobler, DJ5MN; Mart Sakalov,
> SM0ERR; Dimitris Vittorakis, SV1BTR; Gudmund Wannberg, SM2BYA; Frank
> Hobelmann, DL8YHR; Joachim Werner, DL9MS, and Allen Katz, K2UYH, among
> others, as well as groups from Russia, Spain, France and Denmark.
>
> If you would like to read more details about Bruinier's career as an
> EMEer, please look for his story in his own words in the "World Above 50
> MHz" column in the September 2008 issue of QST.
> --
> Nate Duehr
> nate at natetech.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sent via AMSAT-BB at amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
> Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program!
> Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb