February 26th, 2022

After my visit to Berlin a fortnight ago, where Thomas, DC7YS, granted me massive support in assembling my 10/24 GHz duo band rig, I have been out today to give it a try in the BBT contest.

The selected location is a building in the vine yards just a little south of my home.

It has a terrace upstairs with a perfect view to the horizons.

Despite beeing an asolute newbie, I logged two QSOs. The first one I had with Martin, DL3SFB/p on the Hornisgrinde in the Black Forrest near Freiburg. Signals were just good enough to complete in SSB over 144 km. Second was Daniel, DL3IAE, near Landau, 70 km away.

Daniels signal was extremly distorted by windmills and even in CW very hard to copy.

A test with Ewald, DK2DB, in Karlsruhe was not successful, because of a pear tree obstructing him in my direction.

The grey box houses latest Kuhne transverters for 10 and 24 GHz, driven by an IC-705. Output after all the lossy semi rigid and relays is measured to 6 W on 10 GHz and 1 W on 24 GHz. The feed a dual band horn, made by Paul, W1GHZ. The size of the dish is 80 cm. Power sources are batteries of my Makita tools.

After the Test with Ewald I decided to leave, because some strong gusts came up and the dish has a quite a good wind load. As the stuff is very heavy, the tripod is too fragile to withstand the weight plus the wind.