|
|
|
| Portable EME operation was never dreamt of a few years ago. These days it has become more and more an option with the advent of WSJT. The excitement was high to get another rare country (Malawi) in the EME logs of a large number of operators. After the huge success with puting 9J2JD on the EME logs we were looking forward to getting 7Q7JE on the EME logs as well. Previous attempts failed due to the poor weather of the African continent in our summer. Plans were to operate from the two seperate grids both along the shore of Lake Malawi, but it proved not to be feasible. After driving for close to 40 hours non-stop (we were 2 drivers) I arrived at Nkotakota and we worked at unpacking our equipment. Operations was to be shared with my work as well as I was the team leader of a group of people participating in an outreach in the area. Shortly after noon on the Sunday the antenna was setup. It consisted of two 2M9SSB antennas from M-Square that was joined with a 2 way mechanical splitter and 2 lengths of 144 inch long LMR400 as the phasing cables. Feedline was a length of Suhner 1/2 inch semi-rigid coax. The cross-boom is a fibre-glass pole of 3m mounted on a tripod of alluminium. The top mount was able to swivel in AZ & EL and the ropes were normal nylon rope used to position the antenna by reference to the moon when visible or with the aid of a compass and protractor when the moon is not visible. In the next few days several stations were happy enough to get 7Q7JE in their log. The Log is available here. Here is a photo of the antenna next to Lake Malawi.
|
|
This website is the intellectual property of the project and information may
only be copied and reproduced with consent of the project managers.
|
