[Moon-net] ARRL EME Contest Plans - Jamesburg

[Jim Moss]

All,
The Jamesburg Earth Station will be active for the October & November ARRL EME Contest periods.

Callsign used will be N9JIM during the contest period.  Other calls may be active on "Thursday" evening PST.

We will be operating 1296 with the 97' dish and a new improved feed system.  We hope to get an additional 5-6dB gain with the improved feed horn.  Unfortunately, our 300W amp is not available this weekend, and we will use our 120W backup amplifier. If anyone can help us out for the weekend with a "big amp", please contact me or Kevin. Preamp remains < .7dB NF.  Great success was had on 1296 earlier in the year with the lower gain feed.  We worked a few small dish systems that were running <200w.  I

In addition, we will be operating 144 with an improved feed system that will allow us to switch H & V polarization.  We have 800W on 144 and a <1dB NF preamp. If 144 creates too much interference to the 1296 station, 1296 will have priority. During the last 2M activity periods we heard many stations on CW and also on JT65.  Many of the signals, even JT65 were probably SSB workable.  We did not have JT65 at the time and tried to break some of the JT65 stations on SSB!  But I guess many JT65 operators may only be looking at waterfalls and not listening. We hope to work many of you on SSB and CW!

Both these improvements are assuming good weather at the site on Thursday and Friday before the contest, as we must climb the giant dish and make the changes.

We will have some internet access during the contest via email, but we are using a Blackberry.

Thank again to the Jamesburg support team for all the hard work getting the station operational.

Jim
N9JIM
Jamesburg Operations Manager

www.jamesburgdish.org