RX Taurus 20m band testing

The building of DIY kit of the RX Taurus for the 20m band (14MHz) from RV3YF is the first part of my project of building the SSB TRX Taurus. This is my first project after more then 25 years and with a limited practise and limited equipment it is the really and experiment.

After several days struggling with setting up and tune all its parts, VFO, Band Pass Filter, RF Amplifier and BFO, and a significant help from OK1BVK, the first result finally appeared in February 16th 2020. The first CW QSO received on 14.044 MHz. The antenna was just 5m of wire thrown from my balcony in the southern side of our apartment building.

The next day I tried to throw my 5m wire antenna from the window on the southern side and I received a weak SSB signal. Finally, I had a chance to tune the BFO. It’s aliitle bit boring video but was part of the process.

After the finetuning of the BFO a was able to receive several DX SSB QSOs on the piece of wire hanging from my window and confirm the RX is working.

The first received QSO was with the startion UA0AAT from Krasnojarsk, Asiatic Russia. The distance between my QTH and UA0AAT was ca 5.000 km. The second QSO was between UT2IJ from Ukraine and NX4TT from USA, Florida. The distance between these stations was ca 9.500 km. My distance to UZ2IJ was ca 1.720 km and to NX4TT ca 8.000 km. Antenna, just a piece of wire 5 m long hanging from my window on the 2nd floor.

The next experiment with Taurus RX will be to connect a DDS VFO.

OK1KEY MoonContest 2019-12-11

MoonContest 11.12.2019 on 70cm band was our second contest ever. We used our local radio club station callsign OK1KEY but this time we decided to find better QTH for this contest. We found the highest point place in Prague. This place is called Sobinka and it is placed in JO70DB, not far from Prague’s airport Ruzyně. The temparature there was at about -2°C but fortunately no wind.
We used the same equipment as last tim. TRX Kenwood TM-V7E and mag-mount antenna NR-770RSP placed on our car’s roof. We used Banner 12V 74Ah car accumulator as power supply.
This time we were more successful and we achived 4th in total. Guys made 36 QSO and the longest distance was made to the locator square JO80IB, Orlické hory, Suchý vrch. The distance was 173km.
The other „DX“ contacts were: Čelistná (JN79OI) 103km, Komáří vížka (JO60WQ) 76km, Černá Studnice (JO70OR) 99km, Česká Skalice (JO80AJ) 130km, Dolní Černůtky (JO70UH) 105km and Děčín (JO70CT) 84km.

  • OK1KEY, Our temporary QTH, Sobinka
  • OK1KEY, Sobinka, JO70DB, 11.12.2019, 19:00-21:00 UTC, -2°C
  • OK1KEY, Sobinka, JO70DB, 11.12.2019, 19:00-21:00 UTC, -2°C
  • OK1KEY, Sobinka, JO70DB, 11.12.2019, 19:00-21:00 UTC, -2°C
  • Our QSO notes in field conditions 🙂
  • Sometimes bit hard to read 🙂

OK1KEY MoonContest 2019-12-04

MoonContest 04.12.2019 on 2m band. I agreed with our local radio club station OK1KEY to participate this contest with my 11 years sons from my home QTH. As I have just the KENWOOD TM-V7E FM TRX and the mobile mag-mount antenna NR-770RSP on my balcony at 2nd floor we finished the contest on 18th place with 17 QSO and 384 points. The max distnace QSO was made between locators JO70FB and JO60WQ, ca 81km. It was first time when my sons have mike in their hands.