2014-04-04

A Working day at SI9AM

The second work day this year

This Friday SM3EFS/Lennart, SM3ESX/Christer and SM3FJF/Jörgen went to SI9AM to continue the work with the radio equipment and software updates in the computers. They arrived at 10.00 and started with a cup of coffee and a cake.

Weak Signal Propagation Report - WSPR

After the coffee break they began to install a WSPR transmitter which SM3EFS/Lennart had built and donated to SI9AM. There was a hole in the wall earlier, but it was too small so they had to drill it out more. Now they could use the hole for the feeder from the GPS antenna and place the antenna outside the wall. Then they were ready to test WSPR unit. Output power 200 mW and after few minutes SI9AM was QRV from 80-40-30-20-15-10 meters.

Follow the wave propagation

Follow the wave propagation live on http://wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/map

Do this:

1. Under the map write SI9AM in the box "Call"
2. In the box "Band" select "ALL"
3. In the box  "Time Period", select the time interval that you want to look backwards.
4. Check the box "Day/Night Overlay" to get the day and night on the map.
5. Under the map press "UPLOAD"

Thanks for the gift!

Many thanks Lennart for the nice gift to SI9AM and that you now have placed SI9AM on the world map for wave propagation from Utanede. The antenna for the WSPR is a FD4 Windom multiband antenna. Then it was time for lunch.

Wireless internet

After lunch SM3EFS/Lennart and SM3FJF/Jörgen checked if there was any possibilities to wireless internet access to SI9AM. A neighbor to SI9AM is willing to sponsor SI9AM with internet but we need external antennas to get acceptable signal strength.

Spiderbeam

Meanwhile SM3ESX/Christer checked the cables behind the radio stations and connected them to the ground. After than we read the manual for the Spiderbeam to see what spare parts we need to repair the broken Spiderbeam.

Computer logging

We have used several different logging programs and we tried to structure the log files.

Spring cleaning

The afternoon ended with a spring cleaning.

Thanks for this time

Next time we have a working day we will check the cables outside at the antenna mast.