Reflections about a remote shortwave listeners station

The new K9AY with extended circumference has a height of 9.50 m, the single wire a total length of 26 m, which corresponds to a limb of 8 m or 5 m. No problem was the erection of the mast. Most of the work fell as wires had to be entangled and the almost ailing tree crown was felled. A first hearing test showed that it is not worse than v1.0. The freestanding position without disturbing tree crowns, better copper lines, improved grounding and other dimensions provided a more rounded sound picture. Better separation accuracy and better forward / reverse ratio are the decisive factors in my assessment.

The masthead of the tree on which the two antenna wires of the K9AY crossed broke at one of the last storms. The reconstruction is now done with stable material and even better antenna wires. The felled tree will also serve as a "scaffold". It is sheathed over a length of 4 m with a 75 mm HT pipe (plastic water pipe) and is thereby brought to a total height of 9,50 m. It replaces the original height of 7.50 m. This results in other lengths, namely longer wire lengths.

Running a remote station means there is always something to do.

I checked the antennas after some storms and noticed that the top of the K9AY was broken. This looks like a difficult work in a height of about 8 m. I have to fix this in the coming weeks. Another antenna - the horizontal loop - doesn't work as good as before and I have to check if there is a cable break in only 5m height. [fixed: a badly connected wire]

Another duty is the connection of the big notebook, which consumes 5-7 Ah, to the solar energy circle. Connecting this notebook is not as easy as you might think. I bought a 19 V powerbank which delivers 2,5 h additionally to the notebook accu cell. But, for timed recordings with SDR Console software, the USB connection always failes if coming from a sleep state. This problem comes with Windows 8.1 and I don't know how to solve it yet. Another problem was coming up: the powerbank creates disturbances. So I wan't be able to record with the notebook. Very sad.

The Rocketec voltage converter is meanwhile broken, which is not so bad because it delivers always some noise on some bands. So returning to accu energy might be the better way. As you know the small Tablet can only run with a limited bandwidht so I am looking foreward to have a stable connection of the notebook which can run up to 6 MHz broad recordings.

I am also looking for falling prices of SSD discs to get more space on night recordings. My Toshiba 2 TB HD denies since some time to work properly.

Further plans are to connect another 100 Ah solar battery to the system and to get another 100 Wp solar panel. Charging the batteries with 1.5 Ah in average takes a long time, so a second panel and battery may help coming better through the winter. A WiFi-connection is also in planning which could mean to run the station really remote in some time from now.

Hope to get the right stuff on the Ham Radio Fair in Friedrichshafen and to see the one or another of you guys there.

73's and cugn from Giessen!

A new project was started this week, the construction of a K9AY array with adjustable termination resistance, controller unit and relays. As you can see in the picture, the mast still causes problems. The heavy pole should be mounted nearby the other tree and still has to be passed by the tree crown. The white seat in the middle is the directors chair.

The screenshots show the range from 4.5 to 6.3 Mhz and part of MW. There was a lot of noise from thunderstorms on the bands. The performance of the horizontal loop was exciting. Compared to the 8-m wire which hangs around the trees was an increase of more than 10 dBm or 2 S-units on the tropical bands and on MW. Under this constellation it's really sad to return @ home to my ALA 1530s+ .... At the end of the loop construction a balun was sunk in a pipe with waterproof hats. The lead-in is a RG-58 coaxcable.

The horizontal loop is my second antenna type in the garden. The closely placed, meanwhile leafy trees, additionally complicate the mounting. The wire is 2 mm green-clad steel wire, which proved to be excellent tensile strength. He was purchased at the hardware store for 0,06 € / meters.