Category Archives: VHF-UHF

Posts related to UHF and VHF equipment and operations

6m Antenna Upgrade Part 1 – Plans for Antenna Enhancements

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6m LFA Yagi for Field Day and Mountain Topping

6m LFA Yagi for Field Day and Mountain Topping

I’ve been very active on 6m over the past several years. I am closing in on DXCC and Worked All States on the magic band. I operate on 6m daily during Es season. We are also very active in VHF contesting on the 6m band and have worked just under 700 grids on 6m.  This post is about our plans to develop an enhanced 6m antenna system for contesting and DX’ing.

6m LFA Antenna for Field Day

6m LFA Portable Antenna System

We developed an updated 6m antenna system for Field Day and portable use a few years back. The portable setup is based upon a 3-element Loop Fed Array (LFA) antenna from InnoVAntennas. I was impressed with the improvement in the ability to hear weak stations above the noise floor compared to our previous 3-element conventional yagi antenna. Subsequent conversations with Joel Harrison, W5ZN suggested that fixed direction stacks of 3-element antennas would make a very good setup for 6m contesting and grid chasing. This led to our plans for some significant 6m antenna upgrades at our station.

6m Antenna Plans

Our planned 6m antenna upgrade consists of the following elements:

All of these antennas will use 7/8″ hardline coax cables for the main segments of their feedline system.

6m Antenna Project

Advanced Receiver Research RF Switched LNA

I am in the process of building two high-power capable LNA systems for our 6m antennas. These systems will be based upon low noise factor (0.55 dB) GaAsFET RF switched preamps from Advanced Receiver Research. These LNAs should improve the overall noise-factor performance of the 6m receivers in our station by a noticeable amount. We choose the RF switched version of these preamps so that we could disable the preamps and maintain a direct receive path through the LNAs to our antennas. This is desirable for SWR testing and for situations where very strong signals may cause overloading. It also ensures that we can continue to use our antenna should we experience an LNA failure.

I plan to use the shared LNA sequencing capability of our microHam system to control the two LNA systems. All of the antennas for this project will come from InnoVAntennas. The 3-element LFA antennas will be custom-made for fixed direction rear mounting on our tower.

Why LFA Antennas?

The use of a loop-driven element has several advantages, which include:

  • Better suppression of side lobes in the antenna pattern, which results in an antenna that hears better (lower noise temperature)
  • The potential for an efficient direct feed design that does not require driven element matching
  • Wider useful bandwidth
InnoVAntennas 7 Element WOS LFA

InnoVAntennas 7 Element WOS LFA

The 7-element LFA Yagi that I chose takes this one step further by employing a bent reflector to further improve the ability to suppress side and rear lobes in the antenna’s pattern and further improve the antenna’s noise temperature.

6m Antenna Stack Designs

I performed several High-Frequency Terrain Analysis (HFTA) runs to determine the heights and directions for our 4-Stack Antenna Arrays.

6m Antenna Project

4-Stack Facing the EU – Gain vs. Arrival Angles

The example above shows the projected performance of the 4-stack facing Europe. The 3-element LFA Yagi that we are using has a 3 dB azimuthal beamwidth of about 60 degrees. This gives each stack an effect range of azimuth angles approximately the same as the 3 dB beamwidth. The headings that I choose for the stacks are as follows:

  • Europe facing 4-stack – 50 degrees
  • Central/South America and the Caribbean facing 4-stack – 180 degrees
  • The United States facing 3-stack – 260 degrees

I looked at both a 3-Yagi and a 4-Yagi configuration for the U.S.-facing stack on the top half of our tower. It turned out that the 3 Yagi design did a better overall job of covering the range of arrival angles that we can expect. This situation is due to the high elevation of the stack above ground and the wide range of potential arrival angles encountered when working stations across the U.S.

The combination of the new and existing 7-element 6m rotatable Yagis that I am planning or already have installed should cover the remaining directions nicely.

6m Antenna Project

Gain vs. Arrival Angles Towards Oceania – 7-Element Yagi and 3-Stack

The HFTA analysis illustrates the performance of the combination of the west-facing 3-stack and the new 7-element LFA Yagi towards Oceania (ex., Australia and New Zealand). The minimum gain achieved by switching between these two antenna systems is never less than 10 dBi. This part of the analysis also suggests good performance towards Hawaii.

6m Antenna Project

7-Element LFA Yagi Gain vs. Arrival Angles for Japan and Asia

Finally, I looked at the projected performance of the 7-element LFA Yagi towards Japan and Asia. The height above ground for this antenna results in good performance at low arrival angles and a good bit of gain variation across arrival angles. The low noise performance of this antenna, combined with our planned use of high-performance LNAs in the receive path, should provide some opportunities to work stations in Japan and Asia.

I also built a combined EZNEC model to look at possible interactions between these and other antennas on our tower. This analysis indicated that we should be fine if we remove the 6m passives from our SteppIR DB36 antennas. The combination of the stacks and the new 7-element LFA Yagi we are planning will replace the 6m capabilities that our SteppIR antennas have been providing.

Next Steps

The antennas will arrive in the next few weeks, and work is underway to build the high-power LFA housings. I will be posting additional articles about this project as we go. Here are some links to other articles about our 6m Antenna Upgrade Project:

Fred, AB1OC

Scouts on Long Island Contact the ISS via Amateur Radio

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Matinecock District Scout ISS Contact

Matinecock District Scout ISS Contact

I once again had the pleasure to help a group of young people make contact with an Astronaut on the International Space Station this past week.

NASA Astronaut Kjell Lindgren

NASA Astronaut Kjell Lindgren

Scouts from the Matinecock District made a contact with Astronaut Kjell Lindgren, KO5MOS on the International Space Station on Saturday, June 4th, 2022.  You can watch and listen to the contact on YouTube by clicking below.  The actual contact begins at about 40:35 into the video.

The Scouts’ contact lasted for approximately 10 minutes. The Scouts asked and Kjell answered 18 of their 20 questions and there was time at the end of the contact for “Thank Yous”.  Here are the questions that the Scouts asked:

1. What do you have to study after HS in order to have a career as an Astronaut?
2. Could the ISS ever be self-sustaining and not need care packages of food/water/oxygen from Earth?
3. Are ISS teams only picked based on skills or does NASA try to match personalities as well?
4. How does the ISS stay safe from all the “space junk” floating around the Earth?
5. Do you only do experiments in your field of expertise on the ISS or because of limited resources do you find yourself assisting others doing things you’re not as comfortable with?
6. Is automated piloting better than manual piloting in terms of flight controls and docking?
7. What one thing did you do as a young adult that you felt was your first significant step to becoming an astronaut?
8. I’ve heard being in space can change your taste buds. Have you created any interesting or creative recipes to make space food taste better?
9. How do they supply the ISS with constant oxygen?
10. We saw a video of a gorilla suit prank on the ISS a few months ago. Have there been any other funny pranks?
11. What jobs do you have to do on the ship?
12. Do the astronauts get to bring something from home with them to space?
13. I’ve heard astronauts from different countries will trade food. What country has the most popular dish on the ISS?
14. In your personal opinion, what is the best and least good thing about being on the ISS?
15. Can you swim in space when you’re floating?
16. Can you feel the effects being in space has on your body? If so, what’s it like?
17. Can you yo-yo upside down in space?
18. Does the ISS have technology installed that could capture Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)like the US Navy has recently? Have you seen anything up there that you can’t explain?
19. What does it feel like to go to space?
20. I read that there was once water on Mars. Where did all the water go?
AB1OC ARISS Ground Station Operations

AB1OC ARISS Ground Station Operations

This contact was made in a Telebridge format using my Ground Station here in New Hampshire, USA. The linkup with the Scouts on Long Island was via a Zoom conference call. You can learn more about our ground station here.
ARISS Ground Station

ARISS Ground Station

Helping young people make contact with astronauts on the ISS using Amateur Radio is great fun. My work with ARISS is near the top of my list in terms of the most rewarding work that I do with Amateur Radio.

Best and 73,

Fred, AB1OC

Scouts in Australia Contact the ISS via Amateur Radio

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Scout Making Contact with the ISS

Scouts in Victoria, Australia Making Contact with the ISS at VicJam

I once again had the pleasure to help a group of young people make contact with an Astronaut on the International Space Station this past week. The Scouts were participating in a Jamboree in Victoria, Australia. You can learn more about the event, called VicJam, here.

Astronaut Mark VandeHei, KG5GNP

Astronaut Mark VandeHei, KG5GNP

The Scouts made contact with Astronaut Mark VandeHei, KG5GNP this past Tuesday, January 4th, 2022. You can watch and listen to the contact on YouTube by clicking below. The actual contact begins at about 8:25 into the video.

The Scout’s contact lasted for approximately 10 minutes. The Scouts asked and Mark answered all of their questions and there was time at the end of the contact for “Thank You’s” and “Good Wishes”. Here are the questions that the Scouts asked:

  1. What 3 things do you miss from Earth? My Mum worked on a ship and missed; sleeping with the window open, the smell of cut grass, and the sound of rain on the roof.
  2. What do you have to do to become an astronaut?
  3. What would happen if someone were seriously ill on the ISS, and what would you do?
  4. How do you prepare and eat your meals while up in the space station?
  5. What is it like to float around in no gravity without friction?
  6. How does it feel going from zero gravity in space back to earth’s gravity? Does it hurt??
  7. What is the scariest thing to happen to you whilst you have been in space?
  8. How do you shower and go to the toilet in space?
  9. After being in the space station for so many months, how does it feel to experience planet Earth and nature again with all your senses, especially smell?
  10. How do the seasons affect the veggie production system on the ISS? How often do you get to eat fresh food?
  11. Did you always want to be an astronaut and how did you make it happen?
  12. Why do people go into space and how long is an average mission?
  13. How did you feel when you first learned of your selection to go to space and has this been a life-long ambition for you?
  14. Can you share some of the science that was worked on in space that we can now see on earth?
  15. Is there sound or much noise in space?
  16. Multiple nations have had space stations each bestowed with a specific name – Russia had Mir, NASA had Skylab, and China Tiangong-1. As a truly international effort and the largest man-made object in space, does the ISS have a Nickname, or is there a name that the astronauts use for the individual components?
  17. What energy supply do you use to power the station. If nuclear, what type of reactor do you use? If solar, how many solar panels do you use, and what is their power density?
ARISS Ground Station

ARISS Ground Station

This contact was made in a Telebridge format using my Ground Station here in New Hampshire, USA. The linkup with the Scouts in Australia was via a telephone connection using a phone patch in my shack. You can learn more about our ground station here.

AB1OC ARISS Ground Station Operations

AB1OC ARISS Ground Station Operations

Helping young people make contact with astronauts on the ISS using Amateur Radio is great fun. My work with ARISS is near the top of my list in terms of the most rewarding work that I do with Amateur Radio.

Best and 73,

Fred, AB1OC

Importance of Amateur Radio in Schools

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Amatuer Radio in Schools - Satellite Contact at Sussex County Charter School for Technology

Satellite Contact at Sussex County Charter School for Technology

It is vitally important that we make efforts to bring Amateur Radio to young people in schools and other venues. When we spend time bringing Amateur Radio to young people, we accomplish two important things. First, we have the potential to change a young person’s life for the better by involving them in Amateur Radio, a hobby and a service that inspires a lifetime of STEM learning and often leads to lifelong careers in Science or Engineering.

Secondly, our work in schools is one of the very best ways that we can make the general public aware of the positive benefits that Amateur Radio provides to their kids and to the general public…

Source: Importance of Amateur Radio in Schools

In my role as an ARISS Program Mentor, I recently had the pleasure of spending a week with Sussex County Charter School for Technology students and teachers to help teachers there to deliver their summer Radio Camp.

The summer Radio Camp was a STEM education program that the school developed in support of their upcoming contact with an astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS). Members of the local Sussex County Amateur Radio Club teamed with the teachers at the school to deliver a 5-day program grounded in STEM learning through Amateur Radio.

You can read more about the activities that we did at the week-long summer Radio Camp via the link above.

Fred, AB1OC

Plans for Field Day 2021 – Nashua Area Radio Society

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We are holding an in-person Field Day operation at Keyes Memorial Park in Milford, NH. Here’s some more on our plans for Field Day 2021. We’d like to invite you to join us…

Source: Plans for Field Day 2021 – Nashua Area Radio Society

I’d like to invite our friends here on our Blog to visit us during Field Day on Saturday, June 26th, and Sunday, June 27th. We will be at Keyes Memorial Park in Milford, NH.

Testing Our Field Day Satellite Station

Testing Our Field Day Satellite Station

We will have a Tower up with a Triband Yagi and we’ll have our computer-controlled portable satellite station at Field Day.

6m LFA Antenna for Field Day

6m LFA Antenna for Field Day

We’ll also have a new LFA Yagi for the 6m Band. We will be a 4A station with a total of 5 Transmitters on the air. Our stations will be equipped for SSB Phone, CW, and FT8/FT4 Digital modes.

We’ll also be doing training sessions on Satellite Operations, FT8 Digital on 6m, and Fox Hunting at 12:30 pm on Saturday, June 26th. If you have an HT, bring it and you can use it to hunt our foxes. We’ll also have HTs available for folks to use for Fox Hunting.

You can read more about what we are planning and find directions to get to our Field Day site here. I hope that we’ll see some of our followers at Field Day!

Fred, AB1OC

A 6m DX Opening to Remember

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6m EU Opening - PSKReporter

6m DX Opening to Europe – PSKReporter Snapshot

Every now and then we get a really good opening 6m DX opening to Europe on from here in New England, USA. This past Friday, June 4 2021 presented us with just such an opening. This particular one may well be the best one that I have ever seen. The opening began early in the day on Friday and was still going strong late into the afternoon. As you can see from the PSKReporter snapshot above, the band was solidly open to most of Western Europe and evening into the Middle East.

6m EU Opening - WSJT-X Snapshot

WSJT-X Snapshot During 6m Opening

There were so many strong signals from DX stations in Europe, it was difficult to decide which station to call next! I was able to work the opening for most of the day on Friday and was rewarded with over 130 DX contacts into Europe. In addition, I was able to Work 3 new DXCCs and over 40 new Grids (over 30 of these Grids have confirmed on LoTW already)!

6m EU Opening - JTAlert Snapshot

JTAlert Snapshot Helps To Work New Grids

We use the JTAlert application along with WSJT-X and DXLab Suite. JTAlert helped to identify stations in new Grids that we had not Worked before in the flood of activity on the 6m Band during this opening. At times, there were 4 or 5 different stations in new Grids being decode at once!

AB1OC 6m Grids as of June 2021

AB1OC 6m Grids as of June 2021

The 6m Es season has been very good so far this year with great propagation and lots of activity. Let hope that this continues well into the end of the summer here in New England. We are especially hoping for good 6m openings during Field Day later this month.

Fred, AB1OC

Satellite Passes During Field Day 2021

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Field Day 2021 Satellite Passes in FN42

Field Day 2021 Satellite Passes in FN42

We had some time over the weekend so we ran some Satellite Pass Predictions for Field Day 2021 for our Grid Square which is FN42. As you can see, we are going to have a lot of fun working satellite during Field Day! Field Day rules limit us to a single FM EasySat contact using but we can work as many contacts via Linear Transponder Satellites as we wish

Field Day Satellite Station

Field Day Satellite Station

We recently set up and tested our Portable Satellite Ground station here at our QTH and it’s working great! It has produced some good DX contacts into Europe from New Hampshire, USA during the past week.

You can read more about our Portable Satellite Station test here.

Fred, AB1OC

Field Day Satellite Station for 2021 – Setup and Test in Hollis

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The Nashua Area Radio Society will be using our portable Satellite Station this year at Summer Field Day. A number of members got together recently to assemble and test our Computer-Controlled Portable Satellite Station for Field Day. Here are some pictures of our Field Day Satellite Station Test…

Source: Field Day Satellite Station for 2021 – Setup and Test in Hollis

Several members of the Nashua Area Radio Society got together to set up and test our Portable Satellite Station for Field Day 2021. Our station is a computer-controlled one and enables us to work FM and Linear Satellites using phone mode and CW.

The setup uses an M2 Antenna Systems LEO Pack Antenna System on a Glen Martin Aluminum Tower that is set up to be portable. Feedlines use 100 ft lengths for LMR-400uF and LMR-600uF coax cable for the 2m and 70cm bands. The rotator is an Alfa-SPID Az/El unit. The antenna system also uses coax-powered preamplifiers from Advanced Receiver Research. The station uses an IC-9700 Transceiver, a Green Heron RT-21 Az/El Rotator Controller, and a MacBook Air Laptop running MacDoppler and MacLogger DX.

This setup is an updated version of the portable satellite station that we built for an ISS Crew Contact that a local school did with us some time ago.

You can see how the portable station goes together in the article above. You can learn more about the design and construction of our Portable Sation from the series of articles that begins here. We hope to work some of our readers on the birds during Field Day this year!

Fred, AB1OC

Reducing RFI From Our QTH

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Reducing RFI - Fiber Optic Network Wall Outlet

Fiber Wall Outlet

Many Hams (including this one) have problems with RF Interference (RFI) at their stations. Many RFI sources typically come from inside our own homes. Symptoms include birdies at single frequencies, interference that moves around across the Amateur Radio Bands, and high noise floors. We have had all of these problems here.

We recently built an improved EME station for the 2m Band. We noticed a higher-than-ideal noise floor when operating 2m EME during the initial testing of the new station. We decided to do some additional testing to see if we could isolate the source of the noise levels. One test we did was to shut down much of the ethernet network and associated devices here at our QTH. To our surprise, this lowered our noise floor on 2m by some 6 dB, and eliminated many birdies in the EME section of the 2m Band!

Our network mostly uses wired Ethernet running throughout our home on Cat 5e and Cat 6 unshielded ethernet cables. Many of the devices in our home use Power Over Ethernet (PoE) connections to power them through the ethernet cables.

NAS Drives with 10 GbE Optical Interfaces

NAS Drives for Video Storage and Backups

We also do quite a bit of video editing work and often transfer large files from our computers to several large Network Attached Storage (NAS) drives for file storage and backup. We also use an extensive IP Camera System to monitor our towers and for general security purposes.

reducing RFI - Core Fiber Optic Network Rack Enclosure

Core Network Rack Enclosure

We decided to solve our noise problems via a pretty major upgrade to our home network. The upgrade included:

  • Installing OM4 multimode fiber optic cables to replace all of the non-PoE wired Ethernet connections to the rooms in our home. The fiber cables were chosen to support 1 GbE and 10 GbE connections now and to be upgradable to 100 GbE connections in the future.
  • Installing a shielded rack enclosure to house the switches and management devices for our upgraded Network
  • Installing new Cat 6A Shielded Ethernet cables to PoE devices that we wanted to remotely shut down when we are operating using weak-signal modes on 6m and above
  • Upgrading portions of our network to 10 Gbs Ethernet speeds to improve the efficiency of Video Editing and Backups

The project began with the installation of a Shielded Rack Enclosure in our basement. The Rack is wall-mounted and fully shielded and grounded. It also includes cooling fans that move air vertically through the Rack to keep the gear inside cool.

Fiber Optic network - Core Network in Rack - Reducing RFI

Core Network in Rack

Next, we mounted all of the gear for our upgraded core network in the Rack. The main components include (from bottom to top):

PDU Web Interface for Network Control and Management

PDU Web Interface for Network Control and Management

We are going to power down most of our IP Cameras and the WiFi AP devices around our home when we are operating on 6m and above. We implemented this capability using an IP-Controlled Power Distribution Unit (PDU) that allows us to remotely turn network devices in our network on and off via a web browser from anywhere in our home.

IP Camera PoE Switches

IP Camera PoE Switches

The PDU controls a pair of Netgear PoE Edge Switches that power most of the IP Cameras in our home via PoE connections. Shutting down these switches via the PDU removes power from the associated IP Cameras which eliminates a great deal of noise and other RFI.

WiFi AP Control via PoE Edge Switch

WiFi Acess Point Control via PoE Edge Switch

We also installed a VLAN-capable Netgear PoE Edge Switch and connected it to the PDU. This switch enables us to shut down other devices on our network such as WiFi Access Points which are also significant sources of RFI. This switch uses a pair of optical interfaces that connect it to our core network

OM4 Fiber Cable with LC Connectors Installed

OM4 Fiber Cable with LC Connectors Installed

A large part of the work associated with our network upgrade project involved running OM4 Multi-mode Fiber Optic cables to all of the rooms in our home. We ran 12-fiber cables to locations that would likely benefit from upgrades to 100 GbE in the future (ex. our shack, home offices, media-equipped rooms, and servers/NAS devices) and 6-fiber cables were used elsewhere. All of our fiber cables use LC connectors with two fibers for each Ethernet connection (one for Tx and one for Rx). We used a mix of pre-terminated cable assemblies and unterminated cables to complete the room installations.

Fiber Prep using Fiber Cleaver

Fiber Prep using a Fiber Cleaver

Field terminating fiber optic cables is not difficult but it does require some special tools and careful attention to detail. The ends of each fiber must be prepared to precise specifications and be very clean before the LC connectors can be installed. The image above shows a Fiber Cleaver which is used to “cleave” the end of each fiber to form a square, low-reflection/low-loss connection to a field-installable LC connector. Proper use of a high-quality Fiber Cleaver is important if you are to achieve low-loss, low-dispersion field terminations.

Fiber Optic Network - Verifying an LC Connector Installation using Visual Fault Locator

Verifying an LC Connector Installation using a Visual Fault Locator

A Visual Fault Locator (VFL) with an LC Connector Adapter is used to confirm the proper installation of each LC connector. The tool shines a bright red laser light through the LC connector and fiber cable. The field installable LC connectors include a window that indicates laser dispersion at the fiber/connector junction. Too much light in the window due to dispersion indicates a poor connection. The VFL tool is also very useful for checking end-to-end optical transmission and continuity of the completed fiber cable installations.

Fiber Wall Outlet

Fiber Wall Outlet and Patch Cables

The fibers were terminated in wall outlets in the rooms of our home. The outlet plates accept standard keystone jacks. We used LC Keystone Couplers with our wall jack plates. This approach ensures that the ends of fragile fiber optic cables running to the rooms will not be damaged or broken when connecting the fibers to ethernet switches and other devices.

Fiber Interconnect Tray

Fiber LC Interconnect Enclosure

The other end of each fiber cable is terminated in a Fiber LC Patch Enclosure Tray in our Rack. The enclosures provide a test point and LC patch cable interconnect point for the fiber cables. The advantage of using enclosures such as these is that they protect the ends of the fiber cables running to the rooms from damage. A total of three trays terminate a total of 72 OM4 fiber pairs that we installed in our home.

Optical Fiber Connector Cleaner

Optical Fiber Connector Cleaner

It is very important to keep all of the fiber connections clean. Standard practice should be to ALWAYS clean the ends of each LC connector with an Optical Fiber Connector Cleaner each time before an LC connector is installed in a jack. It is also important to keep the supplied caps that come with LC connectors installed when they are not connected to a jack or optical SFP.

10GBase-SR SFP+ Transceiver

10GBase-SR SFP+ Transceiver

The fibers in the core rack and in the rooms are connected to switches, computers, and NAS devices via SFP or SFP+ Transceivers. An example of an SFP+ Transceiver is shown above. These devices convert the laser signals carried on the multimode OM4 fibers to a standard electrical format that can be handled by the core and edge switches in our network.

Core Network Components

Core Network Components

The connections between the Fiber Termination and Patch Enclosures and the SFPs and SFP+s in the Core Switches in our rack are made using OM4 LC Patch Cables (the aqua cables shown in the image above).

Fiber Wall Outlet

Fiber Wall Outlet and Patch Cables

Similar patch cables are run from the Wall Jacks to the Ethernet Edge switches in each room to complete the connections to the core network. Most of our Edge Switches in the rooms in our home use two pairs of fibers in a LAG configuration. This increases the bandwidth capacity of the connections and also increases reliability. Should one of the fiber pairs experience a failure, the other pair continues to carry the traffic until the problem can be repaired.

Reducting RFI - Shielded CAT6A Ethernet Terminations

Shielded CAT6A Ethernet Terminations

Some devices in our network such as the PoE IP Cameras on our Towers and a portion of our WiFi Access Points cannot be shut down without significantly compromising the operation and functionality of our Network. We controlled the noise and RFI contribution from these devices by installing new, Cat 6A Shield Ethernet cabling to connect them. The Cat 6A cables must be terminated using a grounded, fully shielded ethernet panel. This device is 10 Gbps Ethernet capable and properly terminates the shielded Cat 6A cables in our Rack.

Cat 6A Shielded Keystone Jack

Cat 6A Shielded Keystone Jack

Shielded Cat 6A Keystone Jacks and Shielded Ethernet Patch Cables are used in the rooms to connect to the edge devices.

10 GbE Connected Computer

10 Gbps Ethernet Connected Computer

So how did all of this workout? We are seeing a 6 – 7 dB improvement in the noise floor on 2m. This is a huge improvement for our EME station! We are also seeing about 1 dB in noise floor improvement on 6m. We are also seeing a significant reduction in birdies on all the bands. Finally, many of our computers and most of our NAS drives have been upgraded to 10 Gbps Ethernet which enables us to move large files around our network much more quickly. We are also seeing some improvement in the actual measured throughput of our 1 Gbs/400 Mbps Fiber Internet connection.

I hope that our readers find our Fiber Optic and 10 Gbps Networking project interesting.

Fred, AB1OC

6m LFA Yagi for Field Day and Mountain Topping

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6m LFA Yagi for Field Day and Mountain Topping

6m LFA Yagi for Field Day and Mountain Topping

Our 6m Field Day station will be a portable setup and features a new antenna – a 3-Element Loop Fed Array (LFA) Yagi from InnoVAntennas…

Source: 6m Field Day Station – Nashua Area Radio Society

We’ve been wanting to try a Loop Fed Array (LFA) Yagi on the 6m Band. The Nashua Area Radio Society’s 2021 Field Day operation presented us with a good opportunity to do this. We choose a lightweight 3-Element LFA Yagi from InnoVAntennas and used a fiberglass mast to get it up 25 ft (about 8 meters).

The LFA Yagi performed very well! You can read more about this antenna’s performance and our upgraded portable station via the link above.

Fred, AB1OC