August - Western & Northern Suburbs Amateur Radio Club

Portable Mains Power Tests at Bundoora (WANSARC - QF22MH) ParkWith the purchase of a portable generator for field day and out and about use, it was time to "break it in" for a day at the park.After finally getting a day on the weekend with some sunshine, Mick VK3CH took the new power source to Rotunda 6 and poweredup some DVB-S ATV as well as 100 watts on 2 meters with the IC-9100.Don VK3HDX offered some good advice on the generator such as only using high quality synthetic oil, high octane 98 fuel andthrowing out the supplied spark plug and replacing it with a decent NGK spark plug. He also said run it for about 5 hours then drainthe oil out completely to get rid of any metal filing contamination and replace the oil.So after packing everything into the car two days beforehand, on a Sunday with forecast sunshine, Mick set off to the park.As it was a clear sky morning the temperature on arrival at 6:55 am was exactly zero degrees and it stayed quite cold the whole day.On the front page you can see the white frost on the ground and cricket oval, which did not disappear until well after 10am.At 7:05 am a car drove down, looking for a BBQ spot and when they saw me they were not happy. They parked and watched me forabout 10 minutes, maybe hoping I had been there all night and was packing up. As they saw me carrying out box's and more crates ofgear they did a dummy spit and revved the guts out the car and did a nice burnout as they left. If the houses were not already awakethey were now! I had deliberately delayed the starting of the generator until around 9 am out of consideration for the local residents.Working alone, everything was setup ready over two hours, with erecting of antennas and alignment being the most time consuming.After powering on the new generator at 8:50 am it was time to test it all. VK3RTV2 was able to be reached although it wastemperamental at times. Later in the day the change to VK3RTV1 was done and the power level needed to hold that open pictureperfect was only 20% of full power, being about 2 watts (DVB-S).All working first go - needs the entire bench to fit it all With all the gear operating, IC-9100, Remote Rigged IC706,Television, ATV Transmitter, On Screen Text Display Unit and theHD Camera, current draw 240v side is 1.5 Amps (355W), increasedto 3 amps (655W) when transmitting 100 watts on 2 meters FM.The 3.2 KVA Reports on the ATV picture sent to VK3RTV2 were received from John VK3DQ, Trevor VK3ATX, Don VK3HDX, Peter VK3BFG,Jack VK3WWW and Mick VK3AY. Chris VK3FY and Jesse VK3FJPM watched via video stream on the internet on the BATC site.The ATV picture had very fine horizontal lines when looking at white images which was later found to be because of the installationof the 24 volt switch mode power supply inside the ATV TX unit right above the SR-Systems boards. Looks like some shielding isrequired. Some double sided printed circuit boards should do the job...At around midday Johnno VK3FMPB arrived and setup on HF. Later Wilfred P29AX joined him in operating and antenna tuning.Then after seeing the action on his TV at home, Mick VK3AY came down to see us as well. Generator lasts six hours on a tank.Doing some tests with the HM-50 base microphone with the IC-9100 it was found the audio was improved when the "Bass Cut" used.So another problem solved on the day.WANSARC Vol 43 Issue 08 2012 Page 14 of 20