Hello richard- this is Patrick N2OEQ on long island. Sorry our contact on fo-29 was short. Try to keep your downlink frequency steady by adjusting your uplink frequency. It was a good contact nontheless.
I recently did a little homework before purchasing a Hamtronics recieve only preamp. Apparently, adding a preamp increases the dynamic range possibly introducing unwanted signals but then I thought, Hay!, wouldnt that make it easier with a 5khz seperated channelized FM radio? Not sure. Anyway, I seem to be doing OK with rated 18 Bb of gain which is close to the low setting of your mirage. Are you using seperate antennas, how far apart, and how long and what type of coax? Best thing I guess is to experiment. Calculate station gain subtracting and adding gains to help figure out your setting requirements.
I use for FM satellites; icom 229H @ 50 watts into short vertical for omni coverage, a homebrew 8 element UHF yagi-uda beam with preamp at antenna and 25 feet of 9913 coax to FT 8800 dual band rig. I tried using a diplexer before the preamp but better signals are had without the filter and good seperation of the antennas. I'm pretty new to this so the other techies should have a lot more for you.
Thanks for the contact, you sounded strong on fo-29, thanks & 73, pat n2oeq
On Sun, 20 Aug 2006, Richard Lawn wrote:
I'm about to mast mount a new Mirage 70cm preamp. It has a high/low setting. Any suggestions from the group as I'm sure many of you are using this preamp. Is the high setting too much gain? I got tired of forgetting I had the ARR preamp on an frying it by sending too much RF into it. 73 Rick W2JAZ
Richard Lawn, Dean College of Performing Arts University of the Arts 215-717-6125
Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb