Jupiter

Last Wednesday evening there was a micromoon in a clear sky. A good opportunity to make some photoos. I found Jupiter in the constellation Lion.

                                                        Constellation Lion

Jupiter is the large dot left from the middle, the star Regulus (a blue giant) is on the right

The picture was taken from the 'silence area' near Weipoort. With an exposure time of 8 seconds and the light from the micro moon the area was captured:

Some amateur astronomers make beautiful pictures from the planets. For example Richard Bosman: http://www.astrofotografie.nl/index.htm
He made this nice photoo from Jupiter:

145 MHz transverter

I found an interesting article in Funk magazine from May 1999.
It describes a 28 MHz to 145 MHz transverter.
Since I would like to use SSB modulation on 2 meter I am considering to make a transverter based on the schematic shown here:

My Yaesu FT450 can be used for the 28 MHz Intermediate Frequency processing.
Then all modulations (AM, FM, SSB, CW, digimodes) will come available.

I still have a power module M57719 (145 - 175 MHz) from Mitsubishi waiting to be used; this module can be used to boost the RF power of the transverter to a level of 14 Watts although I am not sure whether the power module can handle AM and SSB signals.

eQSL from Albania

This week I received my first eQSL from Albania from a digimode QSO I had Augustus 2006 with Dimitri. The callsign of Dimitri is ZA/IW2JOP.

                                  eQSL from ZA/IW2JOP

                                                      Albanian scenery