OE Headquarter Station 15m SSB

Our station of the Radio-Amateur-Klub of the TU Wien serves as one of the headquarter stations in this year’s IARU HF World Championship. We operate in SSB on the 15m band.

Our rig is based on a FT-5000MP which we hooked up to a historic Collins Radio „30S-1“ Power Amplifier (PA) yielding robust QRO performance. This is a linear PA based on a single tetrode tube suitable for CW and SSB on all HF bands. The PA was provided by Roman OE1RMS in late 2021 and Roman was very helpful in explaining its tuning and operation. Many thanks also to Roland OE1RSA for organising transport of this impressively heavy piece of hardware.

The antenna in use is our SteppIR DB36 Yagi.

The station is operated during the contest weekend (July 9-10, 2022) by Gerald OE1GAQ, Thomas OE1TRI, Dominik OE1ERT, Manfred OE4MQW and Chris OE1VMC.

OE1VMC with 30S-1

OE1XTU is QRV on QO-100 Satellite

The Radio-Amateur-Club of the TU Wien has set up a ground station for the Es’hail 2 satellite (QO-100) in geostationary orbit in the course of several student projects. Shengya and Mariam have manufactured the POTY Feed and constructed its positioning relative to the dish. Mariam, Le and Artan have completed the system integration for the ground station. Basic configuration and pictures follow below.

Transmitter (S-band uplink, 13cm)

• YAESU FT-817ND on 144,0-144,5 MHz
• Kuhne Upconverter (MKU UP 2424 B) for 2400,0-2400,5 MHz
• Kathrein 80cm offset dish with dual band POTY Feed

Receiver (X-band downlink, 3cm)

• YAESU FT-817ND on 433,5-434,0 MHz
• Kuhne Downconverter (MKU LNC 10 QO-100) for 10489,5-10490,0 MHz
• Kathrein 80cm offset dish with dual band POTY Feed

CQ WPX CW 2022

This year, the radio amateur club OE1XTU participated with the smallest multi-operator team: just two OPs, Gudrun OE1OMA and Chris OE1VMC.

Generally Assembly of the RTU

On May 24, we held this year’s general assembly of the radio-amateur-klub of the TU Wien which operates with the call sign OE1XTU. Apart from the usual agenda items of the general assembly, we also enjoyed the talk given by Roland OE1RSA on packet radio, its historic roots, and various implementations in hardware and software. The newly elected board for the next two years consists of Chris OE1VMC (president), Gerald OE1GAQ (vice-president), and Tom OE3PTC (secretary and cashier). Two photos below show the club members at the beginning of the meeting (right photo, taken at the roof of the institute of telecommunications) and in the roundup after the general assembly (left photo).

All Austrian Emergency Exercise 2022

The OE1XTU Team for AOEE 2022 consists of three OPs: Dieter OE1KDK, Gerald OE1GAQ and Chris OE1VMC. This year, the 40m band opened nicely in the afternoon session. The raw OE1XTU score map (before log checking) from the SaigaAOEC Logger is shown below. Districts coloured in blue have been contacted solely on the 80m band. Districts coloured in green have been contacted solely on 40m. Red districts were contacted on both bands, while white colour indicates districts without contacts.

Girls Day 2022

Friday, April 22, 2022 was declared a „Girls Day“ for amateur radio stations in OE-Country. On that day, unlicensed female individuals could operate amateur radio stations under supervision of a licensed ham. The photo below shows Sophie at our YAESU FT-5K rig. She called CQ on 20m and 15m in SSB and we have several QSOs in the log, including one with W4RN in North Virginia.

OE1XTU in FT8 DX Contest

The OE1XTU clubstation was operated by Manfred OE4MQW and Gerald OE1GAQ in the FT8 DX Contest during April 9-10, 2022 that was organized by the European FT8 Club. We were lucky as the thunderstorms all over Europe completely avoided Austria. The participation from Oceania („OC“ region) was very strong and we have several OC contacts in the log, in total we logged 278 QSOs. Screenshot from „Grid Tracker“ below: We worked 132 grid squares in the contest.

OE1XTU meets KK6UC

Chris, OE1VMC, visited the radio amateur club of UCSD with call KK6UC on Feb. 18, 2022. Kevin, KK6FRK, showed the shack to UCSD students, John, Tony, Justin, and Cathrine, on that afternoon. Pics below show antenna farm on the roof of the Atkinson building, the KK6UC shack, YL and OMs. Enjoy!

• 

• 

• 

• 

SteppIR repair

The stormy weather during End of November 2021 destroyed the element housing unit (EHU) of director element D2 of our 4-element SteppIR DB36 Yagi. Also our antenna rotator broke down in those storms. Both repaired on January 14, 2022 by Emir E77DX – just in time for the course „Short Wave Radio“ at TU Wien. Some fotos below.

CQ WW DX CW 2021

During the last weekend in November 2021, we took part in this year’s edition of CQ WW in telegraphy with a small OE1XTU team of three operators: OE1OMA, OE1TKW and OE1VMC. The Covid-19 pandemic is ongoing and Austria is presently in its fourth lockdown. Therefore, we enforced strict Covid-19 rules: only one operator in front of the radio at any time in the contest.

We worked mainly on Sunday afternoon: 99 QSOs on 80m thru 20m. We worked 16 CQ Zones and a total of 45 Countries. The map below was created with the online Log Analyzer 3.2 by DL4MFM. Marker color denotes the radio band: blue=80m, red=40m, orange=20m.