During 2020 lockdown I did few qso on AO-7 with 2mt EME system and 2x25JXX70 on 70cm
After those qso I decided to improve my home station in order to get easier access to the "birds"
The first step was to add the automatic sat tracking to my G5400 rotator
I built a simple Arduino interface that gets command from PC using Yaesu command set
then drives the G5400 using PST Rotator and SatPC32 software
Second step was to change antennas, I removed the 2x25JXX70 and installed a 13DK7ZB for 70cm, in addition I put a 8LFA for 2mt
Now with wider main lobes, tracking is easier and even without V pol I can almost every time copy my dowlink on RS-44
2023 because off the high traffic on Greecube I decided to install a bigger system, now I use 4x13 DK7ZB
After about 1 year I decided to get a new radio, the Yaesu FT736r with Mutek performs still very well but I wanted a modern one
so I get an ICOM 9700, easier to interface to PC for doppler correction and with a nice bandscope that helps a lot.
I did some test with a preamplifier on 70cm in order to improve the reception on RS-44 but I found that the IC9700 is good enough
I have about 10 mt of Ecoflex15 cable + 5 mt of Ecoflex 10 from antenna to IC9700
So far I was able to work 91 DXCC entities and 391 squares.
Analog ODX is FG8OJ 7361 Km worked with AO7
Digital ODX is VK6PY 12698 Km worked with GREENCUBE