23cm EME Equipment - Block Diagram

 

 

Above is a block diagram of my 23cm EME station.  Click on it to see a larger image.  Note that the Leo Bodnar GPSDO injection board is actually installed inside the Icom IC-9700.  (See this Post - Leo Bodnar Installation)

 

All my 23cm EME Equipment "lives" on a 3-shelf rolling cart which stays in the garage along with my folding dish antenna.  When I plan to operate on EME, I simply roll out the cart, install the 2.4m folding dish, and connect the cables.  There are 3 cables from the Sub-Lunar SL-1 Az-El rotors to the WinTrak controller - the SEI controller Bus plus the Azimuth and Elevation power cables.

Then there are the two RF coaxes (Tx and Rx) which connect from the dish to the AG6EE power amp.  The Rx cable connects to the AG6EE preamp and the Tx cable to the OK1DFC Septum feed.  The TX cable connects thru the sensor of the WaveNode RF Power Meter and to the output of the AG6EE power amp.  The Rx cable connects to the AG6EE power amp which has sequenced DC voltage to feed the preamplifier through the coaxial cable.  The preamp also contains a built-in relay and dummy load and it connects directly to a septum or patch feed without the need for an adapter or coax jumper.

Once everything is connected, it is time to calibrate the dish's pointing location.  If the sun is not available, I can use the Theodolite app on the iPhone to get the Az and El of the moon and enter that into WinTrak.  If I have the sun, it is simpler to point the dish at the sun so that the square shadow of the Septum Feed appears on the exact center of the dish.  Then I press the calibrate button on the WinTrak software of the WinTrak controller and it will keep the dish pointed at the moon all the time.

You can see a 45-second video of me setting up the entire station on another Blog post "Setting Up the 23cm EME Station." There is a link in that Post to the video.  Clicking on that post will open in a new window. The setup of all the equipment actually took 19 minutes but the video was compressed to just show the basic operations.

Below is an image showing how the sun's shadow appears on the center of the dish for calibrating the antenna.