My activity on 10GHz started on the late ’80s, due to the help, availability and good example of Goliardo I4BER.
He lent me his spare transverter (2 dB NF and 1W) to let me approach this new band.
I did started with a rectangular horn of 25 dB gain, then I moved to a 70 cm dish with a simple backfire as a feeder.
After some testing and some good QSOs with TK, OE, HB9, etc., often performed following the instructions of Carlo I4CHY, I left  this band for several years, but willing to come back, sooner or later…

In the fall 2001, I decided to get a new try on my new home, located in Montagnana (Italy) JN55rf.
Actually, the position wasn’t the very best for microwaves, but good enough to get a taste..
Therefore, I bought a DJ6JJ-like transverter,built and solt by a local ham. Round 2 dB NF and 200 mW “declared….” tsvt10ghz1
All the 10GHz gears were sealed in a box, fit behind the dish, moved by mean of a modified CD45 rotor at around 5m above the level of the garden.
At the same time, I took the opportunity to improve also the radiating system, building a swan neck to feed my dish. The feeding is a bit stressed, round -8 dB on the edge, but I believed this was a good compromise for terrestrial work with a so small dish.
When all was set up, my transverter started to give me serious problems, due to the very bad behaviour when used outside the lab… (coldness??)

With the kind help of Goliardo I4BER, we tried to get it working, but it was so badly built, that all our tries failed.. a real lemon!! be aware….!

So, my adventure on 3 cm band did stop before to start. Now I’m following another way to get there: the ATV, and this one seems to work!!

By iw4blg

Pierluigi Poggi since his childhood has been attracted from technical stuffs and gears, being a very curious guy. He built his first Xtal radio when he was just 9. Today, we would call him “maker”. When he turned to 21 became radio amateur, with call sign iw4blg. Since then, he developed many radio gears and felt in love with space communication, becoming an EMErs and a satellite enthusiast. His great passion led him to experiment a lot on the higher bands, up to pioneering several THz (lightwaves) QSOs on the early ’90. Beside to this passion to the radio communication and modern technologies, he like to study, experiment, understand-why, then, write and share, or better, spread the knowledge. This fact led him to became a well renowned contributor of electronics magazines with more than 95 articles published and author of 14 science books.

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