Aus to Ukraine - 12,842 klms

Another long distance contact into Europe thanks to Alex UR4MSF in the Ukraine. It took a while to get the RSTs confirmed but a 5x5 recieved and a 3x3 provided. Thanks again Alex! Put him onto the VKLogger so hopefully some other aussie hams can pick up some contacts into Europe.

My RST is wrong

Made a contact with Doug KH6QR this morning - Brisbane to Hawaii. Doug was running 200W from a Kenwood TS480HX into a 6 element beam 40 foot off the ground. A lot of fading on the signal and he had a little chuckle at the 1x3 RST I gave him.......hmmmm....oh oh, I've been confusing my RST...woops! Seeing as messed up the RST I'll not log this one. Have also printed out the RST matrix so I can get my signal reports correct for the future.

Ham Radio RST Signal Reports
R-S-T Characteristics	Readability R	Strength S	Tone T (cw)
1	Unreadable	Faint signals, barely perceptible	Sixty cycle a.c or less, very rough and broad
2	Barely readable, occasional words distinguishable	Very weak signals	Very rough a.c., very harsh and broad
3	Readable with considerable difficulty	Weak signals	Rough a.c. tone, rectified but not filtered
4	Readable with practically no difficulty	Fair signals	Rough note, some trace of filtering
5	Perfectly readable	Fairly good signals	Filtered rectified a.c. but strongly ripple-modulated
6	N/A	Good signals	Filtered tone, definite trace of ripple modulation
7	N/A	Moderately strong signals	Near pure tone, trace of ripple modulation
8	N/A	Strong signals	Near perfect tone, slight trace of modulation
9	N/A	Extremely strong signals	Perfect tone, no trace of ripple or modulation of any kind

Aus to Bulgaria - 13,272 klms

Just leaving the shed after repairing a Kenwood mic for my 2m mobile rig and thought I'd have a quick scan of 10m and up pops Mike - LZ2DF running an FT-920 into a Yagi and looking for DX contacts in the pacific.

A lot of QSB on the signal but eventually we managed to swap signal reports completing a 13,272 kilometre contact from Australia to Bulgaria. Definately my farthest contact so far and still with the same vertical (new one hasn't gone up yet).

Annoying antennas and other updates

I had some problems last night with the antenna giving me a high SWR intermittently. It didn't seem to matter what I did or what rig I was using I was getting a reasonable SWR reading and then a high one. The antenna tuner was struggling bringing it into something usable and it switched back and forth for a while until I came to the conclusion that my 25 year old 11m vertical is due for retirement.....so I bought a new one. I gave Peter a call at Shockwave Antennas - http://shockwaveantennas.com/ - and after a quick chat settled on just replacing the Station Master with like for like. Some advice on tuning the antenna length for 10m and that was it. I'm looking forward to retiring the current vertical and putting up the new one, I also have a new connector coming and will dump about 5 inches of the RG213 in case I have some water in the coax. Hopefully the intermittent problems will disappear after that although...it is behaving itself really well at the moment. Doh!!!

Other items of note are that the LDG Z11 auto antenna tuner has arrived, gave it a quick test and it worked well. A bit noisy when cycling it's relays during a tune but nothing to worry about. It's about an inch smaller width-wise than the Dragon SS485H I'm looking to pair it with but no problems on depth. Should work well portable.

I also have another 3 antennas on the way: 1 Military HF antenna ~2.7 metres in length, a 10m dipole, and a super flexy antenna for my VX-7 handheld. Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) has bitten hard. I also have an old Kenwood 2 metre VHF rig on the way which I'll pop into the car to replace the scanner I have now returned to the shack.

The Standard licence study material has arrived from the Radio and Electronics School (RES) - http://res.net.au/ - so it's time to knuckle down with the books and get to work on the passing the theory and reg exams.

And the last thing I have done is to install the HRD suite of Ham software. I'm not fussed on the remote control stuff but the HRD Logbook app certainly looks complete.

Another contact with Japan and VK8 (NT)

A quick QSO with JA2DYI - Mike in Nagoya, Japan. A lot of fading on the 10m band today but we still managed the contact.



Also spoke with Peter - VK8HPB in Darwin a couple of days ago. Need to start collecting all the states and territories around Australia.

Another portable component

I'm still gathering the bits for my new 10m portable rig. Latest addition is the LDG Z11 Auto tuner. Should be here shortly.



Other items on the list:

• Stick with the 3x12V 7.5AH SLAs I already have? How many to use vs. weight?
• Transceiver - Have 10M rig
• Auto Tuner - On the way - needed to allow for different types of antenna
• Antenna - ex-military whip on the way from Greece, need mounts for new antenna
• Counterpoise?
• Enclosure - this is the problem, stick with what I have or go with a new enclosure like EC1CW?
• Wiring - looking to expand my first effort and some extra features especially on the charging and fuse side.

Japan is open for business

Propagation on 10m was pretty good this evening and after trying for a while I managed to generate a contact on 28.480 with Masa - JE1SDO in Japan.

Great to talk to another ham in a different country and he very kindly gave me a 53 to 55 signal report. Masa was running 200Watts into a Yagi so I didn't feel too bad making the 6,631 kilometre return trip on my 10 watts and the 1/4 wave vertical. WooHoo!!!!!

Success!!!!!!

A bit of trying and I have made my first contact with an overseas station as a licenced amateur. P29FR Renzo was a solid 5x7 on 28.490Mhz USB beaming in from Papua New Guinea. Spotted on VKlogger and tuning in I could hear Renzo fade in and out but with a solid signal in the main talking to some VK stations of which I could only make out VK4LOT. Unfortunately I could not hear any of the other stations speaking with P29FR so tried to time my call to minimize calling on top of other stations trying to work PNG. Luckily Renzo came back and in between some fade we managed to swap our signal reports and conclude the 2280 kilometre QSO. Not bad for 10watts up a relatively short vertical.

Very happy to have completed this one and hopefully will have a few more now that the first one is in the bag. I've setup my account on eQSL and also QRZ so hopefully Renzo can confirm the QSO on his side.

eQSL card below:

Youtube inspiration

I've been spending a bit of time youtubing and thought I'd share 2 of my current favourites. There is of course the well-known GoatHiker (along with the goats Peanut and Rooster). Always enjoy seeing WG0AT - Steve operating mountain tops with his poor beasts of burden in tow:
http://www.youtube.com/user/goathiker

Next one is EC1CW - Diego. I stumbled across Diego's channel over Christmas and I think I've worked my way through just about all of his videos so far. Another mountain top operator Diego regularly activates a number of peaks for the SOTA program.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ec1cw

But of special interest to me is how Diego has contructed his Yaesu FT-897 based manpack. Definately something I'm looking to try in the future.

10m is closed

Having no luck on 10m, CQ calls are going out but no replies and I've missed a couple of skeds with VK4WDM due to my own stupidity around zulu time. 11m is still open with more activity and my Ch.35 radio check request got into Melbourne which is not too bad from Brisbane - 1700kms in fact. I did however get onto the 2M Mount Cotton repeater on 147.075 and had a good QSO with VK4IB - Frank.

Quick shot of lunch in the shack as it stands at the moment. I have the portable apart with the 10m back onto the shelf. I'll set it up in a manpack later on and do a bit of a better job this time but in the absence of a proper rig it's the one that gets me onto the Amateur HF bands.

Gear Addiction

Amateur Radio (at the start anyway) is all about collecting gear and getting on the air. Luckily I've been stashing away radio gear for ages, although a recent thinning of the herd has cut a bit deeper than I would like.
Focus for me at the moment is improving my operations on VHF with my Yaesu 2800 2M rig and working HF on the Dragon SS-485H 10m transceiver.

Unfortunately my Kenwood 440SAT HF rig, Yaesu VX3, and some other choice HF units have moved on but this is always an opportunity to improve stock.........

Cherry Post

........2013 is here and I've picked up an old hobby - Radio. I started out in CB radio over 20 years ago and while I gave it away for a long time it is something that I've always liked. The excitement of talking to someone very far away using an age-old method of communications has always held a higher place for me than the telephone, mobile phone or internet. It really is a case of the journey not the destination.

A couple of years ago I sat and passed my amateur radio Foundation Certificate and received the VK4FLYN callsign. As always one thing led to another and after a spurt of enthusiasm I was focused on work and family. Still, with a young family I'd like to get back into the hobby, use my current certification and if possible upgrade to a standard or advanced licence. For me DX holds the most appeal although I'm not having much success so far. So settle back and let's see how far we can go in 2013 and if Amateur Radio is really all I remember it to be.