VK3ZPF ham radio blog

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award - Update # 18

2012-01-15T19:14:00.003+11:00

A lot has happened in a very short time for my progress on the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award.

Before heading off to French Island I went to The Lakes National Park and St Arnaud Range National Park. On the Sunday after returning from French Island I returned to the Dandenong Ranges National Park.

Why so many parks you may ask? I am working now to get the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award endorsements on as many different bands as possible as well as work from every park in the state. My multi-band switched inverted vee is the ideal antennas for this.

The Lakes saw me get contacts on 15, 20 and 40 m and about 50 mosquito bites on my legs and arms. If you are ever heading to The Lakes I suggest you apply insect repellent before leaving the car!

St Arnaud Range had no mozzies and good QSOs on 10, 15, 20 and 40 m. I even managed a contact into the Snowy River National Park thanks to a chance QSO with Graeme, VK3BXG, who was away camping with some of his family.

French Island gave me contacts on 10, 15, 20, 40 and 80 m, including another two QSOs with Graeme in the Snowy River National Park.

A quick one hour in the Dandenong Ranges on Sunday night after French Island saw me catch up with a couple of stations I have worked before. Yoshi, JH2UZR, on 15 m and Dave, VK3LDR on 10 m. I first worked Yoshi in April 2006 while I was away portable at Hoadley Hide. Yoshi was my first QSO on 15 m. I've made 41 QSOs on 15 m now. I had worked Dave during the 2009 Westlakes Cup when I was portable at the nearby footy oval.

I am progressing well toward working every park and I have updated my Google map to show my progress.

73

French Island National Park activation 2012

2012-01-13T22:37:00.005+11:00

Planning for this National Park activation for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award started back in late November 2011. I posted an email to the KRMNPA Yahoo group asking if any of the group wanted to come along with me. I made the invitation intentionally blunt so there was no doubt what people were in for if they came along. From the KRMNPA group I got no takers. A couple of the members said they would like to join me but were busy elsewhere. This was all quite fine by me as we are a varied group with different levels of experience, ability and desires.

French Island National Park

My next source of people to hike with was the Scout Radio & Electronics Service Unit. Here I got more interest with Matt, VK2ADF, Kevin, VK3KAB, and Adam VK3YDF, offering to come along. Adam came on the 2010 activation and this year had offered to paddle a kayak across, carrying additional weight of required. Matt is based in Sydney at present and was in Melbourne on holidays.

On the Thursday I got news that both Adam and Kevin had to pull out of the trip. This was a little disappointing as they were both keen to come along but circumstance had forced their withdrawal.

On Saturday morning I met up with Matt and Ash, VK3SSB, at the McDonald's in Mornington. Ash had come along to drop Matt off and catch up. I hadn't seen Ash for about 12 months although I had worked him on air earlier in the month.

Base of 10m squid pole

Matt and I then headed 20 minutes down the road to the Stony Point Caravan Park where we parked the car, loaded up our packs, bought our ferry tickets and headed out on the pier.

After a 15 minute ride to the Tankerton Jetty I was back on the island again. There is something about French Island that suggests it hasn't changed in a long time. It certainly hasn't changed in the past two years. I think even some of the cars in the car park haven't moved since I was last here. We headed off to the camp, stopping twice along the way. Once for the obligatory National Parks sign photo and once for a break and some water. The walk to the camp took just over an hour.

On arrival at the camp we found we had the whole camping area to ourselves and we talked about where best to set up the antennas and then place the tents to suit. Rain had been forecast so we set the squid pole antennas up followed by the tents before getting on air. This proved to be a wise move as the rain started lightly falling part way through our first sked. While setting the antennas we were joined by two other campers who had walked up from the jetty, carrying their gear in two shopping jeeps. Not too silly except for the sandy parts of the track.

Peter's operating position

Matt had a 20 m ground plane based on a 6 metre squid pole and my multi-band switched inverted vee antenna was held up by my 10 metre squid pole. Both poles were tied off to tree stumps conveniently left by Parks Victoria.

Just after getting the antennas in the air the local parks Ranger gave us a visit. He wanted to know what we were up to and why we had these big antennas set up. After chatting for about 5 minutes and explaining about the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks award and amateur radio in general he wished us well and left us alone.

Prior to the weekend I had posted a schedule of times and frequencies where stations might find us and this proved to be most useful. I had planned these skeds to make the most of the propagation and to try and get contacts on the 10, 15, 20, 40 and 80 m bands.

Matt's operating position

Our first sked was at 1:00 pm on 10 m. I was keen to work at least one contact using my own call sign before we worked the VK3SAT club call sign. My first QSO was just before 1:00 pm with Greg, VK2GJC, from Ulladulla on the south coast of New South Wales. We then worked 7 stations on 10 m pausing only to move the rigs inside the tents out of the rain.

During the next 5 hours we worked 15, 20 and 40 m bands and added another 44 QSOs to the VK3SAT log. These QSOs came on my FT7 and Matt's IC7000. The IC7000 had suffered a small accident a week before the trip when it got knocked of the table and damaged the volume control. Matt needed to use needle nose pliers to adjusts the volume but once set it was left alone. The rain continued intermittently and Matt and I worked from our own tents.

During a break in the rain Matt and I hung his adjustable dipole in the tallest tree we could access and this gave Matt access to 40 m while I was working 20 m.

Working 80 m inside the tent

At 8 pm we had a sked on 80 meters and after working only 1 station and hearing no more we decided it was perhaps a little early for 80 metres as it was about 45 minutes before sunset. So we turned the rig off and waited until dusk before trying again. When we came back on air there was quite a few stations wanting to work us and over the next hour we put 14 QSO in the log.

Before turning in for the evening I lowered the multi-band inverted vee antenna as it looked like a big storm was heading our way. I got a text message from VK3JNI, about 10:30 pm, telling us that indeed there was a storm about to hit. Thanks Phil.

Lowering the pole to change band

The rain came and got heavier and the tent leaked a little. I had placed the radio back in its box and made sure it was protected against water ingress as best as I could. The same couldn't be said for my bum bag which got wet, as did the ferry ticket inside. I was able to dry the ticket off during the morning by sitting it on top of the radio while making more QSOs.

The night was very warm and humid with the temperature in the tent about 25 degrees at 1:00 am with rain falling outside.

In the morning we set the antenna back up and worked the skeds again. This got us another 17 QSOs in the log with all skeds except 15 m being productive.

Tankerton Jetty

At 10:28 am we made our last contact and just after 11:00 we were all packed up and heading back to the ferry. We made good time to Tankerton, working Graeme VK3GL, on the VK3RMC UHF repeater along the way.

We stopped at the small picnic table hear the jetty for a little while waiting for the ferry time and then headed out to meet the boat. An uneventful trip across and we were back on the mainland.

I must, of course, thank Matt VK2ADF for coming along and working over 30% of the QSOs. I'd also like to thank all the stations that made the effort to work VK3SAT. I'd like to make particular mention of Alex, VK4TE, who made every sked and worked us on all 5 bands and also Ian, VK3FD, who was so keen to work the National Park on 5 bands that he went mobile and got as close to us as he could on the mainland to be sure to make the higher band QSOs.

A special mention to Kevin, VK3KAB, who was unable to make the trip but still went portable on Sunday at Tooradin, setting up his Buddie Pole, to work us on 20 and 10 m.

More information about French Island can be found at http://www.frenchislandinfo.com

This activation didn't get me any new parks as I have been here before, but it did give many others, including Matt, the opportunity to claim a new park for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks award.

Depending on the interest and demand I might just head back in 2014.

Mutli-band Inverted Vee @ 8.5 m and 20 m ground plane

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award - Update # 17

2011-12-30T13:55:00.001+11:00

Yesterday I finally made it down to the Point Nepean National Park for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks award.

Due to a few issues before I left home, heavy traffic and a longer set up time than expected I didn't get on air until about 1:25 pm. I had previously posted to the Yahoo group that I would be on air from midday.

I arrived at the park information centre about 12:30 and had a talk to the counter staff and found that there are limited places to park the car inside the National Park and only four places to access the beach. Armed with a copy of the park notes, I drove in and parked at the Gun Junction car park. This car park is next to an area shown on the park notes as 'Conservation area'. In fact it is an old bombing range from when the park was a military establishment and within the area may be some unexploded munitions.

From here it's about 900 m walk, past the Quarantine Station and the old Hospital to the beach, I loaded up my gear in a back pack and headed off.

Once on the beach I started unpacking. Before I had even got all the gear from my back pack a Parks Victoria Ranger had parked nearby and walked casually on to the beach and over to me. He asked me what I was doing, I explained the antenna and the award and he was happy, headed off and left me alone. He was the only person I saw on the beach for the whole hour I was there.

Once set up I tried 40m but found I still have some more tuning to do on the switched inverted vee antenna and I was getting very little power into the air. I called a few times on 7.100 but got no response.

I then changed to 20m and called on 14.190 and got a response from Ian, VK5CZ. He gave me 5 x 5 and we talked for about 20 minutes about QRP portable and the award.

After success on 20m I tried 15 and 10m but, like 40m there were no takers. There were a few stations on 15m, one JA station was quite strong, but I couldn't get a break.

At about 2:15 I gave it away and by 2:30 I had the pack on my back and was heading back to the car.

One station in the log, one more park off my list and some sunburn on my lower legs.

Back to French Island

2011-12-15T22:07:00.003+11:00

In January of 2010, along with two other members of the SRESU I made the trip across Western Port to activate the French Island National Park. Whilst there I made one QSO with my own call sign and 21 QSO using VK3SAT.

I've decided that it might be fun to go back to the island and claim some different bands for the Keith Roget Memorial National Park Award so exactly 2 years later we are heading back over.

This expedition I am being joined by three members of the SRESU, Matt VK2ADF, Kevin, VK3KAB and Adam VK3YDF. Adam and a mate are planning to kayak across from the mainland instead of walking.

I will be carrying my FT7, squid pole and switched inverted vee antenna. I'll also carry two SLA batteries and send a couple more across with Adam in the kayak.

The plan is to work 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10m whilst we are over there. At least one QSO on each band with my call sign and other QSOs with a scout call sign, probably VK3SAT again.

Matt is also chasing the National Parks Award so his call will get some use as well.

73

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award - Update # 16

2011-11-26T20:17:00.001+11:00

Last weekend was the first "National Parks Activation Weekend" where amateurs in Victoria were encouraged to go out into the state's National Parks and make contacts from those parks. These contacts were then eligible to be used toward the ARV Centenary Award and the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award.

Tony, VK3VTH, tells me that at least 18 National Parks were activated during the period. I worked some stations on Friday and Saturday from home, including VK100ARV from the Brisbane Ranges National Park.

For my part I went to Churchill National Park on Saturday afternoon to try out a modification I had made to my 20/80 switched Inverted Vee antenna. It was a simple mod where I had cut the wires and added a 40m band section to it. At the same time I also included RCA plugs and sockets as a means of connecting and disconnecting the wires for the different bands.

At Churchill National Park I was unable to test the antenna as an Inverted Vee as I forgot to take a piece of coax long enough to reach the centre of the antenna when it is up on the squid pole. So, rather than not activate the park, I configured the antenna as a 40m inverted L with the feed being only 2 metres from the radio, attached with two short patch cables joined together. The SWR was good in this arrangement and I made 12 QSO in just over an hour.

On Sunday I had to travel to Wodonga for work so I stopped by the Warby - Ovens National Park and set the modified antenna up properly on the 10m squid pole. The SWR on 20m and 40m was OK (<2:1) but it was too high on 80m so I had to add some extra length before working that band.

At the Warby - Ovens National Park I made four 20m QSO, 22 x 40m QSO and two 80m QSO using the switched Inverted Vee antenna. Changing bands was as easy as lowering the squid pole, plugging or unplugging the right RCA plugs, and pushing the pole back up.

Although no longer part of the activation weekend, after work on Monday I headed off to the Mount Buffalo National Park where I again used the switched Inverted Vee antenna. The drive to Mount Buffalo National Park takes about an hour from Wodonga and passes through some lovely rural farming area that was once full of farms growing tobacco. Nowadays it seems the old tobacco farms have made way for grape growing. I passed a few vineyards on the trip out, arriving at the start of the park just after 6 pm. From here I was able to make 16 QSO in about an hour before driving back to Wodonga.

On Tuesday after work I headed out to the Burrowa - Pine Mountain National Park, about 120 km East of Wodonga. This drive was a bit more up and down than the previous night. I made 18 QSO from Burrowa - Pine Mountain, again using the switched Inverted Vee. I would have loved to had stayed on air longer at these two parks but I wanted to be out of the parks before dark and back in Wodonga before 10pm so I could get a good night's sleep before work.

So at the end of all this I had added 74 QSO to my log, activated 4 National Parks, worked into four other National Parks and tried out a new antenna design.

My National Park tally, both activated and worked into is 30 parks in total, 7 parks on 80m, 21 parks on 40m and 23 parks on 20m.

I have updated my KRMNPA map here.

73

Scouthike 2011

2011-11-17T22:45:00.002+11:00

After wrapping up the VK100ARV activation on Tuesday my next event was Scouthike. I've been helping with Scouthike now for more than 20 years and I am yet to have a bad time at one.

This year was no exception, although it did have its moments.

Each year the SRESU establish a primary radio network using a 2 m portable repeater with a secondary network on 80 m to provide health, safety and welfare support to the couple of hundred scouts and support staff at this event.

Ashley, VK3FASH, came along with me and, as he did last year, played the major role in running the station. He is getting quite experienced at it.

We knew in advance that our location wasn’t ideal so we set up a 10 m 3 section mast with a Diamond X-200 dual-band antenna on top. I also ran out my trapped 20 m, 40 m and 80 m trapped dipole from the top of the mast. This set-up worked well with simplex 2 m contacts to a couple of the stations in the network as well as a good copy of the repeater.

The repeater had some problems on Friday night but Peter, VK3AJ, took care of these quickly and the 2 m network worked flawlessly for the rest of the weekend.

Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said about the 80 m network. The net control station at HQ had some challenges with their HF antenna and it needed to be replaced on Saturday. It would seem that the combination of a 1/4 wave 40 metre vertical element, some radial wires, a tuner and being set up on a big chunk of rock was not the right combination for an 80 m antenna.

We passed a few important messages and got some good feedback after the event and I put 22 QSO in my HF log, including two contacts with VK100ARV.

We are looking forward to going back to Scouthike in May next year.

SRESU activates VK100ARV

2011-11-17T07:29:00.000+11:00

A couple of weeks ago I was able to work VK100ARV along with Greg VK3LLL from the new VK3SCG station at Gilwell Park.

This activation was the first for the VK100ARV call sign and started at 11:00 local time or 0000 UTC. Our first contact was with Alex, VK4TE, a keen award chaser from Queensland.

Before starting the activation some important works needed to be done to improve station performance. I was assisted with these by Peter VK3AJ and ARV Awards manager Tony, VK3VTH. The works included final tuning of the 80 m Inverted Vee and completing the installation of the 160 m Inverted Vee.

We made 186 QSO, mostly on 40 m and 80 m SSB with a couple of STTV and PSK contacts as well.

The 10/15/20 m yagi at the top of the tower showed poor SWR after recent rains and further work is required to isolate and repair this problem.

We packed up around 10 pm as contacts on 40 m and 80 m had dried up and we both had to work the next day.

VK100ARV has now been passed around many clubs and individuals and is well on its way to making over 6000 QSOs for the month. These QSO have included many DXCC entities, SSTV, PSK, ATV, CW and of course SSB.

Activations this coming weekend include two National Parks as part of the National Parks weekend for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award.

One hundred, one hundred, one hundred!

2011-10-30T22:42:00.000+11:00

100. Three simple digits. This week 100 has been popping up all over the place.

100 DXCC entities worked. It has taken me from my first HF contact with VK2NZ in April 2006 to QSO number 2284 today when I worked CR3L to work 100 DXCC entities. Now I need to confirm them all via either QSL cards or Log Book Of The World and I can get a DXCC certificate to put on the wall. Details of my worked entities are at clublog.org

BM100 worked today. As I drew close to 100 DXCC entities I worked the special event station BM100 from Taiwan on SSB.

BV100 QSL cards arrived last Tuesday. A surprise in the post was four QSL cards from BV100 who I had worked in late September on PSK31. I had mailed off an Internal Reply Coupon and one QSL card not long after the QSO and I was pleasantly surprised to get four different cards back. Very generous indeed.

VK100ARV activation this Tuesday. This Tuesday 1 November is the start of 1 month activation for VK100ARV celebrating 100 years of Amateur Radio Victoria. I'm a lucky enough to be in the first activation group with other members of the SRESU from the new station, VK3SCG, at Gilwell Park. I'm hoping for lots of contacts and maybe even a pile up or two.

A special QSL card is being printed by Amateur Radio Victoria to commemorate the event and contacts with VK100ARV are worth 10 points toward the ARV Centenary Award.

73

Jamboree On The Air - JOTA 2011

2011-10-17T22:41:00.000+11:00

This year I again took some Venturers to the Harkaway Scout Camp, just north of Berwick for a 'bludge camp'. The idea of a bludge camp is that very little is planned and the Venturers are left to do what ever they want, within reason.

I set up a dual band vertical, 2m & 70cm, in a tree to access the ScoutNET repeater network. The ScoutNET is four 70cm repeaters interconnected to allow connections between various scout camps and halls. During the weekend I worked JOTA stations at Gilwell Park, Tyne St Scout Hall and Mafeking Rover Park via ScoutNET.

I also strung my multi-band HF antenna covering 80, 40 and 20m in the trees at about 8 m above the ground. On HF we worked stations in VK3, VK4, VK6, New Zealand and Germany. We used SSB, PSK and SSTV.

I had a problem with RF interference to and from the USB keyboard we were using so PSK and SSTV were limited to predefined macros.

We got 16 QSO in the log and those Venturers who were interested got to have a talk on the radio.

A good fun weekend for all.

73

How's DX?

2011-09-28T22:18:00.000+10:00

In the last couple of months I have increased my PSK31 activity, mostly in the afternoons between 0600Z and 1000Z. When I get home from work really early I’ve even been starting around 0400Z. What I have seen is a lot of stations from Europe and surrounds. Many stations from European Russia, Ukraine and a few from Switzerland and The Netherlands. All QSO have been good, most are simple exchanges of RSQ, name and location. Then a cheery 73 and on to the next QSO.

What has surprised me is that DX stations seek VK stations. I had previously held a belief that VK was not a sought after prefix and that everybody everywhere would have already worked VK and would be looking for more exotic locations.

Not so.

A few times recently I have been ‘spotted’ on DX Summit and immediately a PSK31 dog pile results. I can tell you it is nice to feel wanted but it does make operations more of a challenge. A simple CQ call results in much waterfall activity, where you know stations are calling but they are not being resolved. Eventually one station will be stronger than the others, or will transmit slightly longer and a callsign will be revealed.

Another product of being ‘spotted’ is some operators, who may or may not be able to see I am in a QSO, will call and call and call, often wiping out the DX station I am working. I consider this to be rude behaviour. If you call once and don’t get a response I think it is good manners to wait and see if the stations you want acknowledges your call or calls CQ again. If they don’t call CQ again then move on and work somebody else, or wait until the do. As a rule I work rude stations last.

Incidentally I’ve taken to running two PSK programs now. I use Hamscope as my primary tool for receiving and transmitting and keep DM780 in Super Browser mode running in the background. Where I have trouble resolving a callsign on Hamscope I can look at DM780 for a second opinion. DM780 also helps when looking for stations calling CQ as the Super Browser displays many signals at the same time allowing me to then move Hamscope to the station of interest.

With so much DX activity I have almost run out of QSL cards. I have placed a second order with Gennady UX5UO and I should have more cards soon. This will probably mean a delay of a couple of weeks in me getting my cards to the QSL bureau but I’m sure there are enough other delays in the bureau system that no one will be too bothered.

With the good DX conditions I have also looked around on SSB every now and then and worked some good contacts there as well but the urban noise at home still makes this an uphill battle.

73

Westlakes Cup

2011-09-18T08:47:00.000+10:00

Last night was the annual Westlakes Cup. A 1 hour sprint type contest on 80m for VK operators. It has some quirky rules that really need to be read before participating. I have entered the Cup a couple of times before with mixed results. Among the rules is the feature of a call back at the end of the sprint to tally scores and get an idea of how everyone went.

One of the stranger features of the Westlakes Cup is the need for participants to move 5 kHz after calling for a contact. The exact wording is;

"After a contact is made and reports exchanged, the station that had called “CQ” must
QSY at least 5kHz before calling again. There will be no sitting on a frequency and
working a “pile up.”"

What makes this interesting is the application of this rule when a station that is active in the contest politely breaks into a non-contest net and starts to work the stations on the net. Can the contest station work only one station and then needs to QSY, or can they work the entire net and then leave? After all the contest station didn't call "CQ" so would the QSY rule apply?

In past this issue hasn't really mattered because there were lots of stations to chase. In 2007 there were about 26 stations involved while last night I think there was only 13 stations actively working the contest. I scored a couple of extra stations simply by calling "CQ Westlakes - working any station" to try and pry any contact I could from the ether.

Another observation from last night was the lack of Foundation stations. My log shows none. And I didn't hear any other stations working "F" calls anywhere either. Perhaps they have all upgraded.

I think the reason for the decrease in numbers is a lack of publicity. I couldn't find anything about the 2011 Cup on the Westlakes web site and there had been nothing in the weekly WIA broadcasts.

It was mentioned in a full page write up in the September issue of the Wetslakes club newsletter but I got that only after emailling the club and asking for details of the Cup.

I don't know why the event didn't get the publicity it needs and I hope the club and others will promote the Cup well in the lead up to next year's event as it is a unique event and I, for one, quite enjoy it.

Now, how did I go? I don't know because I couldn't find the call back at the end.

73

Where have I been?

2011-09-13T22:15:00.002+10:00

It's been a while since I have posted an update about what I have been doing with ham radio.

Why?

I have been busy with a few other things. Whitehorse Showtime is a scout and guide production where I am the Technical Director. This keeps me very busy during August and early September with rehearsals and performances. In previous years I have worked right through but this year, to avoid being sent interstate during the show, I took two weeks leave from work.

Ceramic Tile cutter on the radio bench

During my leave I worked on replacing the shower base in the bathroom This included concreting, patching and sealing walls and tiling as well.

Also each day between 2 pm and 5 pm local I made an effort to work 20m PSK or SSTV. As result of this I have made over 180 QSO on 20m in the past 30 days. Even today after work I managed 10 QSO on 20m PSK.

So, even though I have been busy with domestic duties, I have still got some serious radio in as well.

73

VI6CHOGM

2011-09-05T22:47:00.000+10:00

Every two years since 1949, Commonwealth leaders have met at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to discuss global and Commonwealth issues, and to agree on collective policies and initiatives. In 2011, they will be meeting in Perth, Western Australia.

To find out more about the 22nd CHOGM, held in 2011, please visit the official website.
To celebrate this event, the Scout Member Amateur Radio Team have been awarded the rights to use the special event callsign VI6CHOGM, between the 28th – 30th October 2011, the dates that the meeting will be underway in Perth.

SMART plan to run a station across as many modes and bands as possible, to allow as many fellow amateurs to make contact. SMART are also inviting other keen operators to join us at the event, as well as scout members.
The team will be operating from the Peter Hughes Scout Communications Centre, located in East Cannington (Grid EM17IQ, LAT 37.682 / Long -97.314).
PHSCC is a well-equipped centre featuring radio shack, scout hall, antenna farm, computer lab and camping grounds (yes, SMART do plan to camp on-site).

For more info about VI6CHOGM visit http://vi6chogm.com/

73

What beam is that?

2011-08-09T21:10:00.001+10:00

A couple of months ago we put a 3 element Yagi antenna on the VK3SCG tower at Gilwell Park but I'm trying to find some info about the antenna.

I've posted four photos here in the hope that somebody might recognise the design. At best guess the boom is about 4 m long. Along the boom toward the director is a parallel tuning arrangement made of two aluminium tubes about 8 mm in diameter and about 40mm apart.

Each trap has two drain holes that need to point downward.

Any ideas, please leave me a comment below.

Yagi on the ground after assembly

Yagi being assembled, viewed from 30m above.

Yagi about to be hoisted up the tower

Parallel tuning arrangement

JIDX 2010 results

2011-08-07T07:53:00.000+10:00

Back in November 2011 I worked a few hours of the Japan International DX contest.

I was operating from home and the log showed only 11 QSOs and I really didn't think I would be all that well positoned. In 2009 I submitted a log with only 4 QSO and finished first place in the 14 MHz low power category for VK. This time with 11 QSOs I was outplaced by VK4QH with 25 QSOs.

Well done Ken.

The 2011 JIDX contest is on 12 & 13 November 2011 and again I am aiming to work it from the refurbished Gilwell Park radio shack.

73

Waitakere Sprints 2011

2011-07-31T10:34:00.000+10:00

Last night, between transporting kids to and from their activities, I set up my 80m inverted Vee on the 9 m squid pole at One Tree Hill in the Dandenong Ranges National Park. I've worked from here a number of times before with reasonable results, and it is a lot better than working from home.

This time I was having another go at the Waitakere Sprint. I have worked this contest a couple of other times but not from as good a location as this. I was using the FT-757GX powered from the car battery.

Signals were generally good with the noise level below S7. There was electrical storms somewhere and at times I missed some info due to the static crashes. By the end of the hour I had logged 34 QSO, with two being duplicates.

The thing I like most about the inverted Vee on the squid pole is the short set up and pack up times. I got to site at 7:45 pm, made my first QSO at 8:00 pm, last QSO at 8:59 pm and was all packed away and out by 9:15 pm, just as the rain started.

73

ARV Centenary Award

2011-07-30T08:55:00.001+10:00

From Monday 1 August 2011, until the end of November Amateur Radio Victoria, ARV for short, will be running the Centenary Award to mark the occasion of the 100th year of ARV.

To qualify for the award VK hams must score a total of 100 points, while DX hams need only 25 points.

Points are awarded as follows;

contact with an ARV member = 2 points
contact with ARV station VK3WI during the RD contest, Lighthouse Weekend or the OCDX contest = 10 points
contact with VK100ARV during November = 10 points

A station set-up within a National Park on November 19 & 20 and operating under KRMNPA rules, may claim ten points per contact.

Points can only be claimed for a contact once per band per UTC day.

Details for the award are at www.amateurradio.com.au/awards

I'm looking forward to this award as I am a keen participant in the OCDX contest, RD contest and the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award.

I am a member of ARV so if you hear me on air, give me a shout as it will give you another 2 points to the award.

73

VK3SCG - Gilwell Park update

2011-06-25T00:13:00.000+10:00

I had planned to work the 160m section of the VK/trans Tasman contest from the rebuilt VK3SCG station at Gilwell Park Scout Camp using the new 160m dipole but works on the tower have not progressed at the speed I had first hoped.

The idea with VK3SCG is to build a station that will be desired by more than just scouts. A station that other clubs and amateurs will want to use to either chase DX or work contests from. The site is also planned to accommodate the radio needs of major events that are held at the camp from time to time.

To achieve this the builders are trying to make the station as flexible as possible. The new tower will have separate antennas for 6m, 2m omni, horizontal and vertical yagis, 70cm omni and vertical yagi, 160m, 80m and 40m Inverted Vee, 20/15/10m yagi as well as VHF and UHF commercial band antennas. Add to this some local WiFi and a GPS receive antenna and you have a fairly useful antenna set up.

The tower is 30 metres tall and a further 1.7 metres has been added with twin rotators so the HF yagi and the VHF/UHF yagis can be rotated independent of each other.

The 160 m Inverted Vee is at 26m, 80m Inverted Vee at 24m and 40 m Inverted Vee is at 23m.

A rope halyard is provided at 22m above ground for antenna experimentation.

So far the tower works have taken two full weekends and I reckon a further two weekends are needed to finish it off.

It's been good fun setting the tower up and hopefully it will be just as much fun working DX from it.

73

VK/trans - Tasman 80m and QRP Hours contest results

2011-06-08T23:30:00.000+10:00

Yesterday and today I received the results of two contest in which I used my MKARS80 QRP transceiver.

First to arrive was the VK/trans - Tasman 80m results that showed I had placed 20th overall and 3rd place in the QRP section. Peter VK3AJ placed 10th overall and Greg VK3LLL placed 17th overall.

The next result in were for the QRP Hours contest held back in early April. This was a much smaller contest and not many stations actually submitted logs. I just don't understand why some people work contests but don't submit logs. My score of 17 points placed me in 1st place in VK3. There was however only two logs submitted for VK3 stations. It is difficult to gauge an overall position as the contest has CW and SSB sections running at the same time. Adding both CW and SSB points together I could suggest I came 4th overall. Looking just at the phone section I came second a long way behind VK7VH at 27 points. Vince sure does put out I big signal from the apple isle. VK7VH also came first in the VK/trans - Tasman 80m contest, again running QRP.

The next contest is the VK/trans - Tasman 160m SSB contest on Saturday 25 June 2011. I'm hoping to work this contest from the new antenna set up at Gilwell Park scout camp. There they will have a 160 m Inverted Vee with the apex at about 32 metres above the ground. This should perform a lot better than the old temporary 160m antenna that was only 12 metres up. The picture here shows the tower on the day it was erected before any antennas were added.

73

Harry Angel Sprint - or why I shouldn't run QRP!

2011-05-23T22:44:00.000+10:00

Last Saturday was the annual Harry Angel Sprint, a contest running 106 minutes in honour of Australia's oldest ham, Harry Angel, who was 106 when he died.

Following on from my VK/trans Tasman effort where I ran QRP from the Dandenong Ranges National Park I again ventured up the hill. This time however I arrived in the dark and rather than throw ropes and hang a dipole from a tree I set up my 10m squid pole and dipole and ran the FT-7 in the car.

From the moment the clocked ticked over 1000 UTC and the sprint began I realised this was a bad idea. I had settled on a clear frequency at 0955 UTC and was planning to sit there for most of the sprint and work all comers. But I lost that frequency to a higher powered station that quite clearly couldn't hear my 10 Watt signal.

From then on I spent the night chasing stations up and down the band and repeating my call sign many times to get over the obvious noise problems others were having.

At the end of 106 minutes I had made only 27 contacts. Last year, from home, I made 47 contacts and the winner made 75 contacts. So I reckon this year I will finish a long way down the list.

Next year I will go and use the new antenna at Gilwell Park as the new tower will be up and fully operational by then.

73

John Moyle Field Day - Results

2011-05-10T13:38:00.000+10:00

Last week the result of the John Moyle Field Day contest were published. I had participated in the contest with an interrupted entry from Nortons Park. At the time I blogged that I had been on air for about 3 1/4 hours out of the possible 6 hours. I claimed 77 contacts for a score of 154.

In my section, Six Hour Portable Operation – Single Operator HF, there were seven entries and I came fourth. Tony VK3VTH, working from the Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award came second in the same category with a score of 224 behind Jeff VK3HJA with 254.

I was 100 points, or 50 contacts, behind first place despite working only about half the available time. So if I had worked the full six hours perhaps I could have finished higher up the list?

In the Six Hour Portable Operation – Single Operator VHF/UHF category there was only seven entries and the winner, Nick VK3VFO, made 34 contacts for a score of 561. I had previously competed in this category for four years and scored over 1200 points each year. Perhaps I should review the category in which I participate for next year?

73

VK/trans - Tasman 80m contest

2011-05-08T13:59:00.000+10:00

Last night was the VK/trans - Tasman 80m contest . A contest that encourages contacts between Australia and New Zealand that has special scoring zones and times to encourage participation on both sides of the ditch. Quite a challenge considering there is a 4 hours difference between sunset in ZL and sunset in VK6 and the contest only lasts 6 hours.

Last year I participated as VK3SAT with my son VK3FASH and, although our score was not included in the official results, we came 20th overall and 9th in the multi-operator section.

This year, for the first time for this contest, I went it alone. Not only did I enter as a single operator but I also ran QRP using my MKARS80 transceiver. This was a strategic decision as there are bonus points for QRP operation and even more bonus points for home brew, including kits.

I also went portable, as I often do, to get away from the suburban noise that floods the HF bands at home. I went to One Tree Hill lookout in the Dandenong Ranges National Park. This location is reasonably high and has easy access. I strung a 1/2 wave dipole in the trees, in an Inverted Vee configuration with the apex about 6 metres off the ground.

Just before the contest I spoke with Greg, VK3LLL, and Peter, VK3AJ, and confirmed that I could at least get a signal to them.

The contest started with VK3AJ and VK3LLL as my first two contacts followed by a really, really strong VK3KID. VK3KID is a club station at the Sherbrooke Community School and is often on air with students from the school. My potable location was only 2.5 km from the VK3KID station so it was no wonder they were very strong. The MKARS80 doesn't have an AGC so the stronger the signal, the louder the audio. At one point I was caught out when VK3KID called me and I had the RF gain at about half and was nearly blown out of the car.

One other thing I found while running QRP was that some stations that seem really strong are unable to hear me. This may well be because they are working from a noisy suburbs and I am buried in the hash. Where I was located was very, very quiet so I could hear lots of stations.

I moved frequency a few times during the contest due to interference from other stations as the MKARS80 doesn't have fancy filters and such to deal with congestion. I found the tuning control didn't bother me as much as during the QRP Hours Contest but it is still really touchy to use.

I finished up with 97 contacts during the five hours. This is not fantastic but for a QRP home brew stations it was OK.

Peter, VK3AJ, posted a message this morning saying his numbers were a little down on last year so maybe the overall participation was lower?

I've sent my log off and now I await the results.

73

Watts on the bench #6 - BITX20 microphone amplifier

2011-04-30T16:28:00.000+10:00

Being dissatisfied with the excessive distortion of the microphone amplifier in my BITX20 I sought out an alternate amplifier. I checked the Jaycar website to see what op-amps were readily available and then Goggled the NE5534.

I got an easy looking circuit on Andy Collinson's Circuit Exchange International site. Apart from the NE5534 I had everything else in the parts boxes already. I have substituted 33 uF for the 1 uF output capacitor. I'll see if this is a good idea when I check the frequency response of the transmitter later. It may be giving me too much low end response.

I built the circuit on a piece of unclad punched laminate and carefully positioned the components so the input, output and power connections could be directly soldered into the existing holes on my BITX20 circuit board. I also included the 1uF capacitor from the receive circuit on the board.

Once powered the amplifier worked first time. This has revealed a further problem with my BITX20 where the VCO is moving +/- 200Hz as I modulate the transmitter to 4 Watts but I'll deal with that later.

73

Watts on the bench #5 - BITX20 Update # 36

2011-04-18T19:31:00.001+10:00

Back in BTX20 update # 35 I outlined some things I still wanted to do to get my BITX20 back to a usable condition. Every time I have used it recently I got complaints of poor audio quality. During the past week I have been working quite hard at clearing this up.

I have added a choke and two more capacitors to the DC power that feeds the microphone amplifier as I found the RF was getting in here. I have also added two copper brackets to the back panel of the rig to provide a low resistance path between the linear amplifier board and the exciter board. This seemed to help the microphone amplifier more than adding the choke and capacitors did.

I have also replaced the varicap on the BFO oscillator as I found it was shifting too easily. When I removed it I saw that it was damaged and is now missing the bottom plate. This meant that it would turn freely and offered no stability at all. This explained why whenever I got the BFO set and the audio sounding good it would be short lived.

Once I changed the varicap I was able to set the BFO. I then corrected the offset value in the PI4RAZ display so now the rig shows the correct operating frequency.

I replaced the mixer transformers and diodes with a Minicircuits JMS-1 mixer but I found the loss using this device was about 6 dB worse than using the discrete components. I then re-instated the transformers and diodes.

I also replaced the carrier balance trim pot from a 200 ohm to a 100 ohm as required in the original design.

Since making these changes I have spoken with a couple of stations and had good reports of my audio. I even had a short QSO with Rudi, DK4KL, who was running 700 Watts into a mono band Yagi and could hear my 4 Watts coming from 16,500 km away. QRP can be a real surprise sometimes. My next efforts are to fit the 10 turn pot/varactor tuning modification, add an AGC and S meter circuit and get the output power meter to show on the LCD display.

I also want to change the chassis and shielding material from steel to aluminium to reduce the overall weight. At present the rig weighs 1.2 kg and I’d really like to get it under 1 kg. I know 2oo grams isn’t much but when hiking every little bit helps. I knew a guy who drilled holes in his tooth brush handle to reduce weight. Now that is extreme.

On a slightly different topic I had a look at what would be needed to add a back lit display to my MKARS80. The new display is about 5 mm thicker than the current display so everything in the box needs to be shifted back by the same amount. This is not a simple task and it may be easier to look for a new enclosure altogether.

Watts on the bench #4 - PIC programmer

2011-04-10T13:07:00.000+10:00

On the bench today is an Altronics kit, K9505, PIC Programmer.
I bought this kit so I can re-program the PIC in my BITX20 as the frequency offset value is incorrect.

It’s capable of programming many chips such as 8 & 18 pin versions of PIC16F & PIC12F, 28 & 40 pin PIC16F87X series and 24CXX EEPROMS. The chip I need to program is PIC16F628A.

I've powered the kit up and programmed one PIC and it all works well.

QRP Hours Contest 2011

2011-04-03T13:11:00.004+10:00

Last night was the night for the CW Operators' QRP Club QRP Hours Contest 2011. This contest is really two 80 m contests in one. The first hour is for CW, PSK31 or RTTY and the second hour is for SSB. This year is my first attempt at this contest.

The aim of the contest is to promote QRP, or reduced power, operation and stations are encouraged to run 5 Watts or a maximum of 10 Watts.

I decided that I would have a go at just the SSB section and, knowing how bad the noise on 80 m is at home, looked around for a suitable place to operate from. My initial thoughts were to work from a National Park such as Churchill or Dandenong Ranges so others could claim contacts for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award but my time available was restricted due to transport duties for my daughter, again.

I settled on a hill close to home in Dewhurst known locally as Elephant Rock. It's called Elephant Rock as there is a rock there that, with some imagination or creative painting, looks like an elephant. For many years the locals have painted this rock to advertise events and such. On this occasion it is announcing the nuptials of Katie and Will Bodsworth who happened to have been married on the same day as the contest. I have no idea who Katie and Will are but for a while the rock will bear their names.

I arrived at the site with about 15 minutes to set up before the start. I placed my 10m squid pole, inside a length of PVC pipe, against a bollard and used two ratchet straps to hold it in position. Ratchet straps are used for securing loads to trucks and trailers but they are much quicker and better for this application than lashings with rope.

I attached the antenna, an inverted Vee suitable for 20 m and 80 m and extended the pole up to full height. This took the apex of the inverted Vee to about 9 metres. A ran the ends of the antenna out to a tree and an abandoned trampoline frame and tied them off. I ran the coax to the car and attached my MKARS80 home brew QRP rig. I was powering the rig from a 7 Ah gel cell battery. This was the first real contest effort for this rig and I must say it performed well.

The contest started at 1100 UTC and I sat on 3.575 MHz for the first 10 minutes and the rig held there no problems at all. I was working one station per minute and things were going well. Ian, VK3FIDC, came up and asked if I could moved as he was in a conversation with somebody a couple of kHz up and I was causing him problems. Now I'm not too fussed with protocol for who uses what frequency when and since I had been on 3.575 MHz for 10 minutes I took a look around and see who else I could work.

It was then that one of the idiosyncrasies on the MKARS80 started to work against me. The radio has a locking system that takes 3 or 4 seconds to lock the VFO. It is also tuned by a knob that covers about 300 kHz in 180 degrees of turning. Compare that to my FT 757 that tunes 10 kHz per dial revolution and you can see why it would be difficult to tune around and find stations to work. I seemed to always be moving over them too quickly to hear them and when I did hear them by the time my brain had told my fingers to stop turning the VFO was 20 kHz past them.

This is not meant as a criticism of the rig, for what it cost and what it does is fantastic but it is a limitation of the design in use. After I make the 10 turn pot and varactor mod to my BITX20 I may do the same to this rig.

My contact rate slowed significantly as I found most of the station I came across I had already worked. This is not unusual for small short duration contests in Australia. In the second 10 minutes I added only five contacts to my log and then the last forty minutes saw only 3 more marks on the page. It took about 6 minutes to pack up the antenna and I was on my way.

I went back up to the site this morning and set the antenna again so I could get some photos of it during the daylight. With no wind it stands quite well with just the two elements holding it in place. If the wind were to increase then a rope from the apex out to the ground away from the elements would help. I also need to add something at about the 7 metre height to take the weight of the coax off the top section as that too is causing the the top to bend.

Watts on the bench #3 - BITX20 Update # 35

2011-04-01T22:40:00.000+11:00

This is a new section to my blog where I will detail what is currently on the work bench. It may be a kit under construction, a radio under repair or some dust from inactivity. Whatever it is, if it's on the bench and worthy of publishing, this is the title under which it will be found.

Having been home from my trip to 'the Prom' for almost three weeks I have now started looking at what is wrong with my BITX20. As mentioned in my trip report I had reports of very poor transmitted audio from my BITX20. So I have put it back on the bench and I determined to get it to work properly this time around.
So far I have done the following things

Checked the VFO and BFO for stability during modulation - no problems here
Added 0.1 uF capacitors to the DC power rail to the microphone amplifier and the RX audio amplifier
Added a choke to the AF side of T2 to block some stray RF that was making it through the mixer
Re-aligned the band pass filter L1, L2 and L3 - this got about 2 dB more output.
Re-aligned the BFO - This highlighted that the display readout on my Huff & Puff display is wrong by 700 Hz
Recompiled the source code for the PIC in the Huff & Puff display to correct the 700 Hz error and passed it off to VK3AJ to be programmed to the PIC chip

After all this I think the audio is sounding a whole lot better.

Once I get this audio problem sorted I will go the next step and replace the tuning cap with a varactor diode and a ten turn pot thanks to Gary, NI9V.

I also have a JMS-1 SMD mixer that I am going to use to replace T1, T1A and the associated four diodes.

Along the way I have also been taking some waveform measurements for Toni, G6XMO, who asked asked me for some help with finishing another BITX20 V3.

Hopefully by this time next week I will have the BITX 20 finished (again).

Watts on the bench #2 - FT 7 microphone repair

2011-03-25T07:34:00.000+11:00

During the recent JMFD contest I found the intermittent audio failure had returned to my Yaesu FT-7. This issue first showed back in 2009 but of late has not been a problem.

I had tracked the problem to a faulty wire in the curly cord between the plug and the microphone. During the JMFD I found I could cure the problem by holding the cable around the microphone body and pulling it in a particular direction. If I got it right then I could see the power meter move up and down, if I got it wrong then nothing went out.

So I had finally had enough of this and spent a couple of hours yesterday replacing the curly cable and plug.

The operation was a success and now, once I fix an annoying board contacts problem, the FT-7 will continue to deliver outstanding service for many more years.

73

John Moyle Memorial Field Day contest

2011-03-22T07:03:00.000+11:00

Last weekend saw the running of the John Moyle Memorial Field Day. The John Moyle Memorial Field Day, or JMFD for short, is held on the third full weekend in March. The contest is run each year in memory of the late John Moyle who was a long term editor of the Wireless Weekly, (later Radio & Hobbies - later Radio Television & Hobbies) magazine from 1947 until his untimely death in 1965. Serving in the RAAF during WWII, he served with distinction and was responsible for a number of innovative solutions in keeping radio and radar equipment working under wartime operations and difficult working conditions.

For this year's JMFD I had been thinking of heading to a National Park, either Point Nepean or The Lakes, but the need to shuffle my daughter between two 21st birthday parties on Saturday night changed my plans. Knowing I had to leave the station mid-contest I set about finding a suitable portable site located midway between the two parties. I settled on Wattle Park in Box Hill South. Unfortunately when I arrived to set up there was a wedding in progress at the chapel and the car park was full. I then drove around for about 45 minutes looking for another suitable site but I couldn't find one near Box Hill. So I settled on a park in Wantirna South. I have operated from Nortons Park before and found it had an unusually high noise level on 20m. However, since I was short on time it would have to do.

I parked near some suitable trees and started setting up. I threw my trowing weight into the main tree and pulled through a main rope to support my 20, 40 & 80m trapped dipole. I was untangling the coax when a car pulled into the car park and a plain clothes copper got out. It seems that this car park is a popular place for nocturnal criminal activity and he was just interested in what I was doing. A quick check of my credentials and he was on his way.

I got the antenna in the air about 7:45 pm local time, about 1 hour later than I had planned. I was entering the six hour section and I had a set finish time of 30 minutes after midnight as the second party finished at 1:00 am. So at best I was going to get 4 3/4 hours on air, but since I had to do a party shuffle mid-contest I guessed my time on air would be cut to about 3 hours.

Conditions were good and it seemed activity was up from previous years and contacts were rolling in well. I left the antenna set up when I went off to shuttle my daughter from one party to another. I figured it was dark enough that nobody would see the antenna and it would still be there when I returned. I was careful during set up to keep all the ropes well above head height and safe.

At the end of my interrupted working period I had about 3 1/4 hours of actual on-air time and 77 contacts in the log.

Tony, VK3VTH, also went portable for the JMFD. He activated the Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award and made 112 contacts in six hours.

Hopefully next year I can get a full six hours activity and post a competitive score again.

73

Hiking and radio at 'The Prom'

2011-03-17T22:18:00.001+11:00

It's been three days since I got home from my trip to Wilson Promontory and my leg muscles are just returning to normal.

Before the trip I set myself two goals. These were to work 20 m and 80 m SSB from the most southern point on mainland Australia, a place called South Point, and also work 20 m SSB from the beach at the top of Oberon Bay. I also wanted to see how I went physically on a 30 km hike, carrying radio gear, camping gear, food and being totally self sufficient.

This trip would also be another activation of the Wilsons Promontory National Park for the Keith Roget Memorial National Park Award.

Hiking alone is not something that I would ever suggest anybody do, in fact with Scouts we mandate a minimum of five members in a hike party. However, on a long weekend at 'the Prom' one is never really alone. On both days I was hiking along the tracks with many day trippers and a few over night hikers. The day trippers stopped at the beach while the hikers kept walking on toward the over night camps.

The hike on the first day was quite taxing on me. Not only because of the weight of my pack, about 25 kg, but because of the warm temperatures for most of the day. The forecast had been for 18 degrees Celsius with occasional showers. What I got for most of Day One was high 20s to low 30s with little to no cloud.

Progress was reasonable, walking at about 3 and 4 km per hour. I was taking short breaks in the occasional shade to make things more pleasant.

My original plan was to set off about 10 am from Norman Beach, pass Oberon Bay around midday and arrive at the Roaring Meg camp ground at about 4 pm. After setting my tent for the night O was going to keep hiking south and get to South Point about 6 pm and work 20 m and 80 m from South Point until abut 8:30 pm.

However the demands of the day saw me leaving Norman Beach at 10:20, stopping at Oberon Bay for lunch at 12:30 and then headed off toward Roaring Meg. Progress after Oberon Bay was slow as fatigue started to set in. There is a big hill that needs to be hiked up and over. It seemed as I was going up that the hill would never end. Before the top I found I was walking in low cloud soon followed by light rain. I arrived into Roaring Meg camp at 5:15 pm, wet, exhausted and in no mood to head to South Point. That part of the plan was just not going to happen.

I put up my tent in the rain, hung a rope and the 20 m / 80 m dipole from a tree in the rain and gave 20m a quick try. I heard a few stations on 20 m but was unable to get response to my CQ calls. As the sun went down I changed the antenna over to 80 m and swapped from the BITX20 to the MKARS80. I put out a couple of CQ calls but got no response. I left the rig on while I had some dinner and was pleasantly surprised when Mike, VK2IG, gave me a call. At the same time Peter, VK3YE, also called. So from nobody on 20 m I now had two stations on 80 m calling. The signals from both stations were very good. Later we were joined by David, VK3JDA, and a weak Peter, VK3AJ who was portable near Dargo.
Peter, VK3YE, even went as far as to record some of the QSOs and place it on youtube. Later in the evening Peter, VK3YE called again on his double sideband QRP rig, Peter, VK3AJ, came up from a different location and Ron, VK3AFW, dropped in for a quick chat as well. There were electrical storms somewhere and the static noise was increasing as the night went on. About 8:40 pm I switched the MKARS80 rig off and tried to get some sleep. I say 'tried' as it was uncomfortable as I had not brought a mat to sleep on and I was getting cramps in my legs.

Next morning the rain had cleared and the day was looking cooler than the day before and pleasant for walking. I was hiking back along the same tracks as I came in on and planned to stop at Oberon Bay and give 20 m another go. I took the antenna down, packed my tent up and left camp just before 8 am, about 30 minutes after sunrise. By 11 am I was on the beach at Oberon Bay and went about setting up my 10m squid pole to support my 1/4 wave droopy ground plane for 20 m.

I dug a central hole for the base of the pole and used a cut down bottle to keep the sand out of the base. I buried four 300 mm lengths of orange PVC pipe about 100 mm deep and looped the guy ropes around them. This worked well and the pole stayed vertical. The antenna was attached and pegged out with three other pieces of orange pipe. It took just over 20 minutes to set the antenna up.

Using the BITX20 I listened around and found VK4KUS Steve on air. Steve and I had worked a couple of nights earlier and Steve had made me aware of a problem with my transmit audio. I had tried a couple of things to fix it but, as Steve told me on the first over ' Pete - you still have that audio problem.' I'm not sure of the cause but I've got a few ides in mind. I also want to fit a new balanced mixer and a varicap / 10 turn pot tuning modification so I'll fix the audio problem after that.

It was difficult to make contacts on 20 m with the audio problem. Phil, VK3JNI, called up just as I about to start packing up, and despite his best efforts with his Barret radio, he couldn't make me sound legible. Phil described the audio as 'FMing'. FMing means that in addition to amplitude modulation of the single side band signal it is also shifting in frequency with modulation. This is often caused by discharged batteries but in my case there is something wrong with the rig.

After packing away the antenna, which took about 6 minutes, I continued on toward the end of the hike. I got back to Norman Beach car park just after 4 pm which was almost right on time.

My feet were sore, my calves were sore and my shoulders were sore, but I had achieved one of my aims, albeit not really that well, and I have another 9 portable QRP contacts in my log book.

73

Back to 'The Prom', back to hiking

2011-03-08T06:54:00.000+11:00

Next Monday, 14 March 2011, is a public holiday in Victoria so I am making the most of the break and I am head back to Wilson Promontory. Unlike my last trip to the Prom, this time I will be hiking into an overnight camp carrying my radio gear with me. A bit like the French Island trip but without the ferry and about 25 km longer.

My plan is to work 20 m and 80 m SSB from the most southern point on mainland Australia, a place called South Point and also work 20 m SSB from the beach at the top of Oberon Bay.

There are a number of challenges with this trip, apart from the physical one of getting myself and my gear there and back safely.

BITX20 - I built this 20 m QRP transceiver specifically to take away hiking as the FT-7 is too heavy. This trip will be its first time away. Will 5 Watts be enough for some QSO? Will it work reliably?
MKARS80 - Like the BITX20 this 80 m QRP transceiver was also built for portable work. Although not the first time it has been used portable, it will again be interesting to see how it stands up to the challenge.
Antenna at South Point. South Point, from photos I have seen, is little more than a rocky outcrop stretching into Bass Strait. I am taking along my 10 m squid pole, and the antenna is a combined 20/80 m Inverted Vee, that is yet to be made. In my normal operating mode I either secure the squid pole to a tree stump or bollard or I use four guy ropes pegged to the ground to hold it vertical. Securing the pole on a rocky outcrop will need a totally different approach. To add to this challenge everything I will need has to be thought of in advance and taken with me. My thoughts at present are to take some extra rope along and tie off to the boulders. My schedule will see this antenna erected in daylight and recovered in the dark.
Antenna at Oberon Bay. The beach here is just sand, sand and more sand. Here I am planning to use my 20m droopy ground plane. Erecting the squid pole in just sand will again present its own difficulties. I'm thinking of taking some 45cm lengths of PVC pipe to bury as sand anchors and tie guy ropes off to them.

If all goes to plan I will be operating portable from South Point from 07:00 to 09:30 UTC Sunday 13 March 2011. I will be working around 14.190 MHz before sunset and 3.650 MHz after sunset.

Monday morning I will be working from Oberon Bay from about 2330 UTC to 0030 UTC Monday 14 March 2011 around 14.190 MHz.

73

Watts on the bench #1 - 100 W dummy load

2011-02-19T12:10:00.000+11:00

I found a need for a 100 Watt dummy load when I wanted to test the power output of the FT757 GX after learning it had damage in the 24 - 29 MHz low pass filter section.

The dummy load is made of 111 5600 Ohm 1 Watt carbon resistors connected in parallel, between two sheets of blank PCB material. This is then housed inside a disused computer power supply that has retained the 12 Volt DC fan.

The resistors came from Futurlec who have been very good with parts supply for my other projects. I order on line and about two weeks later they arrive. At the same time I also ordered an Amp meter for my VK PowerMaster but that will the topic of another Watts on the bench.

The first step in construction was to cut all the resistor leads to the same length. To do this I used a small piece of PVC pipe with a slot through it. I just placed the resistor in the slot and then cut the lead. Each resistor lead was then the same length.

Next was to bend them all the same. Again I used a length of PVC pipe with a slot and bent the resistors to suit.

After preparing the resistors I soldered the SO 239 connector to the lower board then started by soldering the middle row of resistors to the same board. The resistors were joined together as pairs before soldering them to the board. I put the two boards together and soldered one resistor in each corner to keep the boards in place while I solder the middle row to the top board.

Progressively I worked from the inside out, following the layout plan, adding resistor pairs as I went along. After finishing a row of resistors I would measure the resistance of the load and compare this to the calculated value given how many resistors I had fitted at the time. Remembering of course that I had four extra resistors in circuit, one in each corner. After 74 resistors were soldered in place I removed the four corner resistors as they were no longer needed to hold the boards apart.

The original layout plan allowed for 118 resistor to be fitted. This meant that if all my resistors, being +/- 5 % tolerance, were 5 % high I could still achieve 50 ohms. As it turned out I needed only 111 resistors so some of the corner resistors were not needed.

Once all soldering was done I drilled some holes in the lid of the box and screwed the connector into place. This was a bit tricky and next time I might solder brass nuts to the connector to ease this task a little.

All that needs to be done now is to add an RF choke to the DC lead for the fan and put a power socket on the fan and it's done.

All up it took about 10 hours to complete and cost $5.04 for the resistors, $5.00 for postage and $2.00 for the SO239 socket.

73

Centre Victorian RadioFest

2011-02-13T17:26:00.001+11:00

I've just gotten home from the Centre Victorian RadioFest and I must say it was a good day out. I got to catch up with Tony, VK3VTH, and quite a few other hams that I had met previously. The table I was helping out on was promoting the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award and selling ARV log books.

Tony was also distributing info about the National Parks award to the attendees of the mini-lecture series that was being held upstairs, above the madness that was the second hand goods stalls.

Talking of the secondhand goods, I went for a look about 2 hours after the sales had started and the word 'goods' would be an overstatement. If there was anything good to be had in the junk sales it had surely gone long before I got there. Such an assortment of largely useless junk I have not seen, well, since the last hamfest I went to. If I may misquote Hermann Hesse, "One man's trash is another man's treasure". On that basis there must have been some real gems in there.

There was one stall selling kitchen utensils and another selling jazz CDs. Not too sure about the link to ham radio but I guess you could use a knife as a Uda array element and a CD would make a cute rainbow coloured insulator for a dipole.

I didn't have a look at the commercial sales area but I would guess there was plenty of lovely shiny boxes that I couldn't afford begging me to take them home.

Everything at the Radiofest was well organised and, apart from some problems with the PA system, it all ran smoothly.

The display table I was on got some interest in the award and I'm guessing we will have another two or three members of the Yahoo Group soon.

I'm already looking forward to the next hamfest where we can promote the award a little more.

Perhaps next time I will take a hike pack, tent and squid pole antenna to add to the effect.

73

Hamfest, RadioFest and White Elephant Sales

2011-02-10T18:21:00.000+11:00

I've been a ham for almost 30 years and in that time I have only ever been to two hamfests. Both of them were the EMDRC White Elephant sales. One was under the Telecom building in Rutland Rd Box Hill and the other was at the Box Hill High School hall. For those readers that are long time members of the EMDRC you will know this is quite some time ago.

I don't have an aversion to hamfests I just never have spare cash to buy what I want so I stay away.

This Sunday I am going to my third ever hamfest. The Centre Victorian RadioFest, is held nearly every year in Kyneton, about 90 km from Melbourne. Managed by Amateur Radio Victoria, ARV for short, it promises a range of displays, mini lectures and sales, both new and second hand, and should be a whole lot of fun.

I'll be manning a table promoting the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award and selling ARV log books. Tony, VK3VTH, has put together some great publicity material for the award and he will also be there helping out. I am looking forward to meeting him and some of the hams that I have spoken to recently.

If you are going to the RadioFest please drop by the ARV table and say hello.

73

TM742A battery replaced - finally

2011-01-26T23:03:00.001+11:00

By way of a short history lesson, 16 years ago my employer decided I was surplus to their requirements and gave me extra money to finish up. I took some of that money and invested it in a new Kenwood TM742A 6m, 2m & 70cm mobile rig. Since then I have used this rig a lot, and when I was doing field work it was in the car and in use every day. It has been to every SRESU activity I have done since 1996 and has never let me down.

Inside these rigs, like so many rigs of that era, is a small 3.0Volt lithium battery that backs up the microprocessor, channel memories and such.

Lithium batteries are generally regarded as being good for about 7 to 10 years. After that time they have discharged too much and the memories start to become corrupt. I have even read of these batteries leaking and damaging the circuit board they are on beyond repair.

In July 2006 I decided that 10 years was a good length of time for the battery in my TM742A so I bought a new battery from Jaycar and resolved to replace it. The radio had been working fine with only an occasional hiccup but it was something that needed to be done.

2006 came and went; battery not fitted. 2007 and 2008 came and went; no battery fitted, 2009 and 2010 came and went; battery still not fitted.

Today I had planned to get on the roof and look at my dipole antenna but it was raining. So I decided to have a go at fitting the 'new' battery into my TM742. The TM742 Yahoo group is a great source of information and I had downloaded instructions on how to replace the battery so I was fairly confident.

The task flowed well, as described in the instructions and, apart from my battery being slightly different from the existing battery, went without a problem. I even added a piece of paper with the date on it so I remember when it was done when next I have to change it.

Hopefully I will get 5 or more years out of this battery. Although to be fair it has already sat on the shelf for 5 years and if has only a 7 year life then it won't be long before I am doing it again.

20m & 40m trapped vertical squid pole antenna repair

2011-01-22T21:44:00.001+11:00

I have been using my 20 & 40m trapped vertical for twelve months now and the setting up and taking down was starting to take its toll on the wires in and out of the trap.

Not wanting the antenna to break in the field, today I disassembled the trap and built a more rugged version.
The new version trap is about 60mm longer and has strain relief provided to the element wire.

Soon I will be rebuilding my home antenna, currently a trapped 40 & 80m dipole with added wires for 20m, and changing it to be a 20, 40 & 80m trapped dipole. I need to build new traps for this and they too will be this more rugged design.

I may cover the traps in heat shrink tubing if I can find something suitable at the right price.

73

The FT757 lives again

2011-01-19T13:13:00.002+11:00

During the weekend I spent a bit of time with the cover off the FT757GX, making some repairs and adjustments. This was brought about by the display showing all 8s and the front panel buttons not working. You can read about that here if you wish.

By Sunday night I had attended to two major known problems;

All 8s display. This problem is a continuation of my earlier display problems. The display board at the front of the radio has two header connectors where 11 and 4 wires terminate from the local unit. These wires bring a variety of signals to and from the two boards and, when these connections fail many strange things start to happen. What I had found back in June 2010 was that the pins on the header connectors had problems making contact with the copper traces on the component side of the board. What normally occurs with double sided boards is that connections that pass through the board are plated between one side and the other. It's called through hole plating. Where through hole plating is not used the assembler needs to solder both sides of the board to ensure a good connection to both traces. The display board in the FT757GX is through hole plated so a a good solder connection on one side should mean good connection to both sides. As I have found this is no longer the case.

Back in June 2010 I added two wires to the board to make contacts between the two sides so things would work. By the end of this repair session I had added three more wires to the board and redirected two of the incoming wires and soldered them directly to components. One if the wires affected by this problem was the +5 volt power supply line for the integrated circuit on the display board. Without the +5 volts supply nothing on the board works, as seen by the all 8s display. For interest, the board pins that have now been bypassed are from header JP01 pins 2, 6, 7, 8 and 10 and header JP02 pin 1.

As I was reassembling I notice the purple wire going to pin 7 of JP01 had broken out of the header, probably because I had been pushing and pulling it too hard, trying to isolate the intermittent connection. Rather than return the wire to the connector I simply soldered it to the cathode of D21. I had done a similar thing with the green wire to JP02 pin 1. I was unable to get to the underside of JP02 as it sits under the display, so I cut the green wire from the connector and soldered it to the copper trace behind the 500kHz step switch.

100 Hz off frequency. The 100 Hz problem is two fold. One relates to the steps the VFO takes when moving between frequencies and the second is if the VFO is actually on the correct frequency. What I have found is that when the dial is moved up, or down, 1 kHz the VFO takes 100 steps. When correctly aligned each step is 10 Hz. When not correctly aligned each step is more or less than 10 Hz but the total of the 100 steps must still be 1 kHz. The table to the right shows the received audio frequency as I stepped up from 14.076.01 to 14.077.00 in 10 step increments. I got the 10 step increments by using the up button on the microphone. What I found was the 10 step increments started at 73 Hz, instead of 100 Hz, and then got progressively bigger until the last two steps of 101 Hz and 220 Hz. This explained why the radio always sounds like a big jump right on the kHz point.

The solution to this problem came from Alejandro, LU1FCR via the FT757GXII Yahoo group. He posted the following advice, for the FT757GX MK1 only;

1)- Disconnect the antenna.
2)- Push the MARKER switch on.
3)- Select MODE SSB
4)- With the VFO knob and the microphone Up and Down buttons select 7101.00 kHz.
5)- While moving between 7100.99 kHz and 7101.00 kHz with the microphone buttons, adjust VR2014 in the LOCAL Unit until you determine by ear a difference of 10 Hz.
6)- Push the MARKER switch off.
7)- Input a known RF frequency into the antenna and adjust TC2006 in the LOCAL Unit until zero beat. This is easily done with a good pair of earphones, not with the included speaker.
8)- Continue using your FT-757 GX for the next 25 years.

Using Alejandro's method, and with the aid of Hamscope, I got the 100 steps to be 10 Hz each and right on frequency.
As for step 8 I'll have to wait a while to see if that comes about.

After fixing the two major problems I put the radio back together, put the covers on and, as I always do, gave the radio a good shake to see if there was anything loose. To my surprise I heard something rattle inside. It sounded like a screw but I had screwed the unit back together with the same number of screws as I had taken out. There has always been two screws missing from the bottom cover and they were the only ones missing. All other screws were correct and accounted for.

So, not wishing to power up with the known rattle inside, I took the top cover off again and shook the unit. Nothing fell out but it did sound like the noise was coming from inside the RF Unit. I took the screws out of the RF unit cover and had a good look around. I found a black cover screw in the RF unit. This must have been dropped there by a previous repairer as I have never been inside the RF unit.

While looking around in there I saw a discoloured toroid in the Low Pass Filter section along with a couple of burnt wires. Looking at the circuit I found that this was L11 in the 24 - 29 MHz section. The Low Pass Filter section is arranged before the SWR protection circuits so any fault in this area would remain undetected and the rig would continue to transmit full power. My guess is that the wires were touching the toroid and melted causing a little bit of smoke and a fair amount of heat as the toroid would have been de-tuned. I taped over the exposed wires and positioned them between the toroids so hopefully all will be well again. I have not yet used this radio on 12 or 10 metres and I don't have my power meter here at present to check but next time I have the meter or a 10m antenna in the air I will try it out and see if it needs more repair. It probably will.

73

It's happening again....!

2011-01-15T08:36:00.004+11:00

Went into the shack last night for the first time in a couple of days. Turned the FT757GX on and saw a sight I had not seen for a while, and one I didn't want to see ever again.

On power up most of the parts of the display lit up as bright as can be. None of the buttons on the front panel work and the dial does nothing either.

This is similar to an intermittent condition the radio had when it first arrived here for repair. I knew I hadn't fixed all the problems, such as the VOX and some external connections, but I really did think I had this problem fixed.

So later this weekend or maybe next week, the cover will be off again and the soldering iron out in force. While I have the cover off I might also adjust the reference oscillator that is causing the transmit and receive to be 100 Hz low in frequency. It's an easy adjustment, I just need to get to the tuning spot.

73

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award Update #15

2011-01-06T22:13:00.003+11:00

Wow. Two Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award updates in the same week.

Today I had some time free to head to a park and I was tossing up between Baw Baw and The Lakes. Baw Baw won by about 30 minutes of travel time. I will get to The Lakes another time.

Tony, VK3VTH, had worked from the Mt Erica car park earlier in the week and mentioned that it was busy and stuck right hard against Mt Erica, so the outlook was restricted. Given that I was driving a fair way to get there and I had only an hour or two available I wanted to be sure I made the best use of my time. I had a look at the Visitor Guide for the park and looked at Google Earth for a suitable non-public car park. I thought I had found such a place on Thompson Valley Rd.

However once I was in the park I couldn't find a suitable place and drove all the way to the dam wall looking. On the way back I saw a road off to the left, with a Baw Baw National Park sign on the edge of the road. The intersection was big enough to safely park and the trees overhead were tall enough to throw a string over and hang an antenna from. So I rigged my 20/40m ground plane from a tree branch and started calling CQ, firstly on 40m and then on 20m.

I got no response after 20 minutes of calling so I went looking on 20m and found a QSO just finishing up. I called and spoke with Dave, ZL2OK, who was a good workable signal. After that I put out a call on 40m and worked Jeff, VK2XD, from Wagga. A final tune around 20m found Winston, VK7WH, testing his new Hex beam in the back paddock. A short QSO with Winston and I had three QSOs in the log book for the hour's working.

A word of caution to those heading to the Baw Baw National Park. Be sure to take a copy of the Visitor Guide with you so you are sure you are within the park. There are many areas that are not in the park, as shown on the map, but it all looks the same on the ground. Of course I know I was in the park as one line of my antenna was tied to the park sign :)

73

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award Update #14

2011-01-04T06:53:00.003+11:00

Two separate Keith Roget Memorial National Park Award activations happened yesterday and there is one more today. These activations were pre-announced on the krmnpa Yahoo list.

Yesterday I went to Wilsons Promontory and Tony, VK3VTH, activated Baw Baw National Park. Tony is heading to the Morwell National Park today.

Because these activations were announced on the krmnpa Yahoo list there were award chasers waiting to make QSOs with myself and Tony. Tony and I even made a park to park QSO during the day.

At Wilsons Promontory I set up in the Five Mile Rd car park using my trapped 20/40m ground plane. I had initial hoped to use the Telegraph Saddle car park, which is the highest point in the park that can be driven to, but Parks Victoria close the road to the car park during busy periods as it is quite small. As an alternative they run a shuttle bus up and down the road to take people there and back. While it would have been a worthwhile experience to pack the gear into a back pack and ride the bus, I didn't have enough time available to do such.

Later in the week Wal, VK3WZ and Lachlan, VK3LWZ, are planning to activate the Brisbane Ranges National Park and the Organ Pipes National Park. Details of these activations will be posted on the krmnpa Yahoo list.

73

VK Powermaster fails after more than 25 years

2010-12-29T07:57:00.003+11:00

On Monday I put out a CQ SSTV on 20m and when the transmission was finished I looked over to the receive screen and saw the waterfall display was empty. No signal was being received. Not even noise.

I went out to the shack and sure enough the FT757 was lifeless. No lights, no noise, nothing.

I have been working in the radio maintenance game for most of my life and when I don't see lights where I should, I instinctively look at the power source, in this case, the VK Powermaster.

My VK Powermaster has no voltage meters or output indicators on it, just an illuminated mains power switch. This switch was dark so I knew there was no mains power to the unit. A quick check of the other 240 V appliances in the same power point showed the mains was still present. I unplugged the VK Powermaster from the wall and checked the fuse. One 3 Amp fuse - blown.

I replaced the fuse and the second one blew straight away. Hmmm. This is looking serious.

I built the VK Powermaster over 25 years ago and it has powered many rigs along the journey and has given me faultless service until now. The only modification I have made is a reset switch that releases the over current protection circuit in the event of shut down. I did this because the original design required the mains power be turned off long enough for the filter capacitors to discharge. From memory this took about 2 minutes. I got sick of waiting after each shut down so I fitted a momentary switch that removes the wait. I can't recall exactly how this works but once I find a circuit diagram I will post details.

So with fuses blowing at switch on I took the cover off and started working through the circuit from the mains input toward the regulator circuit. The VK Powermaster is a linear regulator typical of the 1980s era having an 18 Volt AC transformer, a four way diode bridge rectifier, four big electrolytic capacitors, and four 2N3055 pass transistors as the major parts of the circuit.

A visual inspection showed the wiring in and out of the mains switch and the transformer was good so I disconnected the bridge rectifier from the transformer, replaced the fuse and switched on again. This time the fuse survived. This told me the fault was between the bridge rectifier and the DC output.

Since the rectifier has Faston terminals it was easy to remove it from circuit and test it out. With the diode tester on my Fluke DMM I measured between the terminals and found two diodes were good and two diodes were short circuit. The two shorted diodes were effectively placing a short across the output of the transformer. Hence the large current flow and the fuse failure.

A trip to Jaycar yesterday saw a new 400V 35A bridge rectifier fitted and the VK Powermaster lives again.

73

Another digital mode - SSTV

2010-12-19T22:08:00.002+11:00

A ham friend of mine, Bob VK6POP, had talked about SSTV when I was over in Perth early in 2009. It was the same time that I was introduced to PSK31.

Having already made an interface for PSK31 and with that mode working well, I did a little research on where I might be able to receive some SSTV signals and what software I should use. I emailed Bob and asked him and he recommended MMSSTV as a good place to start.

I downloaded MMSSTV from here on 19/12/2010 and within a few hours I was receiving SSTV images on 14.230 MHz using the FT757 GX.

On the same day I also gave sending a go and after only two CQ SSTV images I had a reply from Robert, VK4LHD.

After VK4LHD I got an image from VK6POP.

Since then I have received many images and had 8 good quality QSO with other VK stations on SSTV.

There are a few websites that upload SSTV images as received and these can be good to see who can receive your pictures and how well.

Peter, VK6AAL has a pictorial summary of SSTV websites in Australasia, and other SSTV websites around the world hosted on his website.

Robert, VK4MOD also has SSTV website in Australia on his website.

John, KE5RS has more than 100 SSTV websites on show. His site takes a while to load if you have a slow Internet connection but it sure shows a variety of images from all round the globe.

Keep an eye out for me on 14.230 MHz USB SSTV.

73

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award Update #13

2010-11-28T20:28:00.002+11:00

The Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award is getting a bit more attention with other hams making plans to activate some new National Park early in 2011.

Four new National Parks were declared during 2010;

Warby-Ovens National Park
Gunbower National Park
Lower Goulburn National Park
Barmah National Park

This takes the total number of National Parks in Victoria to 45. I have updated my map to reflect this.

I have also set up a Yahoo group with a mailing list to support the Award and I have invited others to join up and share news of their activations, both before and after. The group can be found at au.groups.yahoo.com/group/krmnpa. If you are interested in finding out when parks will be active, or to make your own announcements, please join the group.

Tony VK3VTH has qualified for the award and Wayne VK7FWAY is almost there as a non-Victorian award chaser. I know Wayne is in my log 3 or 4 times.

73

JIDX 2010

2010-11-17T22:11:00.002+11:00

Last week weekend was the annual Japan International DX contest. This year, like last year, it didn't clash with Scouthike.

At home we are preparing for my son's 21st birthday party in a few weeks so I was not able to go portable and escape the suburban noise.

I worked only 20m and finished with 11 QSO. This is better than the 4 QSO from last year but I am sure I can do a lot better.

Perhaps next year I will run from the refurbished Gilwell Park Scout Camp radio shack.

73

Scouthike and Papakura Sprint

2010-11-15T21:54:00.011+11:00

The weekend before last was the annual Scouthike competition hike for scouts. My eldest son Ash, VK3FASH, and I again set up a station at Sleep Point 6. Our sleep point had about 45 scouts staying in tents each night.

Our station consisted of my TM742A, running as a cross band repeater between 2m and 70cm, and a couple of 70 cm handhelds. For HF I had the tired FT-757GX and the even more tired FT-7 as a back up rig. I also had my MKARS80 along and worked a couple of stations on it as well. Having the TM742A running cross band allowed Ash and I to move freely around the camp area and still work Q5 back into VK3RSR, the SRESU's portable two metre repeater. I have been using cross band at these events for the past 10 or so years and it really is the best way to work and be sociable with others in the camp. We also had a UHF CB radio. DC power came from two 120 Amp-hour sealed lead acid batteries that were topped up when the site's generator was running.

The communications network is run by the HQ station, VK3SAA, and, this was staffed by Hayden, VK3FRST, Gerard, VK3FGCP, Arthur VK3FBEE and Kent VK3TER. Even Heather VK3FGCL got on the mike at one stage.

We had a little bit of trouble with the VK3RSR repeater, again, similar to the troubles we had at the bike event a few weeks earlier. Hopefully Peter, VK3AJ, can figure what is wrong and fix it before the next event.

For antennas we used the usual trapped 20/40/80 dipole strung in the trees at about 8 metres. Our 2m/70cm antenna was a Diamond X-200 fastened to the check-in shelter. I also had another try at building an 80m ground plane using my 9m squid pole.

At first I tried winding 21 m of wire around the pole but this wouldn't tune in at all well. Then I added a base loading coil and kept adding turns until the SWR came down. I got about 1.2:1 and gave it a try. I found it was usually 4 S points worse on receive and transmit was not much better. This was similar to my tests back in January.

On Saturday night was the first Papakura Sprint. The Papakura Radio club has added two more one hour sprints to the VK-ZL calendar and judging by the response on Saturday night they are on a winner. I worked the full 60 minutes without interruption and made 42 QSO. When I got home and transferred the log from paper to PC I found I had made two duplicate contacts. Sorry to the two stations I copied twice.

The Papakura Radio club are running another sprint in the middle of February 2011. If the weather is not too hot and the fire danger is not too high then I might head up to Mt Donna Buang and stretch out a half-wave sloper from the 21 metre high observation tower angled toward ZL.

I didn't get much on HF outside of the sprint but I did add a couple of Ukrainian stations to the log.

Next contest is the JIDX phone contest.

73

53rd JOTA and VK100WIA

2010-10-22T21:36:00.006+11:00

I have participated in more JOTA than I care to remember. I get a real kick out of helping young people enjoy radio. Who knows, maybe they will go on and get a licence and make a career out of radio, like me.

Last weekend was the 53rd annual JOTA and, for the first time, I set up a JOTA station and ran it under my own callsign. Most years I have been at stations with a VK3S** call sign such as VK3SBH or VK3SCG.

I had taken the Friday off work so I could get in early and set up before the kids arrived. The SRESU also had use of VK100WIA so I was keen to get that on air as well. The original plan was to be on air by about 10:00 am. 11:00 worst case.

Unfortunately that didn't happen as I didn't get the car packed until about 12 as there was much rain and many other things to do before going away.

I got to the camp around 2 pm and in the rain, threw up my trapped 80, 40, 20m dipole in the trees by the cabin. I was on air at 5:15 pm. A long way from first planned.

Contacts with VK100WIA were slow to begin with and I seized the opportunity when the rain stopped to also put up my trapped 20, 40m ground plane. Rather than use the squid pole I threw a rope over a tress and hung the wire overhead. It was a good throw as I was able to get the radials about 3 m off the ground. The SWR on 20m was good but 40m was about 1.8:1. Not ideal but the vertical performed better than the dipole on 40m giving about 2 S point increase on receive.

During the JOTA weekend I made contact with stations in ZL, VK4 and VK3. The Venturers and Scouts that were at camp had a go and everything worked out well.

73

Oceania DX Contest

2010-10-05T23:00:00.002+11:00

My effort for the OCDX contest last weekend was never going to be serious. I would be happy with whatever time I could get to contest.

I had been away during the week and really needed to get some things done around the house. Since the weather was fine I had no excuse to not mow the grass and do many other things that needed to be done.

This left little time for contest.

However, I did what I could. The antennas here are not good, and the local noise is never helpful.

I first set out to make at least 50 QSO. This came late on Sunday morning so I thought I would try for 60, then 70, then aim for 100. I fell one QSO short finishing off with 99 QSO and about 20800 points.

What did surprise me however was that I had worked 9 new DXCC entities during the day.

This was my first OCDX contest as a single operator and hopefully next year I can give it a better go. No chance of getting near the top from this QTH however.

Once the contest was over I exported the ADIF and Cabrillo files from VK Contest Logger and within a couple of minutes I had submitted my log, updated my log book, and sent the new QSO details to eQSL.cc and LOTW.

At least that part was easy!

73

QSL card sent, LOTW next.

2010-09-29T19:00:00.002+10:00

After a few nights of writing out QSL cards I dropped about 300 cards off at the inward QSL bureau and picked up 3 new cards that had arrived. I will be interested in seeing how many new cards I get now I have sent so many cards out.

Having done all the paper cards I now turned to how I could track them electonically. I read on qrz.com of a logging program called Win-EQF*. I downloaded the trial version and have now entered all my HF QSOs into it. This now allows me to upload the log to eQsl.cc and the ARRL Logbook Of The World.

I have mailed of my licence info to the ARRL in the USA and I am now awaiting an email with the secure key to complete my registration. Once registered I will upload the log to LOTW and see what happens.

All I need to do then is sort the unique VK QSO from my contest logs and send cards to them as well. That way every HF QSO I have made would have been sent at least one QSL card, unless I know they do not accept cards 'via the beru'.

73

QSL ? How I am managing my QSL cards.

2010-09-12T16:13:00.003+10:00

Until recently I have only sent QSL cards to special event stations and as reply cards to those I received. I was printing my own cards and it was a slow process.

Five weeks ago I decided I would order 1000 cards on-line so I could send more cards. I looked around and asked a few people who should know and I settled on Gennady UX5UO to make my cards. The whole process of getting cards was very easy. I just uploaded my design, paid via PayPal and approved the proof image. Five weeks later and I got my cards. Simple!

Now I needed to decide which QSOs I would send cards to and which ones I wouldn't.

At present I apply the following QSL policy;

QSL cards sent via the Bureau unless station indicates direct only and I really want the card. ie; special event station
QSL cards sent via the Bureau for all cards received via the Bureau
QSL cards sent for all DX QSOs
QSL cards sent for all non-contest VK QSOs
QSL cards sent for all special event stations for the first QSO on each band
QSL cards not normally sent for Echolink contacts
QSL cards not normally sent for VHF or UHF contacts

I think this is a fair policy for QSL card use.

If you are awaiting a QSL card from me and you fit the criteria above then your card will be with you soon. I have 4 years worth of HF operating to catch up on so it may take a while. If I have already received your card via the Bureau then your card is on its way.

73

Where have I been. . . .

2010-09-12T08:21:00.003+10:00

The past 6 weeks have been very quiet around here in regards to amateur radio. My last blog entry was 1 August and my radio log has only four entries since the start of August as well. Three of these entries are VK100WIA and one is YJ0VK, the VK DXpedition to Vanuatu.

August and September are always busy here as my whole family is involved in a Scout and Guide production, Whitehorse Showtime. I am the Technical Director this year and we have at least 9 amateur radio operators involved as cast and crew.

August 2 saw the death of my father who had a big influence on who I am. I first started being interested in radio when we were away camping in a caravan and I would sit for hours and tune around on an AM radio, listening to broadcast stations far away. The RACV auto club would publish a list of all AM broadcast stations and their locations in the strip maps that we always used.

73

Radio-Active net, Waitakere Sprint and noise

2010-08-01T14:16:00.004+10:00

Yesterday was the last day of the Scout Radio-Active award and we had organised for a special net on 40m at 7pm and 80m at 8pm. In addition to the HF nets we also advertised that we would be listening on VK3RSR and VK6RFM and Echolink.

I was undecided how I would approach this net as I knew working from home would be a problem due to the limits of my antenna and the high background noise levels.

I had been looking around for places to work from where I could string a 40/80m dipole, access VK3RSR direct and still be close to home. I had settled on the car park at One Tree Hill in the Dandenong Ranges. But when I heard the weather forecast was for rain and strong winds I decided to stay home.

During the afternoon I loaded Echolink on to an old PC that I use in the shack and, after a bit of messing around, I got it to work 100% on Echolink.

About 20 minutes before the net I turned on the FT757 and, to my dismay, found a noise level well over S9 on 40m and 80m. My chances of running a successful net with this noise level were slim. But at least I had Echolink.

I called for about 10 minutes on 40m but had no response. John, VK3ZX, called me on the telephone to ask if the net was happening and I tried a couple of times but he couldn't here me. I made a few contacts on Echolink and then tried 80m at 8pm. The noise was a similar problem and I couldn't hear anything on the sked frequency.

The Waitakere Sprint was also on 80m starting at the same time as our net, so I tuned around seeing if there was any stations working the contest. I worked a couple then decided that I couldn't beat the noise so I should give it all away.

I shut down the PC and, just as I was about to turn of the FT 757, the noise went away. The source of the noise was the PC.

With the PC now off I was able to hear a lot more stations on 80m in the Sprint.

I tuned around and worked about 20 stations and then called CQ myself and worked a few more.

My score is nothing fantastic but at least I gave it a go. I was logging on paper, which I haven't done for a while, but since the sprint only ran for one hour, and I was late starting, it didn't matter.

As for the Scout Radio-Active net on 80m, it was abandoned as a contestant in VK2 had set up camp on 3.650 MHz and was working well.

I'm told on very good authority that the Scout Radio-Active Award will run again next July.

73

Awards update

2010-07-21T06:55:00.002+10:00

Keith Roget Memorial National Park Award; I made my first contact for this award from the Alpine National Park back in December 2008. Since then I have activated 14 other national parks and I have seen some diverse scenery and spoken with a lot of different people. My contacts from national parks have included R1ANC in Antarctica, the Scout Jamboree station VI2AJ2010 and another Keith Roget Award chaser Tony, VK3VTH, who I have worked twice national park to national park. I have now achieved the minimum requirement of 15 parks, all on 20m, and I have sent off my log to claim the award. I am going to keep working on getting more parks and, over time, I may work to or from them all. Tony, VK3VTH is well on his way to achieving this with only 20 parks to go. To keep adding to my count I will be portable in the Grampians National Park this weekend, working 20m, 40m and 80m while there.

WIA Centenary Award; For this award I need to make contact with the VK100WIA station and/or WIA members to achieve 100 points. Each club activating the VK100WIA callsign is worth 10 points while WIA members are worth 5 points each. So far I have 8 different clubs in the log so two more and I will have the award. Hopefully I will have this done by the end of the month.

The Radio-Active Amateur Radio Award; This award runs only during July and is available to Australian hams that are also members of Scouts. The aim of this award is to get licenced Scouts on air talking to other licenced Scouts. So far I have enough points for the Silver Award and I am hoping to build up enough for the Gold Award. This weekend, while I am at the Grampians National Park, I will join in a Radio-Active net. The net will be around 7.190 MHz from 0900 UTC and 3.650 MHz from 1000 UTC on Saturday.

73

MKARS80 and VK100WIA

2010-06-30T22:19:00.003+10:00

Tonight I managed to combine two blog recent topics into one event.

I have been looking around the bands after dinner most nights for VK100WIA and it had been quite a while since I had heard it.

I found Garry, VK3KYF, running the call sign from Mildura and he was a very strong signal on the FT 757. So I switched over to my MKARS80 and gave him a call there. It took 4 or 5 tries before I got through as I was always just under another station but, with perseverance I was able to make the contact. Garry was running 350 watts, I was running 5 Watts. Garry gave me a 5 X 7 and I was pleased with that. Of course, I gave Garry 5 X 9 +30.

I am now half way to the WIA centenary award.

73

MKARS80 Update # 9

2010-06-27T17:37:00.004+10:00

I have mentioned earlier that I had added a relay to the speaker circuit to remove the audio feedback that occurs when using a speaker/microphone.

This is a similar modification that I did to my BITX 20 V3.

To fit the relay into the case I have moved C2 from the board and, using a small cable tie, I have inverted it next to the new relay. Since I have also fitted a DC power cable and grommet and a DC power switch the back panel is quite congested. The relay is held in place by a thick wire running from one contact down to the ground where the internal speaker would be soldered. There is a second wire, blue in colour, that loops around the body of the DC switch to also hold the relay in place.

As a precaution against short circuits I have added PVC tape to the back panel, across the relay and on the underside of the aluminium case.

In addition to relocating C2 I have also cut a small track on the top side of the board near the original PTT relay. This allowed me easy access to the PTT line from the microphone as well as a place to control the original PTT relay with the new relay.

By switching the speaker out of circuit at the same time as applying PTT, using a double pole relay, I have removed the audio feedback.

73

FT 757 display fault fixed - I hope

2010-06-27T07:02:00.004+10:00

Yesterday I had finally had enough of the display problem with the Yaesu FT757 and hopefully I have now fixed it.

By way of explanation, the FT757 is on loan from a friend of mine. When my friend got the radio it was thrown in as part of an antenna and tower deal. The radio didn't work very well at all and had numerous faults. Looking at the missing cover screws and the damage to the screws that were left, it would be fair to presume that somebody had tried to make repairs.

Over the past couple of years I have been working to get this radio back to its former glory. First up I replaced the internal memory back up battery and realigned one or two of the oscillators. This cured most of the problems but it still had a very annoying, intermittent fault where the display would fail and either show only even numbers, so 3.575 would be shown as 4.686 or something similar. At other times the display would go very bright and show all 8s. Annoying to say the least.

I had previously identified that there was a problem with the 11 way cable that connects from the display board to the main board. It seamed that when I applied pressure to the cable, near the display board, I could make the fault come and go.

I had a look at the soldering on the display board and found what looked like dry solder joints. I re-soldered the connector and, for a while it worked.

After the disappointment of the 2009 JMFD contest, where I couldn't work 160m due to this fault, I had another crack at fixing the fault. This time I thought I had found the problem with a second cable behind the display. I carefully bent the display up and re-soldered the connector there as well.

The problem stayed away for a few months but still came back at the worst possible time.

So yesterday, when it failed while I was tuning around looking for VK100WIA, I resolved to take it apart again and have another go.

This time I again checked the soldering on the header connector to the display board and I used the continuity tester on my multi meter to verify the contacts. I was checking from the main board connector to the solder pads on the board. I checked each of the 11 connections and, even when moving the cable and connector, I couldn't make it fail. Then I started again checking each wire from the far end to somewhere on the circuit board where the copper traces ran to. This, I hoped, might show any breaks in the board or similar. The second wire I checked, pin 10, showed some unreliable contact so I ran a short length of wire between the connector and a PCB pad it was supposed to be connected to. This made the connection more reliable.

Pins 11, 9, 8 and 7 tested fine, as did pins 5 to 1. But I couldn't find where pin 6 connected to. There are no copper traces from pin 6 on the underside of the board and the trace on the top side didn't appear to connect to pin 6.

I had a look at the circuit diagram and pin 6 is connected to the main chip and three diodes so it had to be connected somehow. I took a look at the board overlay in the service manual and it showed me a track on the top side from pin 6 to the diode D19.

I connected my tester between the far end connector and the anode of D19 and there was no continuity. I pressed on the header body and I got a beep from the tester. I let go and the beep stopped. There was a break in the circuit between the pin of the header connector and the copper trace on the top side of the board. A very clean break too. Without too much effort I was able to make the tester sound my call sign in Morse code by pressing and releasing the header.

As I had done with pin 10, I now ran a wire from pin 6 of the header connector to the PCB trace going to the anode of D19. This proved to work as the tester now showed 100% connectivity.

I reassembled that radio and the display works fine. Let's hope it stays that way.

The radio still needs some more alignment as the IF shift and width controls are not good, and the VOX doesn't work, and it seams very deaf on 10m, but these things can wait until another rainy day.

73

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award - update # 12

2010-06-20T09:34:00.004+10:00

It has been a while since I have blogged about the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award but I have been working away slowly at activating 15 National Parks.

Back in late February I activated the Heathcote - Graytown National Park while on my way to the Hoadley Hide site visit. I drove up to the top of a hill and used my 20/40m squid pole antenna lashed to a tree stump.

In April I was down on the Mornington Peninsula and worked Dan, VK4MAX who was mobile in Queensland. On this occasion I hung my 20/40m squid pole antenna from a tree, instead of using the pole. It still worked the same and QSOs came easily.

Yesterday my work had me heading to North East Victoria so I packed the radio in and, after work, headed up to the Chiltern - Mt Pilot National Park. The antenna this time was the 20m droopy ground plane strung from a tree. After a few calls I got an answer from Dan, VK4MAX/5. The name and call sign sounded familiar but it wasn't until I got home and checked the log that I realised that it was the same Dan that I had worked from the Mornington Peninsula National Park.

Now I have just one more park to go to qualify for the award. I'm tossing up between Point Nepean and Wilson's Promontory for a special effort, or I can wait until the end of July when I am heading to the Grampians anyway.

73

VK shires contest 2010

2010-06-14T08:31:00.004+10:00

Yesterday and Saturday was the running of the second annual VK shires contest. After last year's contest I considered going mobile, or 'rover' as the rules call it, and working from 3 or 4 different shires, using my trapped dipole in the trees. A few weeks ago I even head out and looked for some suitable places to set up, not with the dipole though, just with my 20/40m squid pole ground plane.

I thought I had found three places, in three shires, that were reasonably quiet and away from noise sources but when I got home and checked the map, two of them were in the same shire, albeit by only 150 metres. I had still hoped to go out and work from the field but the recent rain and the lowered external temperature convinced me not to bother.

So I worked another contest from home, along with the inherent noise and antenna problems. I started late in the contest as I thought it started at 6 pm local time so I started after dinner only to find the contest had started at 4 pm. I had missed any chance of 20m contacts during the early stages.

I also found a new problem - my son's stereo amplifier system. Whenever I transmitted he could hear me. Not a big problem during the evening as he just turned it off but when I called my first ZL station at 7:15 on Sunday morning, it woke him and my XYL. The problem was soon fixed and it was due to him using a balanced output from the mixer into an unbalanced input on the amplifier. The inter-connecting lead was working quite well as an antenna and picking up the signal from the dipole that is only 4 metres away.

Having solved that problem I was free to work on with the contest but having S8 noise on 40m and S9 +20 dB noise on 80m I am sure there was lots of stations that I just couldn't hear.

I managed to make only 90 QSO, which is one less than last year, and my points total is 180 less than last year as well.

One station that didn't seem to be having any problems was Mark, VK4ADX, who was running mobile in Central NSW covering more than 500 km and 7 shires. I managed to work him in six of those. Mark was set up in a Land Cruiser utility with a 7 foot whip on the roof bar and a friend driving while he operated. I will be looking out to see how well he has done.

Another station that was working well was Wayne, VK7FWAY, who always has a thumping great signal into here.

I sent my log off by email, 29 minutes after the contest finished, and now I will wait and see how I went. Perhaps next year I will get away and work from some place quiet.

73

JIDX 2009 results

2010-05-29T20:09:00.002+10:00

Back in November 2009 was the Phone section of the Japan International DX contest. Despite my earlier assertions that I would give this contest my full attention, as it didn't clash with Scouthike, I only managed about 30 minutes on air whilst my daughter was at a band rehearsal.

I had driven about 10 km away from the rehearsal and found a suitable park where I could set my trapped 80/40/20m dipole. I made 4 contacts on 20 m so I sent off my log as an entry in the 14 MHz low power section.

As it turned out I was one of only two entries from Australia in that category, and the other entry was Craig, VK8PDX in Central Australia. Craig made 3 QSO for 9 points. So, despite my very small participation I will get a certificate in the mail to add to my collection.

Maybe this year I will give the JIDX contest a better go and make more QSOs. After all it doesn't clash with Scouthike this year either.

73

VK100WIA - Back to the Future

2010-05-23T07:23:00.006+10:00

VK100WIA is suffering the curse of most attempts to run special call signs across multiple operators.

An inability to understand UTC date.

On the East coast of Australia, at this time of year, we are 10 hours ahead of UTC. Put simply if it is 2 o'clock in the afternoon here UTC is 0400. If it is midday here UTC is 0200. If it is 8 o'clock on Sunday 23 May here UTC is 2200 on Saturday 22 May.

This concept of UTC date being different to the station date is something some hams never seem to get their head around.

The online log for VK100WIA, captured here at 7:19 AM, 23 May 2010 EST (which is 21:19 22 May 2010 UTC), shows stations worked at 14:59, 23/05/2010 UTC. That is about 17 hours from now, so I should be able to catch them.

Whenever I have trouble with time zones I like to check the World Clock here.

73

VK100WIA MIA?

2010-05-22T21:40:00.003+10:00

The WIA Centenary call sign VK100WIA seems to be Missing In Action (or should that be in-action).

After much fanfare and activity the WIA had logged 979 QSO, according to the WIA log book, in the first 6 days. However qrz.com reports 1,000 QSO by 19 May.
Either way the call sign was getting a good workout until last Thursday. Nothing has been logged or reported on DX summit since 20 May 2010.

It could well be that it is being worked heavily on the VHF and UHF circuits around Sydney and lots of hams are getting the call sign in their logs and the online log is lagging behind.

I'm hoping to work VK100WIA often enough to qualify for the WIA Centenary Award before the SRESU gets use of the call sign in the lead up to JOTA.

I will keep an eye out on the bands and at DX summit and hopefully catch the call 9 more times to qualify.

73

Harry Angel Sprint results

2010-05-22T21:25:00.002+10:00

I got an email during the week with the results of the recent Harry Angel Sprint. This was a surprise as the previous results have come via snail mail.

My sub-optimum antenna set up at home resulted in a similar result to previous years.

The winner overall was VK4YZ, with a score of 75 points. I came equal 11th with a score of 47 points. In 2008 I was equal 12th with 39 points and in 2007 I scored outright 12th place with 33 points.

Perhaps next year I will operate from Gilwell Park, using the new 80 m dipole on the new tower that should be up and running by then.

73

VK100WIA

2010-05-15T15:47:00.002+10:00

The Wireless Institute of Australia, also known as WIA, have a special call sign on air to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the WIA and a centenary of organised Amateur Radio in Australia.

The call sign VK100WIA is being shared around between various WIA affiliated clubs, as well as some WIA members.

Today I was fortunate enough to work VK100WIA which was being activated by Bob VK6POP in Perth Western Australia. Bob is also the National JOTA/JOTI coordinator so we have worked often. Bob was the leader of the VK6SAA station at the Australian Venture in Perth in January 2009 where we made over 100 QSO from the scout camp.

It is always good to catch up with Bob on air and in person.

73

JMFD and VK trans Tasman contests

2010-05-14T20:15:00.002+10:00

Back in March I wrote about the F.A.R.T camp and using my MKARS80 in the John Moyle Memorial Field Day contest.

Last week the results were published on-line and I came sixth in the 24hr single op HF phone section. Since I was not out to set the world on fire I was happy with this. I was also last of the submitted entries but that doesn't really matter. As a measure of performance I was only 4 points behind 5th place. Greg, VK3FUNK, came in 3rd place in the 6 hour, single operator, all bands, phone category which was an excellent effort considering he was working from the mobile at a good, but not fantastic, location in Kangaroo Ground.

Last Saturday was the annual VK trans Tasman contest. A contest that encourages contacts between Australia and New Zealand that has special scoring zones and times to encourage participation on both sides of the ditch. Quite a challenge considering there is a 4 hours difference between sunset in ZL and sunset in VK6 and the contest only lasts 6 hours.

I worked the VK3SAT call sign along with my son, Ash, VK3FASH, down at the Officer Scout Hall. I have worked from here before and it is a good location as it is only 5 minutes drive from home and has some sizable trees that work well to hold up antennas. This time around we worked from inside the hall. My previous operating from here has been outside in the car. I much prefer being inside with table, chair and computer!

Two things surprised me while we were working this contest.
One, my 80 m dipole, that I normally set in an inverted Vee formation, had high SWR when it was set horizontally. I have seen this before with my trapped antenna. Perhaps I need to make two 80 m antennas, one for inverted Vee and one for flat topping.

The second surprise was, after the normal serial number exchange, a station said, "Great to hear you on, I've read your blog". This was a surprise as I was not running my normal call sign so not only had the operator read my blog but he had remembered that I run different call signs in contests. I didn't note who it was, so, if you are reading this - Hello, you know who you are!

73

Harry Angel Sprint and a new antenna

2010-04-24T23:00:00.006+10:00

Tonight was the annual event to celebrate the life of our oldest amateur, Harry Angel, VK4HA, who passed away in 1998, aged 106.

The Harry Angel Sprint runs for 106 minutes and is either CW, Voice or a combination of both.

As I know very little CW I had a go at the phone section for the third time. My previous results have been 12th and equal 12th (with VK3SAY).

As with any contest I try and operate away from the noisy environs of home but tonight I couldn't get the inclination to go out and set a portable antenna in the rain. I had been thinking of putting my 10m squid pole atop of the 7 metre high lookout tower at Koo-Wee-Rup and trying out a 1/4 wave vertical antenna.

However I settled for my 80m/40m trapped dipole at home. The SWR on 80m is poor so I need to replace it.

My activity in the contest was hampered a little by the reduced output of the FT-757 due to the high SWR and a front panel/board fault that make the display go strange which seems to never go away.

Still I was only 2 QSO less than 2008. Perhaps a better antenna would have helped.

If the rain goes away for a few days I might just get on the roof and replace the 80m/40m antenna with a 20m, 40m, 80m trapped dipole.

I had published details of the Sprint to the SRESU mailing list in the hope that some other members would give it a go but I didn't hear any SRESU on air.

I must say the general noise level on 80m was down on the usual levels but the static crashes made up for it. I think the recent rain we have been having has washed the power lines clean and so has reduced the noise. Even the TV looks better on ABC lately.

73

BITX20 Update # 34

2010-04-07T21:56:00.004+10:00

As I mentioned in update # 33 I have moved my BITX20 Version 3 into a new box but had some strange results.

The first issue was the huff 'n' puff display showed the offset count of 9.9972 MHz rather than somewhere in the 20m band. It also appeared the huff 'n' puff circuit would not stabilise the receiver. I found that I had swapped the VFO sense and VCO control cables when I had connected them to the BITX20 exciter board.

The other problem I had was that when I pressed PTT I got a constant 4 Watts output, with no modulation from the microphone.

I borrowed a CRO and traced through the circuit from the microphone amplifier along to the far side of the crystal filter. What I found was signals from each amplifier stage. I disconnected the input into each amplifier but I still got an output.

Then I checked the power supply rails and I found that the +RX supply was on for both RX and TX. This caused 3 separate amplifier blocks (Q1 & Q13, Q2 & Q12, Q3/3A and Q11) to be powered in both TX and RX and each of them was oscillating when PTT was pressed.

Normally this would also result in audio feedback between the microphone and the speaker but not in my case as I have the speaker disconnected by a relay when PTT is pressed.

I found the cause of this on the under side of the board where I had connected a red wire to power the huff 'n' puff circuit. By mistake I had connected the wire to the +RX supply and, at the same time, bridged from the main supply to +RX with a small piece of solder.

Once I moved the huff 'n' puff supply wire to the main supply rail and removed the solder bridge my BITX20 started working again.

I will need to re-align the oscillators to allow for the new enclosure but at least I have found the major problem.

73

BITX20 Update #33

2010-03-29T23:21:00.003+11:00

Tonight I finished boxing up my BITX20 Version 3 into a new box.

I went to particular effort to make it neat and tidy so that If I need to fault find it I won't struggle too much.

I took some photos and then powered it up. At first I thought things were good as the display came on with the start up message and all looked OK.

But then the start up message went and I was left with a display showing 9.9972 MHz. This is the offset count for the display. This says to me that the PA3CNO huff and puff display circuit has no input from the VFO.

The VFO seems to work as I could tune around and receive a couple of broadcast stations.

I pressed the PTT button and I get a carrier even when I have no modulation. This could be a simple tuning issue as I expect all my oscillators need to be re-aligned now that the boards are mounted near metal inside the ABS case.

I will go through the circuits tomorrow and see if I can find the problem. Perhaps I have the VFO sense and the VCO control cables swapped over?

73

Squid poles, ground planes and a dipole

2010-03-27T20:02:00.011+11:00

The F.A.R.T. camp last weekend was a great opportunity to try out some antennas as the site had plenty of space.

Some time back I published details for a 15m droopy ground plane that could be hung from a tree, so at the camp I tried a droopy ground plane for 20m built on my 10m squid pole.

I used three radials, spaced at 120 degrees and at 45 degrees from horizontal. I started out with 5.5 metre lengths and trimmed the main element to 4.5 m and the radials to 5.3 m each. This returned SWR of better than 1.2:1 between 14.100 MHz and 14.300 MHz.

On the same site I had also set up my trapped 20/40 m ground plane on a 9 m squid pole and my 20/40/80 m trapped dipole in a tree at about 9 metres. With three antennas I was able to do some comparison between them.

I found that on 20 m the droopy ground plane was nearly always 3 S points stronger than the 20/40 ground plane and up to 4 S points stronger then the 20/40/80 dipole. All 20m signals were skip signals from within VK.

On 40m I found that the 20/40 ground plane was mostly 2 or 3 S points better than the 20/40/80 dipole for skip signals, but the dipole was 2 or 3 S points better for ground wave signals.

This is consistent with my earlier trials.

In the next couple of weeks I will make the droopy ground plane more durable and publish some more photos.

I think I have found a new portable antenna for my award chasing on 20m. The droopy ground plane is a little harder to set up than the trapped 20/40 ground plane but the extra 3 S points could make all the difference.

73

MKARS80 Update # 8

2010-03-22T21:36:00.003+11:00

Last weekend was the SRESU F.A.R.T camp and, beside a disappointing turn out, the weekend went quite well.

It was also the John Moyle Memorial Field Day contest weekend which means there was plenty of activity on the HF bands.

I made 10 contacts on my MKARS80. Most stations heard me well, except on VK2 station who was running maximum legal power, 400 Watts and was not really strong into station. It took many tries to get the exchange but I'm sure we did and they are in my log.

One thing I did notice with my MKARS80 is low audio through the speaker microphone. With some bud earphones the copy was fine but the speaker was not loud enough for working. Next time I take the MKARS80 away I will take a bigger speaker with me.

I also became more convinced that a back lit display is needed. I bought 2 displays a couple of weeks ago but I haven't got around to fitting it.

I also need to look at a way of turning the back light on and off to help conserve battery power. I'm going back to the circuit to see if there is a 'lock' indicator I can use. Otherwise I might just fit a push button switch with a timer circuit.

73

BITX20 Update # 32

2010-03-18T22:53:00.003+11:00

Mich Lei Juice recently asked how my BITX20 was going. At present it is in pieces on the very messy work bench.

I have started work to move the boards into a new, slightly larger box where I can shield the variable capacitor. I'm hoping by adding some shielding I can get rid of the drift that happens every time I move my hand near the case.

For shielding I am using galvanised steel sheet left over from the NVARC Ugly Filters. To help guard against short circuits I have covered the sheet with blue tinted 'Contact'.

The new case is about 6mm higher than the old so I needed to make new front and rear panels from blank PCB materials. This time I have laminated the paper front panel.

Fitting out the new case will also allow me to tidy up the inter board wiring so it looks neat when I take photos to put here and on other sites. Sunil has an early picture of my BITX20 when it was still screwed to a piece of timber on his web site. Once I have finished the fitting to the new box I will send him a good looking photo.

I hope to get it all back together in the next couple of weeks.

73

MKARS80 Update # 7

2010-03-18T22:09:00.004+11:00

It has been some time since I have written of my MKARS80 QRP kit. It is still going well and I took the plunge recently and added a relay to disconnect the speaker before applying PTT.

This has, no surprise, removed the feedback howl I was getting when I use a speaker/microphone.

The modification to include the extra relay was not all that easy. I needed to cut a top side track, remove a capacitor and file the case a little as well.

When I get a chance I will draw the circuit showing where the relay fits in to it all.

I have also got a blue back-lit display to fit as well. To fit a back-lit display requires a bit of work as the display is about 3 mm thicker, so the main board needs to sit 3mm further from the front panel. This means the connectors on the panel need to move 3mm as well.

Because of the RF socket and DC power switch I use getting the board in and out is not as easy as it once was.

While I have the board out adding the new display I will adjust the speaker socket and make it the same height as the microphone socket and make a new rear panel as well.

73

Field Activity Readiness Trial camp

2010-03-16T22:10:00.002+11:00

This weekend is the SRESU's first Field Activity Readiness Trial (FART) camp. Organised by Arthur VK3FBEE a small group are heading away to setup and meet the following challenge:

To set up a communications camp site capable of supporting two operators and
running to our normal comm's plan of = 2 Meters, = 80 meters and UHF CB,
for a period of not less than 36 hours.

Once set up we are free to circulate and inspect other sites, exchanging ideas
and the various reasons why it's been done that way.

This weekend is also the John Moyle Memorial Field Day contest which promotes portable operation. I have previously done very well with the VHF/UHF section of this contest from Mt Donna Buang, which, coincidentally, is not far from the FART camp location. I will most likely work some HF signals just to offer support for the contest. If I get a chance on Sunday morning I might also head up the hill and hand out some numbers there as well.

I am also hoping to get one more National Park during the weekend as well.

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award - update # 11

2010-02-20T20:50:00.003+11:00

Today I got a chance to head east and down to activate the Tarra-Bulga National Park for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award.

As usual I set up my trapped 20/40m ground plane and my FT-7 on a picnic table. I had been calling CQ for just a couple of minutes when VK5IS answered my call. Ian and I chatted for a while and I found out the Ian also uses a squid pole when working portable.

After chatting with Ian I decided to also put up my trapped dipole with 40 and 20m fitted so I could compare the ground plane to the dipole.

Talking to a couple of VK7 hams on 40m I found about 4 or 5 S point increase when using the dipole but when I worked Tony, VK3VTH/M the ground plane worked better, by about 3 S points at my end.

Tony VK3VTH is also working toward the National Parks award and he was over in the Mount Eccles National Park in Western Victoria. A first for both of us was a National Park to National Park QSO.

Later in the day I worked into Sydney on 20m and again I was able to compare the dipole and ground plane. This time there was a 3 S point increase on the ground plane compared to the dipole.

From all of this I conclude that sometimes one works better than the other, and other times it is the other way around.

Given the shear convenience of the squid pole ground plane I think I will stick with it for now.

I have updated my map to show the latest park I have worked from.

73

New battery box

2010-02-14T22:09:00.008+11:00

Recently I got two second hand 120 Ah sealed lead acid batteries. One of my greatest worries with batteries of this size is the possibility of the terminals shorting out either in transit or when in use. Such a short circuit would deliver very high currents and potentially cause a fire.

To minimise this risk I made a wooden box today for one of the batteries. I'll make a second box next time I have a few hours to spare.

The box is made of 8 mm thick three ply, 20 x 42 mm dressed pine and 20 x 20 mm dressed pine. It is screwed together with 6G x 20 mm bugle head screws.

I needed to drill 2 holes at each end to allow the rope handles to pass through.

I have another battery of similar size that is already in such a box and it has given me trouble free service for more than 10 years.

Now I have finished the new box I need to add a 20A circuit breaker and a power connector.

Up until now I have used low voltage T plugs and small Utilux power connectors for my batteries, DC power supplies and DC cables. Some members of the SRESU have been changing over to Anderson connectors and I think the time has come for me to consider doing the same. Unfortunately I have a large amount of gear that, at present, all interconnect well. To change to Anderson connectors I will need to change everything. This will be a costly exercise so it may have to wait a little longer.

For now, at least I have a protective box.

73

The (not so) great squid pole muster

2010-02-13T09:21:00.002+11:00

Last Monday was our regular SRESU meeting and Peter VK3AJ had suggested those with squid pole antennas bring them along to show off to others. I got to the hall around 6:30 pm and set up my usual 20/40m trapped ground pl ane. Shortly after Peter VK3AJ set up his 10m pole, also in a ground plane configuration. Peter, unlike me, figures he doesn't need to keep things small as he has a car to take gear where it needs to go.

His pole is fully rigged with three guy ropes held in with steel star pickets driven with a sizable hammer. His pole has four radials connected with gold plated RCA connectors. Peter uses a 4:1 balun and tunes the antenna with the internal tuner in his Kenwood TS2000. Quite an impressive set up for portable use.

Peter was the only other pole user to show off his antenna but there was 9 or 10 interested onlookers from the unit there.

I made 2 QSO on 20m and one on 40m. One of the 20m QSO was into Spain. Not a bad effort for 10 watts portable.

Phil, VK3JNI, has recently shipped 24 ten metre squid poles to unit members and friends so hopefully the F.A.R.T. camp in March will see some more poles out and about.

While I had my pole in the air I gave my newest antenna a try. It is a half wave vertical dipole for 2m made only from coax. Using a borrowed rig I was able to access many repeaters on 2m so it must have been working well. My plan is to build a two or three section colinear antenna for 2m using a 10m squid pole as the support. I have not built colinear type antennas before so this should be an interesting exercise.

73

VI3KIAH - Recognising the operators of Black Saturday

2010-02-07T21:45:00.003+11:00

For the first anniversary of the 2009 February fires the Yarra Valley Amateur Radio Group used a special call sign in recognition of the services radio operators provided during and after the fires.

VI3KIAH operated at Kinglake, one of the most significantly damaged areas, today. 'Kiah' is an Australian Aboriginal word meaning "beautiful place".

I was fortunate enough to have worked VI3KIAH on 2m simplex about 30 minutes after they started.

173 “From the Black” QSL cards numbered and dated, will be provided to the first 173 contacts with VI3KIAH. 173 is significant as it reminds us of the number of people who lost their lives due to these horrific fires.

I don't know if there are plans to do this every year but given the enormity of the loss I would not be surprised to see some annual event to recognise those amateurs who gave freely of their time and experience to assist during and after these fires, as well as to remember those that died.

73

The great squid pole muster

2010-02-04T21:34:00.002+11:00

This coming Monday at the SRESU meeting we will be mustering all the various squid pole antennas belonging to members.

The idea is to show them off to other members who have just bought new squid poles and are unsure what to do with them.

I will be taking along my trapped 20/40m ground plane and hopefully I can make some QSO while we are there.

73

BITX20 Update # 31

2010-01-30T21:19:00.006+11:00

With my recent QRP activities and going back to work to earn some money, I haven't been near my BITX20.

I do however have a new case for it. It is the same size as the existing case but it is not second hand.

Before I pull apart my existing case to fit it into the new one, and add a metallic shield to the huff and puff circuit board, I have drawn a complete circuit diagram showing all my modifications.

I have also drawn up an inter-connection diagram to assist me, and others, get the connections in the right places. The inter-connection diagram shows the standard un-modified arrangements rather than my changes. My modifications don't change the way the two boards interconnect.

A big thank you goes to Leonard, KC0WOX, for his informative manuals on his website.

73

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award - update # 10

2010-01-24T20:13:00.008+11:00

This weekend I had the opportunity to activate four more National Parks for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award.

The first park I worked from on Friday night was the Great Otways National Park. I dropped two of my children off at a nearby camp and then had a look at a couple of spots that overlook Bass Strait. The wind was quite strong by the coast so I head inland a little to the Moggs Creek Picnic Ground. I set up my 20/40 m ground plane and started calling CQ. It wasn't long before David, VK5HOL, answered my call. My new preferred antenna was working well. I chatted with David for a little while and then packed the antenna away and moved on. My next destination was the Brisbane Ranges National Park.

I arrived at the Brisbane Ranges park a little before 8 pm and again got my quarter wave assembled quickly, this time supported by a wooden picnic table. After just a couple of calls Dennis, VK5LDM, answered and reported I was a good solid signal into Adelaide. I worked Dennis for a while and then called CQ again. This time I was answered by Dom, VK2YDD/M, who was mobile near Goulburn in NSW. It was great to work from my portable station to a mobile station.

After QSB and local noise for DOM brought the QSO to an end I packed up and headed for home.

I thought about heading down to Wilson's Promontory on Saturday to take a short hike and activate that National Park but the weather was not looking too good so I put that trip off for a while.

Keen to get at least one more National Park for the weekend, after dinner I headed to the nearest National Park to home. Churchill National Park is a small but hilly park in the south east suburbs. I had previously looked at the car park of this park but decided it was too close to the high voltage power transmission lines that cut a path through the middle. I had found a small gate on the northern edge of the park and, looking at Google Maps it seemed a fairly easy walk from the gate to the top of a hill away from the power lines. How wrong I was. I had not looked at the contours of the walk and soon after leaving the car found the track was quite steep. I had the FT-7, a 7Ah battery and the squid pole antenna in a pack on my back so the hill climb was more difficult than I had expected.

The track rises up about 90 m in a distance of about 600m. Very steep indeed. Once near the top I set the antenna and called CQ. It was well after 8 pm and the sun was almost down so I knew it would be tough to get a QSO. Perhaps I should have started earlier?

I was 3 minutes from my self imposed cut off time when Gary, VK3ZGC, answered my call. Although he was only 4 km away it was still great to hear a response.

Sunday saw me out early and heading for the Organ Pipes National Park. The vehicle gate on this park is closed until 8:30 am and I arrived at 7:45 am. I again packed my gear into the back pack and headed off. This walk was much easier than last night as the path is relatively flat.

Using my trapped 1/4 wave ground plane I heard the tail end of Gerry, VK2APG's call of CQ. I answered him and we chatted for a while. Gerry reminded me that we had worked before back in 2006.

After Gerry I gave a few calls and John, VK3LKJ/7 returned. John is traveling around Tasmania and was a great signal from his mobile setup with a 7ft whip. After a bit of conversation I learned that John comes from the next town up the road from me. It really is a small small world.

So after the weekend I have four new parks in the log and four more green markers on the map.

I also have a new favorite antenna. The trapped 40/20 m ground plane has proved its worth in speed and ease of set up and pack up and it works quite well too.

73

20m & 40m trapped vertical squid pole antenna

2010-01-17T21:34:00.005+11:00

One of the drawbacks with the antenna system I took to French Island was the time and effort to change the squid pole antenna from a 20m quad loop to a 40m ground plane. It takes about 15 minutes and that is 15 minutes more in the sun. If you need to change back then it is another 15 minutes.

Today I trialed using a trap near the mid point of the main element to see if the antenna would tune and work on 20m as well as 40m. I was using my FT7 on a 7 Ah SLA battery sitting in the boot of the car.

Now, in theory this should work as I use the same principle on my 80/40/20m trapped dipole. Using one of the 20m traps from my dipole I tried a couple of wire lengths and settled on the dimensions shown to the right.

The trap is made with 42mm diameter PVC pipe with 9 turns of wire on it. In the middle of the pipe is a length of open ended coax acting as a capacitor. Details for making the trap are shown here.

With the wire lengths shown and supported by my 9m squid pole, I got SWR less than 1.3:1 on 7.100 MHz and 14.200 MHz.

While checking the 20m SWR I heard a fairly strong signal near 14.300 MHz and, after checking my SWR was good, I tuned down and found Rick, VK2AAH, calling CQ. I answered his call and Rick came back to me with a 5 X 8 signal report into Sydney. Not a bad effort for a first contact with only 10 Watts. As the sky was getting a little dark and rain was coming along soon I didn't talk long with Rick.

I gave the 40m band a quick look and heard Ray VK2FW calling another station. I listened and Ray called a second time. Still no answer. After his third call I called him and, after short introductions, he gave a 4 X 5 signal report. Not as good as my 20m report but I was still pleased to make a contact so quick.

By now I was starting to get wet so I signed with Ray, put on a rain coat, and packed the antenna away.

So, there we have it. A trapped vertical portable antenna for 40 & 20 m.

73

MKARS80 Update # 6

2010-01-16T21:24:00.004+11:00

Having now finished with the hike to French Island I was able to turn my attention back to my MKARS80 QRP radio kit.

A couple of days before the French Island trip I hooked my MKARS80 up to my PSK software and generated a single audio tone into the microphone. I was able to measure just over 5 Watts output into a dummy load. However on the microphone it is difficult to get much more than 2 Watts output.

I will try adding a microphone pre-amplifier. As I am planning to use a speaker microphone with the radio I will also need to do the same modification as I did to my BITX 20. The addition of another relay to disconnect the speaker upon PTT is required to stop the audio feedback that currently occurs when I use the speaker microphone.

Over the last couple of days I have been playing around with the front and side panel designs and have got a working solution in place now. I am still having issues around the placement of the two 3.5mm audio sockets as I have just worked out that they are not on the same centres from the board edge. One is slightly higher that the other. For now I have just made the microphone hole slightly larger but when next I make a side panel I will move the speaker socket and get them the same height and then the holes will fit tightly.

I must admit that after the mess I made of the side panel before I am quite pleased with how it now looks. The panels are made from paper that I printed in my ink jet printer then, after using a hole punch for the MOD LED and a Stanley knife for the display cut out, I laminated and then trimmed to size. I have filed down the MOD LED so it is flat against the front panel rather than poking through as it was earlier.

There has been some talk from another VK amateur of building a MKARS40 and, if that happens, I might just build one of them as well. That would give me three light weight QRP rigs to choose from when next I go hiking.

73

French Island, The Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award and a hike in the sun - it happened but not quite as planned.

2010-01-10T21:48:00.004+11:00

Saturday morning came around and I made the final adjustments to what I was and was not taking on the trip. I weighed the pack and it came in at 25 kg. This was a bit heavier than I wanted but Adam had said we would have room available to take some stuff if need be.

As I headed off up the freeway to pick up Adam I got a text message from Hayden saying that he was unwell and wouldn't be joining us. This was a disappointment as Hayden was the first to put his hand up to join me on the island trip. This also meant that the 40/80 m dipole, two batteries, an SWR meter and an IC7000 that Hayden was bringing wouldn't be there either.

Anyway, there was still Adam and Marcus coming along so it was still worth going ahead. I picked up Adam and he tells me that he hasn't got his new camera yet so I say he can take some photos with mine instead. There is about $1500 difference in the cameras but, having seen the photos Adam took, the quality of the camera is only one aspect of a great photo.

We arrive at Stony Point about 45 minutes early and set about finding where we should park. For $4.40 per day we can park in the car park at the back of the caravan park. This sounds like a good option so we pay 'Lumpy' at the gate the money. Lumpy is the gate keeper, if you like, and I reckon he knows everything that comes and goes from the island. He asked us a few questions about what we would be doing on the island. I didn't tell him about the radio stuff as sometimes it's just better to gloss over such details. He warned us to stay on the tracks and keep a lookout for snakes. Lots of snakes on the island was his comment. 'Sometimes you can see them sunning on the beach.'

I had been warned about the mosquitoes, March flies, and sand flies but nobody had told me about snakes, until now.

After parking the car we went and bought the ferry tickets. $21 to get over and back. Again we got asked what we would be doing on the island. There seems to be a common theme here.

After a short wait Marcus arrived and he too went and paid for parking and then bought his ferry ticket.

The ferry left right on time and we were stepping off at Tankerton Jetty 15 minutes later. Already the day had started to warm up and sitting in the ferry was not all that pleasant as it has lots of glass and no air-conditioning.

We loaded our packs on and headed off toward the east. After about 800 m there is a junction with the coast road and we turn left and head north. The trip to the camp proceeded as planned and we stopped three or four times in the shade to refresh with water and re-apply sunscreen.

Once at the camping ground we set about finding a suitable place for the antennas and out tents. There were four main options available as some other tents had already been erected.

One area to the south was quite small, covered and shaded, one area to the far north was exposed with no tree cover and two areas, side by side, in the middle. One was exposed with some stumps and the neighbouring area was lightly treed with some shade. This looked ideal for use as it gave room to set the squid pole as a loop or ground plane and gave Marcus a tree or two to set the 30m and 17m dipoles.

I started setting up the 20m quad loop and Marcus picked a suitable tree and started throwing my hammer up to try and get a rope over. After 4 or 5 attempts, a couple that got a little stuck, I gave it a try and got the hammer very stuck. After pulling the rope in a variety of directions it dawned on me that we could try using the squid pole to push the hammer out of its position. To Adam's and the other campers amusement, I managed to get the hammer free and drop it down along with the rope ready for Marcus to hoist his dipoles in the air.

I put the squid pole back on the stump and got the 20m quad loop ready for action. I made a contact into VK6 after just a couple of calls and this satisfied the award requirements. I then called CQ using VK3SAT and worked one other station on 20m.

Marcus had got his antennas up and started setting up his FT-817 when he realised he had left the microphone at home. So we now had only 1 radio.

So we were down two radios and the 40/80 dipole, had antennas in the air for 30m and 17m but no radio to work them, no SWR meter to help build an 80m antenna and only 3 instead of 5 batteries. Not the ideal start. However, on the positive side we did have 20m and 40m and the FT-7 was unlikely to flatten all 3 batteries in a weekend.

I re-jigged the squid pole to be a 7 MHz 1/4 wave ground plane and we set about making some contacts on the 40m band. This proved to be the most productive band with 20 of our 22 contacts being made on 40m.

I worked 40m and we moved around a little trying to keep out of the sun as best we could. Adam rigged my tent fly as a shelter and this blocked the sun for the few hours that we were exposed.

None of our published skeds on 20m, 40m or 80m gave us contacts. There may have been stations waiting on 17m or 30m but without a radio to work them we weren't there.

We made contact twice with VI2AJ2010 on 40m before dark.

In an attempt to keep our Saturday 80m sked I added some base load to the 1/4 wave 7 MHz antenna and gave it a try on 80m Without an SWR meter it was just an educated guess. We got one contact really quickly on 80m but that was it. Nobody else seemed to be able to hear us over their own noise. After calling and getting nowhere on 80m, and just after it got dark, we headed off to bed.

Sleeping was uncomfortable as I had not taken a sleeping mat or pillow.

In the morning 80m was a lot quieter but still no answers to our calls. Again 40m proved to be a very useful band and we made 8 contacts on 40m for the morning.

Just after 11:00 am we packed up and headed back to the ferry.

We got to the jetty 5 minutes before the ferry was due and it was 10 minutes late anyway. 20 minutes later we were back on the mainland having achieved everything I set out to do, and more.

However we had seen very few mosquitoes or flies and no snakes or koalas.

We are all planning to come back sometime and see some more of the island, maybe on bicycles next time, and without the extra weight.

73

French Island, The Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award and a hike in the sun.

2010-01-07T21:59:00.004+11:00

This Saturday I am heading off on the ferry for the weekend to hike French Island along with 3 other members of the SRESU.

The purpose of the trip is, using VK3SAT, to activate the National Park for the Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award, make a scout camp to scout camp contact with VI2AJ2010 and enjoy a good hike in an area none of use have been before.

We are hoping to keep the following skeds;

Saturday9January2010
Band	Frequency	Local	UTC
17m	18.130	1500	0400
20m	14.280	1530	0430
30m	10.120	1600	0500
40m	7.080	1800	0700
80m	3.680	2100	1000
Sunday10January2010
Band	Frequency	Local	UTC
80m	3.680	0800	2100
40m	7.080	0900	2200
30m	10.120	1000	2300
20m	14.280	1100	0000
17m	18.130	1200	0100

I will be taking along my FT-7, a full wave quad loop for 20m, and a 1/4 wave ground plane for 40m. Others on the trip will be taking antennas for 17, 20, 30, 40 and 80m along with two other radios so we will have the lower HF bands well covered.

From the island we also have access to a few repeaters with IRLP so we may even use the Jamboree IRLP node.

The weather forecast for nearby towns predicts 27 and 28 degrees for both days so it will be warm but not ridiculously hot. I have been warned that the mosquitoes and flies on the island can be very annoying so I am packing tropical strength insect repellent to try and remain bite free.

I haven't packed yet but I can do that tomorrow night and anything I am missing I can pick up on the way.

73

VI2AJ2010 - Special event station

2010-01-05T22:15:00.003+11:00

The 22nd Australian Jamboree is running at the moment and, as with many Jamborees, an amateur radio station has been set up.

Using the rather long call sign of VI2AJ2010 they were on air yesterday and today. I have been fortunate enough to work the station on 20, 40 and 80m from home.

I have also emailed them with the sked times for this weekend's trip to French Island. It would be good to have a Scout hike party in QSO with a Scout Jamboree station.

Details of the VI2AJ2010 station can be found at qrz.com

73

80m ground plane and a squid pole - not so good

2010-01-05T21:53:00.002+11:00

After trying unsuccessfully to make contacts on 80m on Friday and Saturday night I posted an email to the SRESU member list seeking a QSO on Sunday night.

Right on time VK3AJ and VK3FUNK were on air and I was able to test out the ground plane and a low dipole I had also erected in the park. Also on air was Richard VK2XRC who was portable about 350 km east of me using a vertical antenna as well.

The comparison testing between my 80 m ground plane and a 1/2 wave dipole at about 5 metres above ground revealed some shortcomings with the ground plane.

Of the two stations that could hear me both reported a significant increase in signal strength when I was on the dipole. VK2XRC reported me as S9 + 10dB on the ground plane and S9 + 20dB on the low dipole. Pete VK3AJ reported similar difference between the two. Greg VK3FUNK couldn't hear me at all.

As a result of these tests I have decided to leave the 80 m ground plane at home and take only 40 m and 20 m antennas to French Island this weekend.

Two others on the French Island trip are also bringing antennas and radios with them so we will be able to work 17, 20, 30, 40 & 80 m at one time or an other.

I have an alternative design for an 80m antenna from UA6HJQ. Although the website is in Russian, Google's translation does a reasonable job of making it readable. There are also pictures on the site and, in this case, a picture really is worth 1000 words.

I doubt I will have time to try this design before the French Island trip but it does give me some more options for elsewhere.

73

40m & 80m ground planes and a squid pole

2010-01-01T21:56:00.003+11:00

In preparation for our upcoming French Island trip, today I went to a park and made a 7 MHz 1/4 wave ground plane antenna supported by my 9 m squid pole.

The antenna is quite simply, a single vertical radiator with 4 radials laying in the ground. The vertical radiator is held up by the squid pole. I made a thumb knot in the top of the wire and slipped onto the top section of the pole.

The vertical radiator is 8.4m long and each radial is 10.5m long. I set these lengths up and checked the SWR and it was below 1.5:1 so I was happy with that. I gave a few CQ calls and Justin, VK2HAK, came back to me. We chatted for about 10 minutes and then Steve, VK7FSRC called up as well. Both stations were 5 X 9 copy although I was only 5 X 1 into Justin's QTH and 5 X 7 to Hobart.

I know that the vertical radiator should be longer, say 10.5 m, but I can't hold a wire that long on the squid pole, so 8.4 m will have to do for now. I could add a loading coil somewhere along the wire, perhaps in the middle or at the base and see if I can make the SWR better, but for now I will leave it as is.

Next task was to make a 3.5 MHz ground plane using the same radiator. I extended the radials to a total length of 21.5 m and added a series coil at the base of the radiator. I started out with 12 turns on a 40 mm former but that was no good. I then added another 12 turns but it only seemed to get worse.

I then went for 12 turns on a 60 mm former but still no success. I extended this to 40 turns by adding another piece of wire and winding 28 more turns. This just made things worse.

I then wondered what would happen if I was to connect the 12 turns between the coax centre and the coax outer, along with the ground plane, and then connect the 28 turns to the radiator. This, finally, gave me and SWR of 3:1 on 3.600 MHz and 1.1:1 on 3.795 MHz. This was a good sign but since I wanted the lower portion of the band I needed to add some more turns. I jumped to 40 turns on the radiator and worked my way back from there.

With 12 turns on the bottom and 32 turns on the radiator I got SWR of 1.1:1 on 3.600 MHz and 1.25:1 on 3.700 MHz. This covers the part of the band I am interested in so I stopped at that.

I called CQ but, as it was mid afternoon, I got no response. I tried again later in the evening but an incoming electrical storm meant the 80 m band was just S9 + 20 dB of noise, crashes and static.

I will try 80 m again in the morning if the weather has improved.

73

20m quad loop and a squid pole

2009-12-31T13:21:00.004+11:00

In preparation for our upcoming French Island trip, today I went to a park and challenged myself to erect a full wave quad loop using only a 9m squid pole, some ropes and 7 tent pegs.

My quad loop for this exercise is made from a 22 m length of insulated 13 x 0.12 mm sq wire. This different from the quad loop I have used before. My previous loop is made from twin flex and significantly heavier.

First up I needed to get the squid pole to stay upright so I set 4 guy ropes and used a figure 8 knot to secure the guys at the bottom of the second lowest section. I had to adjust the size of the loops to ensure it was a tight fit on the second section and wouldn't move down to the first section. The guy ropes were taken down to tent pegs and secured with a rolling hitch. I also tied the bottom of the pole to a tent peg to stop the base moving out if the wind picked up. Before I stood the pole up I pulled the top section out of the pole as it can't be reached once the pole is upright.

After securing the pole I placed the centre of the loop over the top section. Like the guy ropes this has a loop in it that keeps the wire at the bottom of the top section. I used two cable ties to secure the loop. Once extended the top of the loop will be about 7.9 m above the ground.

I then extended the pole until I had 5.5 m of wire on each leg in the air and then made loops in each leg, again with a cable tie, to attach ropes to pull the sides out with. I attached the ropes and then fully extended the pole.

By this stage the wind had picked up a little and the pole was being blown around a bit.

I ran the two side ropes out and pegged them to the ground so the bottom of the loop was about 10 cm off the ground.

I attached a coax, set up my FT-7 on battery power and checked the SWR. The SWR was 2.3:1 on 14.200 MHz and a little better on 14.010 MHz and a little worse on 14.300 MHz. This suggested to me that the loop was too long.

Rather than get the cutters out and start trimming I thought I would try adding a parallel line section at the feed point. So with some PVC tape I taped about 500 mm of wire into two parallel wires about 10 mm apart. The SWR was reduced to about 1.8 :1 so I taped up some more. Again the SWR came down. After taping up 1.1 m of wire the SWR at 14.200 MHz was 1.3:1. This I could live with so I left the antenna at that.

I tuned around and heard a couple of QSOs. I found a clear frequency and called CQ. After 5 or 6 calls VK2BNG came back to me. He gave me a 58 report although there was a bit of QSB on our signals. I chatted with Binu for a good 15 minutes and everything performed well.

After signing with VK2BNG I made a few more calls but got no response.

At least I know it works. The loop is now uneven as the lower sides are only 4.9 metres long and the top sides are 5.5m. If the weather is cool over this weekend I might go and set up again and adjust this to see what difference it makes, if any.

73

MKARS80 Update # 5

2009-12-30T22:27:00.004+11:00

Today was the day I made a big mistake. I'm sure I will work a way around it but for 30 seconds of care it could have saved hours of extra work.

Today I decided to keep pressing ahead with the kit as I was now so close to being able to get the radio on air.

After learning that Q1 really needs a heatsink for extended transmit I set about putting my MKARS80 into the supplied box.

I downloaded the front panel drilling template from the website and printed it out, making sure to select no scaling in my printer set up.

I measured the template and it was exactly the required size.

With some care I lined the template up on the front panel and taped it into place with masking tape. I then, with significantly less care, stuck the side template on the box. I then drilled all the holes. First with a 1 mm pilot drill and then a 3 mm drill.

I then marked with a Stanley knife the areas where the holes needed to be elongated and also the LCD cut out. I was so pleased with how it was going I even took a picture showing how I was using the knife and a steel ruler to mark where the LCD cut out was. If you look carefully at this photo you can see where I made my mistake.

The template says to line up two parallel lines on the side template with the mounting holes on the front. I'm not sure if my eyes were playing tricks or I was just careless but, as the photo clearly shows, the lines are out by about 3.5 mm.

As a result of this error the holes on the side panel were out by about 3.5 mm. This meant that once I had drilled all the holes and elongated them as required the board wouldn't fit. The only answer for this was to enlarge the holes some more, and then some more after that. The hole for the Q1 heatsink didn't need to be enlarged as I just tilted the FET over until it was in the right position.

The final result looks really bad and it detracts from all the good work I had done on the inside assembly.

You can see in another photo how I cut out the LCD hole. I drilled 4 holes along each long edge then cut along with a metal saw. A few more holes along the short sides and the bulk of the metal was gone. I tidied the opening up with a flat file and, unlike the side panel, it come up looking good.

After I got the board to fit I finished the assembly and tried the radio out on air. I measured the output power at 4 Watts PEP and the current drain is 1.13 Amps. The output seems low as I was expecting at least 6 Watts. I will need to look into this further.

I gave a few CQ calls on a couple of frequencies but I got no response. It was about 2 pm and 80 m is normally very quiet at that time of the day.

Later in the evening I gave the radio another try and heard three radio nets in progress and all were good signals coming in to me.

I found a quiet frequency and called CQ a few times and, low and behold, VK3ZZ, Ross, answered my call. His opening comment to me was, "I hope you can hear me alright, I am running home brew at about 10 Watts." I said the copy was fine and that I too was running home brew but only 2 Watts. I don't know what happened to the 4 Watts I had earlier but now it was peaking at only 2 Watts. We had a long chat about his radio and mine and then he went inside to put the kids to bed and I came inside to escape the heat.

Tomorrow I will look more into the low output power and try a few different microphones. I will also put a tone generator into the microphone input and see what output that gives me.

If I can't get any success with that I may need to rewind T2 as this was the transformer I was not happy with when I made it and it is in the output transmitter chain.

If I can't get satisfaction on my own I can always send an email to the MKARS80 Yahoo support group.

73

MKARS80 Update # 4

2009-12-30T09:47:00.003+11:00

Well, it's all getting a lot closer to working.

After my last update I went off to Altronics to look in the specials bin at some back lit LCD. Unfortunately the displays on offer were not back lit. I have continued on with the supplied display and I will order one with a back light next time I am getting parts from Futurlec.

My next bag of bits was bag 5, Bag 5 has such goodies as the potentiometers, Polyvaricon capacitor and the sockets.

I fitted all these without any trouble. I'm going to use a SO239 socket when I finish but for now I have fitted the BNC socket. It should be the only component that I have to de-solder and I hope I can do this easily thanks to the over sized pads and holes that it mounts in.

I have also added two power leads to the board where the internal battery connects. I'm not planning to use an internal battery, or the proved coaxial DC socket, but have a short fly lead with a mini T plug. This is the same arrangement I have on all my other radios so, along with the SO239 socket, the MKARS80 will not require any special leads or coax.

Having fitted these last few parts it left only the PIC chip and the LCD to be fitted. In the manual Steve recommends powering up and checking the +5 and +8 Volt supplies before inserting the PIC chip and display. This is good advice and I followed it accordingly.

Power on - no smoke and some noise from the speaker. This is a good start. The +5 and +8 Volt power supplies are OK. Time to add an antenna and have a listen around.

A quick tune through the band found a signal sounding like RTTY coming in quite strong. I was very pleased that at least the receiver was working.

Power off and add the PIC chip and display.

There is no challenge to the PIC, just place it carefully in the socket, checking of course that the socket, and chip are the right way around. It would have been a shame to get this far and blow up the only component I can't just go down the road and buy.

The LCD confused me as I couldn't quite make out the instruction about mounting the top left corner. I read through it a number of times and looked at the PCB as well. I didn't look at the LCD. Once I started looking at the LCD and the PCB and where the connections needed to be made, it all made sense.

After arranging the screw and pushing in the first three wires from the left I found it very difficult to get the fourth wire in. I didn't have the holes and the connector underneath aligned exactly. I loosened the screw and moved the LCD so I could get the most right wire in. Having done this the remaining wires were easy to insert. I soldered the wires to the LCD and then removed the LCD before trimming the wires. I just wanted to be sure all the wires were the same length into the socket and that I hadn't missed one. All was good so I trimmed the wires to suit.

In the manual Steve also suggests placing a cardboard or plastic insulator between the LCD and the main PCB to prevent any unintended connections. Five minutes of handiwork with a pair of scissors and a Stanley knife and such an insulator was made. I wrote my call sign and the date on the cardboard so that later I, or others, will know when I built the radio.

I reassembled the LCD and prepared for switch on. The LCD fired up all black, as expected, and a quick adjustment of R29 saw the characters appear. So far so good.

I did the frequency alignment as described using C38 and got full coverage of the 80m band. Using a frequency counter I adjusted C83 for as close to 10.000 MHz as I could get. I'm not confident it is 100% correct but I can adjust it later after on air tests or using my DDS reference oscillator. For now 9.99970 MHZ is close enough.

I set the band pass capacitors C54, C68 and C79 to look just like the picture in the manual. I'm sure the pass band is fairly wide and these settings are not critical. Again I can always come back to them later.

I connected a power meter and dummy load to the BNC output and using a mono 3.5mm plug in the microphone socket got the radio in to transmit mode. I later read further down the manual and saw a warning about transmitting for longer than a few seconds without a heatsink on the IFR510 MOSFET (Q1).

Having the radio now in transmit, and with an ammeter in line with the power, I noted the initial transmit current as 0.26 Amps. I carefully adjusted R2 to increase the bias in the final amplifier until the overall current rose to 0.31 Amps. As mentioned in the warning about long transmissions, the bias current rose as Q1 got warmer.

I then tuned my FT757 GX, with a 30 cm length of wire for an antenna, on to the same frequency as the MKARS80 output and adjusted R59 and C103 for minimum S meter indication. At first I had S7 showing and I was able to reduce this to S1. I then draped the 30 cm length of wire I was using as an antenna on the FT757 GX over Q1 and the S meter came back to S7. Further adjustment got the carrier level down to S2. I have an RF probe somewhere that I built when testing my BITX 20 so I can check this again later.

At this point I was happy everything was working as it should and, since it was now almost midnight and I had to be up at 6:00 am I finished for the night.

73

MKARS80 Update # 3

2009-12-29T09:01:00.003+11:00

I got a pleasing note from Steve G6ALU after update # 2 saying it looked like I was doing fine and that I should take my time. I have slowed a little but not because I am troubled by construction, or on Steve's advice, but because my son, VK3FASH, had his birthday a couple of days ago.

Since my last update I have completed bags 3 & 4. Bag 3 had 51 X 100 nF capacitors along with many inductors and transformers to be wound. Mounting the capacitors was easy enough although I did have one left over. I can't see any empty holes so it must be a bonus.

Transformers T4, T5 and T6 use 38 SWG enamelled copper wire inside a small binocular core. For those not familiar with SWG sizes, 38 SWG is 0.152 mm (0.002 ") in diameter.

Winding wire so thin needs a fair amount of concentration and steady hands. I found it a great help to hold the binocular core in a clothes peg while winding and tinning the leads.

I was quite pleased with the results of all my transformers and inductors with the exception of T2. T2 uses 22 SWG wire (0.711 mm) which I found difficult to fit all the windings into the core and the last two turns look very untidy. I doubt it will affect the performance and the board would look messier if I now try and remove the transformer just to rewind it.

Steve suggests in the manual to secure the small transformers to the board with silicon after testing but I have used double sided tape to hold them in place.

Bag 3 also contains the electrolytic capacitors and these, being polarised components, must be fitted the correct way around. I have always wondered why the capacitors are marked showing the negative lead, rather than the positive lead? Nearly all circuit diagrams and marked boards highlight the positive terminal. Just one of those strange things I guess.

As I had done with the ceramic capacitors, I sorted the electrolytic capacitors into foam to make selection easier.

Bag 4 has the transistors, voltage regulators (that look like transistors), trim pots and crystals in it. I sorted the transistors and regulators into groups, but not into foam, to make the job easier. Looking at the part numbers on the BC547 has proved to me that my eyesight is not what it used to be and maybe it is time for some glasses.

Bag 4 had no real challenges, except getting the right part in the right place. The PCB screen layout sure makes this task easy. Q5, ZTX651, is a strange looking device in as much as the front and back of the device are parallel and the only difference is a small chamfer on each side. Particular care was required with this part.

I took the fuse from bag 5 and fitted it to the fuse holders to assist in soldering it in. Without the fuse I found the holders too hard to keep in place.

While I was in bag 5, I unwrapped the LCD and found that it has no backlight. Since a lot of my portable activity is at night, and that is when 80m really comes alive, I will look to substituting a different display with a backlight. I saw some displays in the specials bin at Altronics before Christmas so I will pop in there today and see if they are suitable.

73

MKARS80 Update # 2

2009-12-27T07:55:00.004+11:00

I wasn't planning to do any work on my MKARS80 last night but there was a lot of activity going on nearby so I made the most of the time while waiting for things to calm outside.

Firstly I finished the resistors, diodes and some capacitors in bag 1. There is a note in the manual to be careful not to confuse 4k7 and 47k resistors so I measured each strip of resistors to be sure I was putting the right part in the correct hole.

After finishing bag 1 I moved on to bag 2. Bag 2 is mostly small ceramic capacitors, 33 in fact. With the resistors I was happy to hunt around and find the ones I needed as the same value resistors were joined together making it easier to get the right ones. If the section of the manual needed 5 resistor of the same value I checked the groups of five to get the ones I needed. Pretty easy stuff.

Once I had emptied bag 2 on the bench it was obvious that the same method was not going to work with the capacitors. Apart from the fact they were all separate, the printing on the capacitors is so small that my tired eyes have trouble reading it without a magnifying glass. To make it easy on myself I sorted the capacitors into their values and placed them into a piece of foam. This was just ordinary Styrofoam, not the anti-static product, so I would only use it for passive components. I wrote the values of the capacitors on the foam as well.

By pre-sorting the capacitors it did speed the assembly process a little as I only needed to read the values once!

After finishing bag 2 I made a start on bag 3 and soldered in two Zener diodes. The next components on the list are 51 X 100 nF ceramic capacitors. As it was almost midnight I decided this was a good time for a break.

Looking ahead I see bag 3 also contains the inductors and transformers that need to be carefully wound and the leads prepared before soldering. It may take more than one session to complete bag 3. Perhaps the capacitors one night and the inductors the next night.

73

MKARS80 Update # 1

2009-12-25T21:28:00.005+11:00

It's Christmas Day toady and I have a new radio kit to play with.

Steve G6ALU was kind enough to post my MKARS80 kit to arrive in time for Christmas so today, during some quiet time after lunch, I set about making a start.

This kit will be different to my BITX 20 kit as this one has all the parts supplied, including an aluminium box.

The parts are packed in small plastic bags and each bag has its own section in the manual. I made a start with bag 1 and placed about 65 resistors. I am not rushing this one as the board is extremely well made with screen printing, solder mask and through hole plating. And there is a good reason to be sure the right part is in the right place. Getting parts out of through hole plating can be a real challenge.

Hopefully I will get all the parts right and not have to remove any.

As I did with my BITX 20 I will post my progress here on my blog so others can follow along. I'm hoping to have the MKARS80 finished by Easter so I can take it away with me and give it a good try out in the field.

P.S. I also cleared a spot on the bench. Not a really big spot, but is better than it was.

73

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award - update # 8

2009-12-22T22:40:00.003+11:00

Well, it is almost Christmas here and I have been very busy and not able to blog. We were also without Internet for a few days which didn't help.

I have added another National Park to my list having worked from the Kinglake National Park about a week ago.

The Kinglake area, including the National Park, was devastated by the Black Saturday fires back on February 7th 2009. About the only part of the National Park not damaged was the Frank Thomson Reserve. It was from here that I worked 20m using a 1/2 wave inverted Vee strung in the trees.

The local Yarra Valley Amateur Radio Group will be setting up a field station VI3KIAH at the reserve on February 7, 2010 to commemorate the worst fires and loss of life in this state's history.

I have almost finalised my plans for hiking into the French Island National Park on 9 and 10 January 2010 along with 3 other members of the SRESU. We will be on air using VK3SAT and working HF bands 20m and below.

In preparation for running QRP I have been using my FT7 from home on a sealed lead acid battery, just like I will on the island. So far I have QSO on 20m with VK4, VK2, VK6 and the Norwegian special event station LM9K75Y where I was the 20,000th QSO. Not a bad effort for 10 watts into an inverted Vee.

73

BITX20 Update # 30

2009-12-10T23:26:00.003+11:00

After the success with my BITX20 I decided I would update the circuit diagram with my modifications.

I have marked my changes in red on this diagram.

I have also shown the interconnection between my BITX20 and the PA3CNO/PI4RAZ Huff & Puff display board.

I hope this assists others.

Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award - update # 7

2009-12-06T21:11:00.002+11:00

After making no contacts last Sunday in the Yarra Ranges National Park, this week I decided to try a different location and use the bigger rig.

I chose the Fernshaw Picnic Ground, about 70 km from Melbourne to set up a 20m half wave inverted Vee in the trees above the car park.

I got the lead rope in the tree with my first throw thanks to my new 16 oz throw bag and glove. It is much easier to wear a glove than worry about rope burn.

I was using the FT757 and called CQ for about 15 minutes with no reply. I then tuned around and heard R1ANC calling CQ from Antarctica.

We exchanged signal reports and equipment types and then signed so R1ANC could chase some more DX.

I can now update my National Park map again.

MKARS80 - my next QRP project

2009-12-06T15:23:00.002+11:00

With my BITX20 nearly finished I have decided the next project will be the MKARS80. The MKARS80 is of similar bi-directional design as the BITX20 but on 80m and has been developed by the Milton Keynes Amateur Radio Society. A kit version is available from radio-kits.co.uk and I placed my order this morning.

I'm hoping to get the kit before Christmas so I can get a good start on it during the holidays.

Unlike my BITX20 where I chose to source the parts myself, this kit comes with it all. Right down to the knobs and rubber feet.

2E0VPX has already built an MKARS80 and has a great write up on his website.

BITX20 Update #29

2009-12-05T19:51:00.007+11:00

It works!

Finally, after over 12 months off and on, I can now say that I have achieved something. I made my first QSO on my BITX20 to a local ham, Graeme VK3GL.

I finally got the Huff & Puff problem resolved. It turned out the the problem was not with the DC power supply but actually within the Huff & Puff circuit. One of the relays on the linear amplifier board was causing the oscillator on the Huff & Puff to shift each time the relay was energised. Because the oscillator changed the resolved frequency changed and the Huff & Puff would try to correct it.

The VFO had not actually moved but the correction voltage forced the VFO to shift beyond the range of the Huff & Puff circuit and therefore the Huff & Puff would unlock. All this happened in less than a second.

So I moved the Huff & Puff circuit board about 20 mm and the problem was solved. Prior to moving the board I had done the following:

Added a relay to remove the audio feedback at PTT
Change the VFO regulator from Zener to 78L05 + resistors regulator
Added a DC choke to the +12 Volt supply
Changed the DC supply electrolytic capacitors to tantalum capacitors
Moved the DC power for the Huff & Puff from the amplifier board to the BITX20 Board
Changed the PTT ground return path for the relays from the BITX20 board to the linear amplifier board.

All of which did nothing to help the unlocking problem.

After getting the Huff & Puff to work properly I tuned up 14.185 MHz and started calling CQ. After 3 calls Graeme, VK3GL, answered my call.

Graeme and I chatted for about 15 minutes and the BITX20 stayed on frequency and showed no problems at all. Graeme tells me that there has been some good DX on 20m in recent nights so I will have to have a tune around tonight and see who else I can work.

My next challenge is to add the AGC/S meter modification and perhaps the SWR/Power meter as well.

I also need to finalise a case for the radio as the current case is just slightly too small and upside down.

Not a very sucessful weekend!

2009-11-30T06:07:00.003+11:00

Over the weekend I pulled out my BITX20 and started looking back over its existing problems.

These include the annoying screech when the PTT on the speaker/microphone is pressed and the unlocking of the PA3CNO huff and puff every time PTT is pressed.

For the screech problem I tried adding a FET to switch in and out the microphone and the receive audio amplifier but this didn't work. I tried adding a diode/resistor combination to bias the receive audio amp off when the TX12 was present but that didn't work either.

Everything I tried seemed to make no difference as the screech is happening between when the PTT is pressed and when the RX12 turns off. The RX12 and TX12 are switched by a relay on the linear amplifier board and both are filtered by electrolytic capacitors.

In desperation I added a DPDT relay activated by the microphone PTT button and used one half to disconnect the speaker from the receive amplifier as soon as the PTT is pressed. The second half is used to then switch the RX12 TX12 relay on the linear board.

By doing this the speaker is disconnected before the TX12 comes on and the problem has now gone away. I now have a small click when the PTT is released but I can live with that.

The unlocking of the huff and puff was not helped my the relay modification. I added some 100 or 220 uF electrolytic capacitors around the power supply but these made little difference.

My next step was to add a 78L08 voltage regulator in place of the Zener regulator. I can't buy 78L08 regulators readily in Australia so I used a 78L05 with a voltage divider network to boast the output to 9 volts.

Unfortunately I soldered the regulator in backwards and it didn't regulate at all. While trying to correct this I had mistakenly left the radio powered and the 78L05 was destroyed. A pop, a red glow and some smoke. This is the first smoke from the BITX20. I don't have any more 78L05 so it will have to wait.

Last night I went out and drove up to the Yarra Ranges National Park to try and add another park to my Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award effort with my FT7 and 7Ah battery. I strung a 20m half wave dipole in the trees and called for about 20 minutes with no success. As I was short of time I had to pack up and head back without the much needed QSO.

Next time I will allow more time and try to get a better position. Perhaps the lookout tower at Mt Donna Buang.

DXpedition ? to French Island

2009-11-20T21:52:00.003+11:00

Keen to continue, or maybe complete, The Keith Roget Memorial National Parks Award managed by ARV for operating to and from National Parks in Victoria I'm planning an overnight radio trip to French Island on 9 - 10 January 2010.

The aims of the trip are simple:

· Make at least one 20m contact from the French Island National Park.

· Make contact with the Jamboree station, VI2AJ2010, from the French Island National Park.

· Enjoy a hike on French Island carrying in all that is required to achieve the above two aims.

Access to French Island is via a passenger ferry from Stony Point and the walk to the camping ground is about 7km.

I'll be taking a 7m mast, 80/40/20m trapped dipole, FT7 and three 7.5 Ah SLA batteries that should give at least 8 hours of good operating.

Although the island has a general store the facilities at the camping ground are limited to toilets and, if there has been recent rain, water.

I've invited members of the SRESU along for the trip. So far I have one coming along.

VK Shires Contest - results

2009-11-14T07:51:00.005+11:00

Back in June I took part in the first ever VK shires contest. The contest encouraged contacts within Australia where multipliers were based on how many different municipal areas you contact.

I worked the contest from home and manged 10th place in the single op category, or 24th place overall, with a score of 6840. The contest was won by VK7ZE with a score of 115432. There is a big gap between first and second place, VK4VCH 46110.

As this contest becomes more popular I suspect that the margin between places will get smaller. Next year's contest is on the 12 & 13 June 2010, the same weekend as the Victorian Queen's Birthday Holiday on Monday 14 June. This means I get the day off work on Monday so the possibility of going away and setting a station in two or three less shires is much higher.

I've been thinking about a piece of bush about 50km from here that spans three shires. Perhaps I spend 6 hours in each shire with the remaining time for setup and pack up?

Last weekend it took about an hour to fully erect my trapped 80/40/20m dipole and about the same time to carefully pack it away. I'm thinking of changing the design to speed this process up. At present the traps and wires all get disconnected and packed individually. If I were to keep them all connected and just roll it up it would be quicker. Perhaps a project for my quiet time over Christmas.

I need to do a bit of a reconnaissance beforehand to find three suitable sites.

Scouthike 2009 - Update

2009-11-08T20:40:00.007+11:00

Well another Scouthike has been and gone. This one was different from so many others of late. This year it didn't rain. Not a single drop. Not even a hint of moisture from above.

Of course, this meant our VHF radio net worked very well and we all had dry canvas when we got home.

It also meant that the amount of work to be done around the camp was reduced as there were no cold and wet scouts with leaking tents and wet sleeping bags. Everyone on our sleep point had a really good time.

We were at the same site back in 2000 and that year it rained so much the road in was impassable and the entire campsite was under 6 inches of mud. After about 2 hours there we gave up trying to keep the mud out of the tents.

No such problems this year.

I put up my usual 20m, 40m and 80m trapped dipole as well as 2m and UHF CB antennas.

I purchased a 16 ounce throw bag from an arborist's supply store on Thursday and I was keen to try this out. My first couple of throws were not quite high enough but I managed to get the dipole flat, rather than inverted vee at a height of about 12 metres.

When checking the SWR on 80m I found it was about 3:1 at the bottom of the band and even worse at the top. This always means the antenna is too long so I pulled about 1 metre of wire through the insulator and twisted it back in itself. Now the SWR was 1.2:1.

I'm think the SWR problem was caused by me having the antenna flat rather than my usual inverted vee configuration.

Once on air I made a few QSO on 20m. Estonia, Russia, India, Dubai and Townsville. I didn't have any luck on 40m with DX and 80m was used just for a quick chat with the other stations at the event.

I also strung up a dipole on 17m, a band I have not used before. I tuned around here and found ZL1TBA who was quite happy to chat and share his experiences with 18 MHz. Most interesting.

I called and listened around on 17m later in the day but nothing else was worked. A very quiet band indeed.

I had hoped to work the Easter Island DXpedition XR0Y during the weekend but I didn't hear them at all. I was able to work the P29NI DXpedition from Papua New Guinea.

We also took along an old AWA25M VHF commercial radio that has been modified for 2m. We used this radio for the overnight shifts as it has very low standby current however the receiver is very deaf and needs repair.

I took some photos of wires in the air but it is really hard to make anything out so I'll save the bandwidth and not uploaded them.