Posts Tagged “amateur”

APRS working and update!

Jun 18 , 2016
I have finally figured out all the bits for running APRS for tracking to and from my activations, worked well for my last activation of Webb's Ridge. That's a bit of a slower drive up via Blue Range Rd out in the brindies, good fun if a bit chilly towards the end! (read more...)

Mt Pinnibar SOTA activation

Apr 26 , 2016
I'd decided to try and drive the triton up Mt Pinnibar while camping with the family at Geehi, 33km past Thredbo on the Apline Way. Geehi's a lovely spot, and I recommend it for camping! (read more...)

Tyrell's Ridge VK2/SM-096 SOTA Activation

Apr 25 , 2015
I'd planned a camping trip a few months ago with some friends at Geehi in the snowy mountains, a 45 minute drive, about 35kms past Thredbo on the Apline Way. So, thinking about it a bit more, I decided to see if there are any close by SOTA peaks, lo and behold, there are two, Mt Youngall a 10 pointer, and Tyrell's Ridge, 4 points and not previously activated! (read more...)

Mt Ginini

Mar 9 , 2015
A public holiday Monday with lovely weather, and some restless kids, so I took them up the hills to let Mum have a bit of a rest. (read more...)

Mt Stromlo and 1000 QSOs

Feb 15 , 2015
Another SOTA activation for me, having come out of a flu and some other health issues, thought I'd try for an easy one! Mt Stromlo is an easy walk from the carpark up to the summit, then on to the northern hump, so I took a chair this time too! (read more...)

WIA Spring VHF-UHF Field Day

Nov 27 , 2014
After complaining about trying to hold a yagi, the microphone and write down contact details at the same time on SOTA summits, and receiving much advice, I set out to convert my 70cm beam to work on a squid pole! Relatively simple, drill holes for the u-bolt, and put on a coax socket so I can have an extended run of coax up the pole from the radio. And then the use of some PVC pipe so the squidpole doesn't get smooshed! (read more...)

SOTA activation of Tuggeranong Hill

Nov 3 , 2014
Finally had a morning where I could get out and climb a hill! Decided to try Mt Tuggeranong VK1/AC-038, an easy walk and not too far a drive. Parked at the substation on Callister St in Theodore, as most people have in the past! (read more...)

SOTA activation of Mt Barrow

Oct 24 , 2014
While I was in Tassie, I had an opportunity to get a second activation done around Launceston. I asked my Dad which would be the easiest of the 10 pointers around, and he said Mt Barrow, 45 minute drive, and easy walk to the summit :) (read more...)

VK7 Inaugural Activation

Oct 12 , 2014
I've just got back from 2 weeks in Tassie, mostly to visit my Grandmother, and to celebrate her 90th birthday, which we did in some style at Stillwater in Launceston!
Car parked, ready for the summit!
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SOTA Activation of Black Mountain

Sep 21 , 2014
Got out to another SOTA summit today, VK1/AC-042. Started off on 2m and got VK1MA, booming in strong as always, not much further luck on 2m, so attempted to get going on HF, but there were problems! (read more...)

SOTA Activation of Mt Stromlo

Sep 14 , 2014
Well, I got my second SOTA activation done yesterday on Mt Stromlo, VK1/AC-043. I wanted to test out my gear, and make sure everything works, before I head to Tasmania in a few weeks, hopefully arriving after the SOTA association for VK7 goes live! (read more...)

Ocf Dipole Up!

Sep 9 , 2014
I've managed to string up an 80m Off Centre Fed Dipole over the weekend, I managed a contact to Kentucky, USA, on 20m, and got a 59 report with my 100W and his gigantic yagi of doom! Also had a half dozen SOTA contacts on 40m and 20m over Sunday afternoon, so it's fair to say it works! I had taken some photos, but it's actually really hard to see it in them! It's just some wires running through the trees. Last night I spent some time with the local club's MFJ analyser (Thanks Gilbert!) and got an SWR graph of the antenna as installed:
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5w Dx!

Aug 28 , 2014
Woooo! Pretty excited, i had a day off yesterday, and in the afternoon thought I'd have a bit of a play with radios, and finally got a good DX SSB contact with my 5W OzQRP MST2. I managed to get to Europe, Coray France to be a bit more precise. It was with Frank, F5PAU, he's running 1KW into a yagi, a pretty impressive setup! (read more...)

Rd Contest And New Radio

Aug 17 , 2014
I had a bit of fun on Saturday with the wia's [Rememberance Day](http://www.wia.org.au/members/contests/rdcontest/) amateur radio contest. (read more...)

70cm Yagi

Aug 11 , 2014
Now that I know a bit more about antennas and why using a dipole in a yagi isn't so good, I decided to build a new one, following the WA5VJB's designs found on his [website](http://www.wa5vjb.com/yagi-pdf/cheapyagi.pdf). (read more...)

New Callsign

Aug 4 , 2014
After passing my Advanced exam a few weeks ago, I'm now known as VK1ATP! Hope to hear you over the air! (read more...)

Sota Activation

Jul 27 , 2014
Today was the VK1 (And most of the rest of VK!) [SOTA](http://sota.org.uk) party, and I did my first ever activation on Mt Ainslie, VK1/AC-040, and had a bit of fun! I learnt just how far down the hill the activation zone starts, 25m altitude is a bit further than I thought! Here's my chair at the summit pole, the end fed antenna is strung up in the trees to the left.
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Boxed And Ready To Go

Jul 18 , 2014
Well, the Beach40 is boxed up and ready to test! Just working out what else I need to check before putting it on the air! Hopefully I'll be set up at 04:00 UTC tomorrow (2014-07-08), listen out somewhere between 7.007 and 7.230 :)
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Weekend's Efforts

Jul 14 , 2014
Had a bit of a quiet weekend, didn't get a huge amount of radio stuff done, instead mostly housework, looking after the kids and on call work! However, I got my dummy load built:
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Beach40 Finished

Jul 8 , 2014
Well, the soldering is finished anyway! Still have to find a box, get all the connecting hardware, shield the oscillator, and build the L-Match circuit (and maybe the fine tuning circuit, and RF pre-amp).
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Beach40 Transmitting!

Jul 2 , 2014
Have got my Beach40's mic amplifier in, and tweaked the carrier suppression via the balance pot and cap. I'm managing a carrier suppression of 24 dB, which i don't think is too bad for a first time homebrew build, but I do need to get some non-capacitative flathead drivers, would make these things a bit easier!
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Lesson Learnt 001

Jun 24 , 2014
Well, I finally collected all the extra bits I needed, and had an hour or two to proceed further with my Beach40 build, and got my recieve audio amplifier circuit built:
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Vox Working

May 31 , 2014
Well, after a week or so of experimentation, I've got a VOX circuit that works with my [OzQRP MST2](http://ozqrp.com)! In addition to the below VOX circuit, I put in isolation transformers and 40dB attenuators for the MST2's speaker out to my sound card's microphone input, and similarly for the revrse: sound card speaker out to MST2 microphone in.
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Compiling Wsjtx On Debian X64

May 27 , 2014
dpkg -add-architecture i386 sudo apt-get install gcc g++ gfortran make libfftw3-dev \ libpulse-dev libhamlib-dev qtbase5-dev pulseaudio subversion \ libgfortran3:i386 libc6-i386 libqt5multimedia5-plugins \ qtmultimedia5-dev svn co svn://svn.berlios.de/wsjt/branches/wsjtx cd wsjtx mkdir build cd wsjtx cmake ../ make -j4 cp ../*.dat ../*.txt ./ cp -R ../Palettes ../samples ./ chmod +x contrib/kvasd ln -s lib/jt9 ./ ./wsjtx (read more...)

Dipole Up!

May 26 , 2014
My legs are now a bit stiff and sore from going up and down a ladder for a few hours yesterday afternoon. Made a homebrew dipole with some cut and drilled $2 shop polyethylene chopping board and some cheap coax and wire from Jaycar. I used coax wound around a little toroid as a common mode choke
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First Proper Hf Contact

May 20 , 2014
Today I'm at home watching the kids, and I decided to try some 20m contacts. After mucking about a bit with end fed half wave antennas, and not being happy with it, I decided to make the wire as per the instructions for the L-Match tuner I built (based on Peter, VK3YE's HF Portable youtube series), and 22m of wire appears to work much better than the 12m I did have. I made a contact with Ron, VK3AFW portable 4, as he was doing a SOTA activation on VK4/SE105, which is a distance of 1249.8 km from home and I got a report of 5 and 7, which I hope isn't too bad with my 5 watts output. Yay :) (read more...)

Beach40 Better Coverage!

May 12 , 2014
Well, after some help from the [Minimalist-QRP](https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Minimalist_QRP_Transceivers/info) yahoo group and members of the #technest irc channel, I've got my oscillator going a bit better! It now covers from 7.0041 MHz to 7.2405 MHz, a much more useful range of the 40m band! In the end I used two 7.2 MHz ceramic resonators in parallel, with the O leg of a jaycar varicap and a 1 µH inductor in series with that. (read more...)

Beach40 Start

May 1 , 2014
I've started building Peter Parker [VK3YE](http://vk3ye.com)'s 40m Dual Side Band transciever, completing the oscillator Manhattan Style:
I've built it with some 7.2MHz resonators from [MiniKits](http://minikits.com.au), and with the 60-160 pF variable cap I have, it gets me from 6.938MHz to 7.049MHz. Which is not terribly useful for the 20m band (7.0 -> 7.3 MHz). So I'll have to tweak things and work out how to get more swing from the oscillator. (read more...)

Mst2 20m Buildlog Day Something

Apr 30 , 2014
Well, after getting my MST2 in an enclosure and looking Ok:
I went to a friendly ham's workshop and started aligning it. The receive slug tuning and mixer balancing went perfectly well. When we got to doing the transmit tuning, things started to go a bit skee-whiff! The MST2 turned off. So we replaced the fuse, which promptly blew, and another! (read more...)

Mst2 20m Buildlog Day 2 And 3

Apr 20 , 2014
Well, yesterday we continued the odyssey, and got all the capacitors and transistors in, finishing off today with the transformers and chokes, pin headers and crystals, so we're all done for the easy bits!
I had a few oddities, the instructions specified 1.8pF NPO caps, but the kit came with 2pF caps in place. I have a left over 2 pin header (which I just realised should go on the VFO input!), and no 3 pin header for the DDS-VFO power, a bit odd, but easily worked around :) (read more...)

Mst2 20m Buildlog Day1

Apr 19 , 2014
In continuation of my radio building, I have started on my [OzQRP](http://ozqrp.com) MST2, 20m band SSB radio kit. Ordered on Wednesday, it arrived Thursday afternoon! It helps that I live quite close to where they're sent from! (read more...)