The VK2DJG blog

I’ve not done much with amateur radio these past few years. There have been plenty other interests to keep me occupied in what scarce free time I have. But, having recently divested myself of hosting and administering the VK-VHF mailing list I’ve decided that I should use that new acquired spare time to try and get my CW skills up to speed - so to speak.

It’s now 33 years since I passed my UK 12 wpm morse exam at Stonehaven Radio (and became GM4DSZ). Having been mostly interested in VHF when living in the UK, I really only used CW when aurora were around. … and I’ve not used CW much at all in the past few decades.

Now, being involved with the implementation of a new data network at work utilising a dual 10 gigabit/s backbone, there seems to be some sort of inverted perversity to getting my morse speed up to, say, 30 words per minute ( ~ 30 bits / second).

I’ve spent some time over the past few days just tuning around various HF bands just to reacquaint myself with band conditions.

… and its been pretty quiet overall.

Just ten minutes ago I was tuning around 80 m - I heard two VK SSB nets on the go and one CW station. Nothing else. Nada. Zilch.

But the CW station on 3509 khz (RST 529 at 1057 UTC) turned out to be W1FV calling CQ DX!!! That’s a fair haul from here (in QF59). Good old 80 m. Now, where on earth is my Bencher keyer?

I’ve finally upgraded the software that drives this blog. It’s now running WordPress v2.2. Let me know if you notice something broken.

Later this year I’ll be heading west into the Australian outback (including the Birdsville Track) for what will be about a 5000 km (3100 mile) round trip. It’s an opportunity to take my ham-radio equipment along for fun and safety (and see what I might be able to do on 2m SSB (Aircraft Enhanced mode) and digital modes). For HF I have a Terlin Outbacker mobile antenna but it’s not been used much to date. Last weekend I attached it to the bull-bar on my Hi-Lux truck and gave it a test.

I don’t have a permanent mobile installation so the setup was, of necessity, rather primitive. I used an Icom IC-706 MkIIG, and an MFJ desktop antenna tuner sitting on the passenger seat to feed the antenna. I don’t have any earth strap installed to the vehicle chassis yet, so was a bit worried about the effects that would have. The vehicle has a diesel engine so that probably helps to keep the noise level down.

With everything plugged in, and the engine running, the S-meter sat with zero noise level so I was happy. I made a quick contact on 40m just to get a signal report. I worked VK5ZKT/P near Adelaide ( a distance over well over 1000km) so I was happy with that result too.

Over the coming months I’ll set about upgrading the setup to give a slightly more permanent mobile installation.

[Ref: Outbacker antenna info can be found here].

I recorded the carrier to noise level at the modem during a sun transit outage on my satellite-provided internet connection. The story and graph can be found in the technology category of my personal blog.

A photograph of the satellite antenna that’s on the house roof and that’s used for the internet link can be found on my photoblog.