The VK2DJG blog

The concrete for the tower base has well and truly “gone off” or cured by now.

I put the GPS on it and it reads 1015 m (3330 ft) a.s.l. Later it said 1018 m (3340 feet), but I won’t quibble over such a small variation. Once the tower’s up, the topmost antenna will be at 1040 m (3400 feet). That sounds good to me!

I’ve not a heard a chirp on the 2m, 6m or 10m bands for weeks. I monitor beacons on a regular basis, and leave the receivers running on the 2m and 6m SSB calling frequencies.

The merging of the low winter and low solar cycle periods leave little activity.

I have to qualify the above statements by adding that I don’t live in front the receivers so I will miss things now and again but in general there’s not a lot happening.

I need to get my 2m meteor scatter setup up and running again. There’s usually always some level of activity in the mornings. I can’t work further south than Rex, VK7MO, in Tasmania. After that there’s nothing but ocean before hitting Antartica. Working into New Zealand would be a challenge - from this QTH it’s right on the accepted range for “normal” MS working at around 2200 km (1400 miles). With a little “assist” from a duct, though, it could be possible.

Apologies to anybody who reads this blog via an RSS reader. My feed was broken - it’s fixed now.

The concrete for the base for the new tower looks to be curing well, albeit slowly. I was told that the extended period of cold and wet weather would add a week to the time normally taken for the concrete to “go off”.

So be it. Only two weeks to go.