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?

Quite a few 2m and 70cm contacts have been made between VK and ZL over the past few weeks. The distance, depending on QTHs in question, are around the 2200 km mark.

Contacts made this way are mainly due to tropospheric propagation. High pressure zones, and high temperatures forming ducts aid and abet those seeking contacts.

It’s harder for me to work into ZL because I’m about 120 km inland - and 1 km high. It’s harder for my signals to enter a duct, or otherwise made it across the water.

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.

I listened, off and on, for beacons on 6m and 10m today. I can categorically state that, with one exception, both bands were pretty dead! The exception was that I could hear the familiar old chirpy beacon from Adelaide, VK5WI, for several hours on 10m (28.260 Mhz).

I also left the receiver running on the 6m and 2m SSB calling channels whilstever I was in the shack today. Nothing heard. Not even a meteor ping.