Monthly Archives: January 2016

Mount Gawler 2016

Mount Gawler vk5/se-013 is my first activation for 2016.

The weather was nice and cool and the Tour Down Under cycle race started today so I decided to activate a summit on the way to watch the Women’s race go by at Mount Torrens in the Adelaide Hills..

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Parked nearby the set up area the bush is slowly recovering from a bush fire in 2015 easy summit to access .

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Lots of burnt out trees in woods and forest country across the road and still very dry from months of no rain this summer .

So once set up I was glad to start out with a S2S, VK1VIC/2 was very clear and strong on 40m ssb so I knew it was going to be ok to qualify the summit and as it turned out I got 3 qso’s from the same summit with VK1VIC/2 , VK1FAJW/2 and VK4JAZ/2 so 3 S2S QSO’s right from get go. Unfortunately no short skip to VK5 again with only a very low signal qso with Ian VK5IS on cw and VK5AO Mait who was just below me in Adelaide, luckily the vk 2 3 and 4 stations were quite strong on 40m cw.

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On this summits it is hard to set the antenna up under the trees and I could only run out the dipoles north south direction which would later make it harder to qso to Japan on 15m . The wx was a nice breeze to keep cool but not really fill out the flags all the time.

Once roll over came I went on 40m ssb and made some qso’s mostly with the same chasers I had worked on cw giving them some extra points but with conditions poor for the locals I could not complete a couple qso’s I am sorry.

Mt Gawler 2016

The Large tree over the fence only allowed me to put the dipole up end on to Japan which probably did not help my signal but with the FT 857 I was running 25 watts on cw . I noticed the internal noise in the 857 is not as quiet as the kx3 and the DSP filtering was turned off helping improved my reception when working hard to pull out the week signals. No man made noise was evident and 15m was very quiet but with low signals and qsb we had to repeat reports several times and keep listening for the qsb to go up. With this type of conditions it is good practice to slow the cw speed down and just send the RST three or four times no other information/chatter.  JJ1SWI/1 Go was on summit JA/KN-020 in Kanagawa and he had the best signal considering conditions, then Mot JP1QEC/1 who was portable in a park was workable as well. Mot is my friend on Face book and I have chased him on summits before from my home, so we were proving the possibility of a s2s one day. I was very pleased NS7P Phil was able to make contact with me, its been a while since I heard from him.

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This SOTA station was a FT 857 running 25 watts on ssb and cw the antennas are my newly made 40/20m and 30m/15m link dipoles fed with rg 174 feed line and in this case both inverted V’s were up 7 metres . New wire is from SOTA beams which I think is great antenna wire, the link dipoles are made up from the dipole design on sota maps.org page which has a great antenna design feature. Even down to the length of the support strings needed for my set up with a 8m squid pole and keeping with the 60 deg angle of the inverted V. The software calculates for you the length of wires needed to get the two bands you are aiming for, the length of cord needed for end supports and I call my tent pegs .1m .  Very little tuning is needed to get it resonate in the area I want to operate in if you follow the design plan.

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Working the pile up .

Thanks everyone for chasing and S2S, sorry to those who I could not work .

23 contacts plus 2 uncompleted from the qsb.

Thanks for your interest in my blog.

cheers from

Ian vk5cz ..

 

Horse Race in Morse Code

A poem about a couple of telegraph operators sending a running commentary on a horse race which is how it was done before we had a Nation Wide Broadcast Radio system. Probably from the 1920’s era in Australia and to save time on the key lots of abbreviations were used. See if you can follow the flow and excitement of the race and the temperament of the operators.

A bit more “history” , I found this poem first on the Packet Radio BBS back in the early 1990’s and as you know that system of communicating is not used very much these days. I was looking around in my old 486 computer that still runs today and came across it saved in a file . See how you go working it out.

Well I remember Charlie Teede who used to work the races

No need indeed to ask for speed He’d pace it with the pacers.

Lord help the man who broke him once or questioned his creations

On him a flood of scorn was turned the atmosphere with brimstone burned

And Pitman green with envy squirmed at his Abbreviations.

TE FIELD GOT AWA TO TI   AS TY SETTLD DWN

TE SHICER 1st TO BK TE LINE  WS FLWD BI JO BROWN

IN CLOSE PROXIM WAS TIRED TIM TN CAME ARBTRATN

BHND TE BUNCH WS CNTR PUNCH GD LUCK & HI TAXATN.

 

TY WHIZZED ALNG WT GRT SPD WN

C T R B

TH TOP WT JUMPD ES GOT ON TRMS WI SHICER

BI TN  HIS BUNDL DUMPD WE LABLD HIM A TWICER

As Pitman scrambled after Charlie like a trailer around a bend

He gave ok, but queried,   C R T B — U send,

now what is that enlarge a bit my friend.

The sounder nearly rattled loose as Charlie scorched the line.

U ORT T B ON TE RABTPROOF OR UP AT DOODLEKINE

CHASIN PODDIES RND TE YD SHD B UR CHF PASTIME

T THINK U CDNT WRK IT OUT IT NRLY MAKS ME SIK

ANI OLD JILARU OR ROUSABT CUD RITE IT W A STICK.

FANCI A MAN WO CALLS HMSF A TGST ASKG TT

A RECORD OS VACUUM IS LOCATED NEATH UR HAT .

 

D U WANT IT IN OILS BI LAMBERT OR CARVD ON MARBLE STONE

OLE WINJA MORTILL CD TKE IT DWN   UD NVR HR HIM MOAN

NOT SPELT OUT LKE IVE DONE FR U BT CUT DWN T TE BONE.

 

WL I MST SA ITS TE BEST DISPLA OF IGNRCE IVE EVER HRD

OF ALL TE SQUTRS IN TE LAND UR CRTNLI TE BIRD

ES ANI HRSH RMKS IVE MIST TY ALL CN BE INFERD.

 

WY  C R T B — ITS KNOWN BI ALL

WT WD U HV ME SEND ?

ITS CMG RND TE BEND U GOAT

ITS COMING ROUND THE BEND !