Well I’ve been thinking of which license to go for to get me started, there are three classes in Australia. Foundation, Standard, and finally Advanced.
I’ve been going through the sylabuses for the three levels and I know I could get foundation without much if any study, but it is too restricted, for example a foundation license can’t use 20 Metres, which at the present moment is where the fun is.
So looking at some of the online tests for the standard exam, I managed to get 68% on it without much study, the pass mark is 70%. So I’m going to go for standard, and later on advanced.
~Ivy
So I get home, to play with the radio. And the noise is just getting to me. There is little one can do really. other than get a better antenna, and in a rental property there is little one can do.
~ivy
Well Hannah and I went to a hamfest over the weekend. And we picked up a LDG 1:1 balun and an old watt/swr meter. The hamfest was fun seeing lots of cool junk, like WW II mobile transmitters and old test equipment.
After that we headed over to my fathers place, where at least the noise levels are much down, set up our droopy dipole, set up the watt/swr meter, and did, well tried to do some tranmission tests on the FT-707, as we knew the transmit was low. Well, unfortunately we cooked the output stage and the magic smoke got out, not my idea of fun.
Anyway at least we hadn’t damaged the receive section of the FT-707, so no big issues there as I’m not licensed yet, and we’re waiting on transferring Hannah’s license from the states (which won’t be hard.) So technically Hannah can’t transmit yet, and I can’t at all.
With the addition of the balun to our dipole antenna, has removed a lot of the noise that we still received at my parents house, and seemed to improve things on most bands. We didn’t do too much on the saturday other than get everything set up and play a little on 20 metres.
On sunday morning we listened to the wia news and the callbacks associated, lots of VK5s and VK4s and a few VK3s. But we were rather disappointed that we couldn’t pick up much on 20 metres like the day before. But on 40 meters we started hearing a lot of people from New Zealand which was a first. So the balun was making a difference.
As the morning progressed though, 20 metres opened right up, and heard many a dog pile as people in the us tried to contact a guy in nz with the call sign ZL3DX.
Both of us are itching to get on the air and do more work with our antennas.
~Ivy
Well playing with Hannah’s HT a Yaesu VX-5 I can pick up the automated voice transmision from the control tower for Essendon Airport. It repeats itself, giving the time in UTC, with windspeed and direction, and temprature. The frequency that this transmits on is 119.8 MHz. Also been able to pick up flights coming into Melbourne Airport. Rather nifty, and kinda boring sometimes.
In other news Hannah and I popped into Strictly Ham, in Bayswater, to have a look at some radios, I think we’ve decided that we will get the IC-7000.
~Ivy
Well fired up the FT again tonight lots of background noise, more than usual. But for a first from home WWV was coming clear on 10MHz AM well still fading in and out but still a lot better than normal.
~Ivy