Well one of the many things Hannah and I have wanted to hear is a proper numbers station, been a fan of the conet project and all.
We found it at 5230kHz USB, and was a monotone female voice, just reading out phonetic letters (whiskey tango foxtrot for example.) The interesting thing was that it was in the process of been jammed, by a loud pulsating carrier.
Well it seems that 20 metres is opening up more and more as the year goes on, even if the sun is without sunspots at the present moment.
Hannah and myself have finally managed to get a contact in the UK and other European and Scandinavian stations.
And finally one contact into the Antartic.
lots of fun.
Well I did it, finally I have a full call. Now just the wait for the paperwork to be processed, though over the christmas break it may take some time. But VK3IVY here I come.
Over the past months, Ivy and I have been trying to catch those DX stations. In the current time of solar minimum, it has been hard to return to the calls with our meager 100W. And, not being able to afford stacked monobanders and a leenyer, we’ve decided to try and improve what we can, which is antennas.
The first choice was to install HF verticals for different bands. Since they are relatively easy to construct with just wire, and have a low take-off angle of radiation, we decided to go for it.
Wonky 20 metre vertical
First was a 20 metre vertical. Scrounging around for parts, we came across a sad piece of copper pipe that had been left outside for some months. After straightening it out the best we could, it measured just over 4 metres in length. My understanding of antennas isn’t all that great, but I do understand velocity factor. Copper pipe is said to have a VF of 0.86 or so. Given our poor copper was in an advanced state of oxidation, I figured the VF would be lower.
Oh well, might as well just load it up and see. After sanding off the corrosion on the bottom and attaching a strapping wire via a clamp, it seemed to have OK continuity. Then we decided to try 4 radials of scrap wire, each at 1/4 of a wavelength. The vertical was then installed on the roof with surprising results. Though we could not get the SWR down below 1.7 or so, it happened to have this dip at ~14100kHz. This antenna performed quite well, considering it cost us the grand total of naught
With the success of 20 metres, we decided to again try, this time on 40 metres. Around this time we decided to buy one of the EMDRC 9 metre aluminium masts. While it’s a tad short for the 10 metre tall 1/4 wavelength vertical at 7MHz, we came up with a clever solution to extendorise the mast. Using a 3 metre long bit of orange electrical conduit, we slid our extender into the top of the mast section. The whole thing flopped right over to one side. But hey, the radiating element can’t be too close to the metal mast anyway, else it will couple and cause a distorted radiating pattern and possibly effect impedence. The bendy conduit put the vertical about a metre and a half to one side of the mast, and the bottom of the 10 metre radiating wire ended up just above the ground. More 1/4 wavelength radials, and we were on the air. This one, though, was able to be tuned by way of changing the length. We managed to bring the SWR down to about 1.2:1 at ~7200kHz.
Results with the 40 metre vertical weren’t as drastically increased as with 20 metres. We got only slightly better (often only 1 S-unit) signals on the vertical compared to the dipole. The radiation pattern for transmit seemed to be pretty similar to the dipoles as well. It was useful as an antenna for local contacts, but we still couldn’t get those DX stations to hear us.
We’ve since given up on the verticals, in favour of a ZL-Special. There will be more to come.
73, Hannah
Well again with the late posting, on the 10th of November, Hannah (VK3GNU) and myself (VK3LNX) had the pleasure to attend Andersons Creek primary school, to help out with an ARISS contact. Not that we really did any of the hard work as that was done by VK5ZAI and then to the school via a telebridge.
Though I had been asked to do a quick Q&A on stage in front of a few hundred people by Rob (VK3KRB) about how long I’d been in amateur radio and what I had done.
Q&A at Andersons Creek Primary School
After me Jim (VK3AMN) also gave a quick talk about what he has done with radio, and then finally the contact went ahead.
The kids of Anderson Creek asking questions of Mike Fincke on ISS
Anyway it was a fun night and a pleasure to be there (more information can be found on the wia website.)
Well it’s been a bit since we’ve posted here, but anyway hopefully this will get everything up to date.
In early November Hannah (VK3GNU) and myself (VK3LNX) went to the Bunyip state park to see how well we could work in the forest.
We took our vertical whip that we purchased from a recent hamfest, and a 40 Metre dipole that we had constructed for taking out into the forest.
We had little luck with the vertical (though we did on another morning get into a 80m net and got in fine). So we strung up the dipole into the trees, nice and high. But unfortunately the bands were rather quiet, but in the end we proved we could operate out bush so to speak.
basic setup of the ic703 and ic 706mkIIg in the forest