Radio

Well yesterday Hannah and myself saw a presentation of D Star radio. I have to say at first I was quite impressed. The routing systems were weird, and the system seemed to be fairly open. And both Kenwood and Icom were using it (though as it seems all that Kenwood does is rebadge icom dstar radios for the japanese market.)

The data modes on 23 centemetres (1.2GHz) were amazing, 128kbps while slow to us with our fast broadband connections, was very fast for radio based data modes.

But upon looking into it further is that the codec used for the audio modes is the AMBE codec. This is the bad part, while the whole dstar standard is open, the codec used for audio is propriatory and the licensing fees for the codec are insane. 

It just doesn’t feel like amateur radio when the main part of the radio system that being the voice mode, is not open. Amateurs have gone from AM voice to SSB to various digital modes like psk31 all of which are open protocols, where the AMBE codec is closed.

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Looking back over the last few days has been quite interesting, scary and stressful.

Saturday was the hottest day on record in Melbourne 46.4ºc or 115.5ºf. We don’t know hot hot it was where we were located at mum and dads.

We were warned that this day would be a day of high fire danger, and keeping this in mind we tuned into 774 and listened, as they will break (and did so) all normal broadcasting when there was an emergency.

As the situation became more complex we started listening to the CFA and DSE radio frequencies, to see what was happening on the ground.

Also using the BOM site, we were able to see the wind speed and direction.

The fires were fairly close, but were moving away from us, moving in a south easterly direction, but as the day moved on, we were aware that a cool change was moving through.

Unfortunately, with the cool change, the wind change would be unpredictable and could drive the fire which at this point of time were about 10 KiloMetres away from us (six miles approx).

Combined with this, we heard that the CFA were assembling a strike team nearby.

With this information in hand, we decided to evacuate (at this point in time, the horses had been moved.) We had already prepared everything to be ready to go at a minutes notice. 

So we left.

In the end, we returned to the next day, as the fire front moved away from mum and dads place.

But in the end, so many were not so lucky.

and thanks to the CFA our country wouldn’t survive without them.

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Well, today we’re sitting here waiting. Listening to the CFA and DSE as there are fires near our operating qth, we are prepared to leave the property if the fires start moving towards us. 

Currently the fires are moving away from us, but depending on the wind changes with the cool change, it could cause issues.

At least we can monitor everything that’s going on right now.

~Ivy

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Last week Hannah and myself spent a few days in Lakes Entrance. While we were down there we were without internet access, but I did take some notes of the first day:

Drove down to lake tyres beach, and set up our whip antenna, to see what was out there. The whip is a fairly simple thing with elements for 80/40 (depending on loading coil at base) and 20 metres. 

Worked with some difficulty vi2bv90 (only got a 2/5) on 40 metres, the whip we decided wasn’t working so well so we set up the vertical built out of a squid pole and some plumbing parts.

Now this vertical is an interesting thing, based around a “squid pole”  and a few plumbing pipe, we didn’t set the thing to it’s entire hight, we may do that tomorrow, but it was to say the least a marked improvement. we heard much more than we were hearing with the whip.

So we went to 20metres, and worked a station in Japan, who gave us a 5/5 (we gave him a 5/7) and it was amazing, here was a guy running an Yaesu DX 9000 with a Yaesu quadra amp, and a 6 element tribander, all up running one Kilowatt!

We were easly able to work him with only 100 watts, and the vertical.

I guess it says something for working right on the coast, where the salt water lakes create for us a brilliant ground plane to work against.

Other than a little sun burn and eating way too much a very successful day

~Ivy

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Well my license upgrade came through, and I’m the proud owner of the call sign VK3IVY.

That’s it, all my licensing exams are done with, and I now have the advanced call.

~Ivy

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