Hi Tom,
Thanks for the nice report. I’m running 200 W to a 2 ele trapped beam at 42 ft. Down to 70 W on FT4.
The superiority of the digital modes was made obvious today.
Ed DD5LP was good SSB copy whenever the station 3 kHz down wasn’t calling CQDX. I should not hear him but he probably is using final amplifier clipping instead of at a lower level.
Your SSB was dropping into my noise level on QSB so not brilliant copy here. Better signal on CW except for the lid who was all over you. Still we got you in the log. The other station is not in my log strange to say. The interfering station seems to have an RF switched PA as the CW was badly clipped.
Now on FT4 there’s no QRM and so the other stations calling me were no problem. Quick. Painless. No ambiguity in the callsigns or reports. No other stations calling over the top. No QRS, or agn? The software makes two passes digging out signals that are weaker than the blockbusters.
Magic.
I love the simplicity of CW but 20 m when the band is open is a bit of a bloodbath. Call me squeamish if you will but it’s not a lot of fun.
Anyway good to have Ian VK5CZ, Adam VK2YK , Ed DD5LP and M1EYP in this afternoon’s log.
I didn’t realise that VK3ZLP was also you! Still, it’s an extra VK call in today’s log from Win Green G/SC-008, making a total of 8. OK, it turns out half of them were you, but still pleasing!
Great stuff. At my end, wkg condx were no more than FT-817 running 5 watts into a home made quarter wave with groundplane, mounted on a fishing pole. So simple - yet so effective!
Hi Tom,
VK3ZLP is usually my inside station running 70 W from an IC7000. There is a coax to the garage where there is a remotely switched changeover relay to select house or shack for the 3.5 - 10.1 MHz doublet.
In the shack I can select either an IC9100 (wsjt) or an old Yaesu FT1000 MP mk V (SSB)CW). The beams can only be used in the shack.
Your FT7 does a grand job. Ed I think had 20 W which made him more loudenboomer.
A nice short activation from DL/AM-180 Berndorfer Buchet this morning. After working a few EU stations on 40m, I was surprised by 5 VK contacts in a row. I was very glad to get the S2S with Ian VK5CZ - who was camping out on the VK3/NE-093 summit as the first 20m contact in the log.
Today 20m was good to EU had chat with Ed S2S on ssb.
Strangest thing happened on CW I got a call from the first station to reply to my CQ, then all hell broke loose over the top of him. I stuck to my guns still trying to complete the QSO as I had not heard my report yet. 3 other stations continued to keep sending 599 reports to me. Well hang on, 5 watts to a bit of wire and these home stations were not 599 to me. If I was 599 to them they would have known I was still trying to get a report from the first station who called me and not hammered us both for 10 minutes. It worked out in the end but give me a break we got all day to do the work.
Try again tomorrow.
73 vk5cz …
Looks like I was lucky to get out yesterday morning Ian to get the EU-VK S2S with you and the other VK contacts - the Kp index isn’t looking too good over the next couple of days!
No DX callers this morning.
I sent CQ on 14MHz CW from SP/SW-004, beacons spoted me at UTC 5:38, unfortunately I had no internet so just sent CQ and try to copy anyone.
Only F4WBN came …
I went up early today to the summit Oberriedel OE/OO-383 to get some DX in the log … calling CQ for almost two hours on 20m between 05:40 and 07:40. Could hear the beacons from Hawaii and New Zealand on 14.100 quite well. Only got one DX in the log … @ZL4NVW worked me at 06:23 UTC. After that only European contacts. Thanks for the QSO’s.
The Wx forecast for the east coast of Australia over the next four days is rain, rain, rain and rain with an expected total rainfall in the vicinity of 125 to 130 mm. I’m currently studying blueprints for an Ark!
You may not find too many alerts posted through to Sunday evening inclusive.
Hi Martin,
Today, for some reason, 20m was later in opening to VK compared to the last couple of days and VKs only really started coming in on SSB from about 0700 UTC with me.
The 3000 km MUF for Central/Northern Europe hovered around 10 - 12 MHz for some time before finally rising over the 14MHz level.
Many thanks for the contact @OE5REO. I’ve seen your call on sotawatch a few times before, but good to finally manage a QSO.
I wouldn’t have wanted to be on a SOTA summit at that time. Winds were ~100kph and blizzard conditions outside my shack. QRN was in the audio, not RF spectrum! Things looking much calmer and prettier today as you can see.
I posted an alert for tomorrow morning. I plan to be QRV from my local hill OE/OO-084, but I will decide in the morning if i go. As mentioned before by VK1AD the WX is not good in VK east coast, so probably no S2S … but hoping for some chaser DX contacts!
I managed to get out of bed early, thick fog at my home QTH made me look at a local webcam first to see if on my targeted summit I can expect sun. I saw that the fog is only below 800m … so left home at 0440 UTC and went up Eiskogel OE/OO-084.
At 0555 UTC @ZL4NVW called in with a nice signal peaking 5/5 … thanks for the QSO, you made my day! It was the only DX I managed to get in the log today, worked several chasers from Europe a bit later.
The very rare occasion where propagation into ZL4 is better for Europe than the more populous ZL1 or VK1-3 regions. There were spots from VK stations to say they were listening for you but hearing nothing. It’s normally the other way round - I hear ZL1 and VK1-3 working Europe but can hear nothing of the European stations here.
There are not many SOTA chasers this far south (ZL4) … in fact just 2 that I know of, including myself.
