SotaBeams Dipole Traps

A couple of months ago, the SOTABeams Facebook page Posted a link to a new item they had just finished making. A simple pair of lightweight dipole traps for portable use to help with running multiple bands and the band changing efforts. I had built a link dipole last year and this works well, but if the…

Sota Activation – VK3/VE-204 The Paps

Work took me into country north eastern Victoria. A long day of tasks and driving, a 700km loop! I packed my sota backpack into the car just in case i had time to drop past a summit and undertake an activation. I actually ended up on two summits. I had to visit an air services…

Strange link dipole shenanigans?

Help!!!.. In the true spirit of this page, i installed a poorly built antenna on the weekend, and I don’t know why? I got the courage to cut my unicorn blood DX wire, and began the process of making a link dipole. Followed the guides form all the normal places, VK3ZPF and VK3PF and the Sotabeams Calculator among many. I built…

1:1 Current Balun

To Balun or Not to Balun, this is the question? Like Ford vs Holden, Canon vs Nikon or Yaesu vs Icom; the world is divided into two camps on how best to connect a resonate wire antenna to a bit of coax. Until now, my dipole had been direct connected. and this had worked as…

EARCHI End-Fed 40-6 build.

Back when I started Sota, i was looking for a quick and easy antenna for portable use, along the way other items have been built and obtained that have made this project not as critical. The project is a simple 9:1 Unun that creates a match for a random bit of wire, it still needs…

Portable PSK31 on the iPad

Digital modes on the radio are a bit of a Black art. In my quest to expand my radio options while camping. I discovered and purchased an 817-iPad interconnect cable and it arrived just before our trip. I’ll expand on that in another post, essentially it’s signalink type device for my iPhone/iPad. I haven’t really…

Sota Activation – VK2/SM-053 (Wollondibby Peak)

After our morning Activations to Box Ridge (SM-065) we headed back into Jindabyne for some supplies and lunch. The local Bakery at Jindabyne has really yummy Tandoori lamb pies, and i was keen to have one for lunch. The road back to the camp site passed another Sota Summit, VK2/SM-053, this is unnamed, at the…

Sota Activation – VK2/SM-001 Mt Kosciuszko

As part of our family xmas holiday’s, we are camping in the Kosciuszko National Park, a family favourite xmas camping location, we stay in a bush camping spot on the Thredbo river just down from the ski resort town. We enjoy this part of the world visiting most xmas times. This year, having recently become…