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…

I still refuse to rejoin the WIA!! But….

I was sent a link to the most recent WIA presidents blog/letter recently by someone who said I should reconsider my WIA position based on this letter and the intent that the WIA is making in order to change their direction. It’s interesting to note that I’ve had 2 conversations with Phil over the last…

Exploring random wire antennas!

In an effort to better understand the performance of my ft817 and the ZM-2 ATU, I’ve been exploring different random length wire antennas while camping. I read an article posted on a sota forum about random wire lengths and how to choose an efficient length, this article talks about the importance of choosing a length…

Icom IC-9100 ICF Programming File

I had a local Melbourne ham who is a member of my local Ham club EMDRC ask me today if I had the 9100 programming software CS-9100 as he was keen for a base line file as a starting point as the prospect of starting to program the icom IC9100 ICF file was a bit daunting,…

Analogue TV Switch OFF

The idiot box does not feature too highly in our household, but today at 9am, Analogue tv was switched off in Melbourne. This was the last location around Australia that analogue tv broadcast services existed, and marked the end of the program to convert Australia to digital tv. I made a couple of videos of…

50MHz Lunchtime Opening.

Sometimes, the magic band is just that, Magic. I was at home on my lunch break, and VKLogger suggested conditions were good, so i connected the OCF dipole and changed to 50MHz, to discover and work ZL2WHO – Mark in Palmerston on the north island, as well as into Vk5/7/4 and 2.. Not bad for…

Solder burns and other shenanigans

I needed to convert 12v to 8.4v, so went for a drive to the local jaycar and purchased a simple voltage regulator kit. The kits is listed as simple,  and thats a good thing, I haven’t soldered in anger for a number of years, and was a bit (lot) rusty!. The kit simply regulates the…

Radio Mobile Prediction Software

A nifty freeware bit of (windows) software for hams and other radio people is called “Radio Mobile”. This tool allows you to simulate and map predicted coverage of your location using terrain and clutter data and maps expected coverage into google maps. The windows version requires you to source the terrain and clutter data (easy…