The other week, the EMDRC club had a presentation on portable and lite HF antennas as well as some other ideas on portable operation. Len Steel vk3fb showed a nifty and cheap way of making some wire winders. The video of the presentation can be seen on YouTube at the bottom of this post. I…
Earlier today, my wife Christine successfully completed her Foundation license course and has become (when the paper work arrives, its been submitted) VK3FCEK! Well done Christine, now you too can operate when we go on those SOTA trips! ***its arrived. 3 weeks for the wia to process their paperwork and 4 days for the acma. The…
Over the last weekend, the Moorabbin Ham radio club held their annual hamfest. I had just enough time to pop in for a quick look see. Overall, the event was similar to the ballarat hamfest I wore about last year. A mix of junk with the odd interesting item, some new gear from the usual suspects…
As part of a short family holiday to Sydney and home via Canberra, I was able to fit in one activation. I had dropped the family off at Questacon early on good friday morning, the kids love this place, we spent a whole day at the science centre on wednesday, and they wanted to go back.…
My four year old son Toby is Volcano obsessed at the moment. We had talked about some old volcanic rocks you could see not far from melbourne, and he had a picture of them in a book we had gotten him on volcanoes, so, we promised him a trip to the “Organ Pipes National Park”…
Randomly searching around eBay as you do, i discovered a place in Melbourne selling Cheap 8m long squid poles. They advertise them as pickup only, and a search of the seller name found me the store, a fishing shop in Dandenong. On eBay, its 2 for $26.50 with pickup, curious about the quality of the…
A flaw in the Kranker Knob upgrade for my FT817 was discovered soon after the knob was installed. The yaesu soft carry case for the FT817 neatly protects the radio, however the knob extension bar didn’t fit!, thankfully my wifey has a home/internet based sewing business making kids hats and other items, so i enlisted her…
My big child Nathan has developed a recent trait of unexpected and rather rapid onset motion sickness in the car when we travel on twisty roads. With that in mind, we set off to join the Morrabbin and District radio club members at Mt Dandenong for a mini SOTA combined activation and promotional event. The…
My big child Nathan turned six this weekend, as a bit of a family tradition, we try and go camping for both kids birthdays. And for the last couple of years for the big child’s birthday we have visited Tidal River at Wilson’s Prom. Its a caravan park in the middle of Wilson’s prom, with…
Opportunistic.. Sometimes thats what you have to be with this sota caper, especially with a young family and limited time to goat. I had a pretty urgent overnight work trip to Warrnambool handed to me, and a quick look at sota goat showed me that I would be near at least 2 summits on my…