Monthly Archives: June 2015

Special Event

Upcoming Special event VI5MCP

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Between the 11th and the 26th of July Members of AREG will be activating a special event station VI5MCP.

The Special event is in celebration of the 100 years of Proclamation of the Morialta Falls Pleasure Resort, which we now know as Morialta Conservation Park.  The 100th anniversary of the park is on Wednesday the 15th of July 2015.

Morialta CP is located in the Hills to the East of Adelaide and is a popular location for Portable operations.  Activations of this park qualify for the SANPCPA – South Australia National Parks and Conservations Parks Award and also for WWFF and VKFF as VKFF-783

The Aim of this special event station is to celebrate the 100th anniversary and to  further promote awareness of portable operations and awards.

We are planning on Activations  from the park over the 2 week period and at the moment we have some confirmed and some tentative activations scheduled, please keep an eye on this post as we will update the schedule in the coming days.

VI5MCP Calendar July 2015

Planned activation dates and frequencies/bands
DateLocal Time / UTCBand/FreqNotes
Saturday 11th
Sunday 12th10:00 / 00:30UTC7.140 SSB /147.500 FM then 14.240 or 14.310Around 2 hours
Monday 13th
Tuesday 14th
Wednesday 15th10:00 / 00:30UTC7.140 / 10.130 /14.240 or 14.310Around 2 hours or longer if a lot of chasers
Thursday 16th
Friday 17th
Saturday 18th13:00 -17:30 / 03:30 - 08:00 UTC14.240 or 14.310 and
7.140		Looking for EU DX on 20M * running a 2Element on 20M
Sunday 19th10:00 / 00:30UTC7.140 SSB /147.500 FM then 14.240 or 14.310Around 2 hours
Monday 20th
Tuesday 21st
Wednesday 22nd10:00 / 00:30UTC7.140 / 10.130 /14.240 or 14.310Around 2 hours or longer if a lot of chasers
Thursday 23rd
Friday 24th
Saturday 25th
Sunday 26th10:00 / 00:30UTC7.140 SSB /147.500 FM then 14.240 or 14.310Around 2 hours

*Note Mode will be SSB unless specifically noted as otherwise.

Please also check out QRZ.com for the QSL details.

Equipment

Phased Vertical Antenna Testing

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On Sunday when I was out, I finally had the opportunity to do some very basic testing with another Local amatuer whom is approx 20km away  to do some simple testing  of the 4 possible configurations of the Vertical antenna’s.

It was certainly not state of the art, but more real-world evaluation of the Received Signals, so more comparative than anything else.

My Ascii Art

A         B                                                                                                           RX

Ok,  A and B are the 2 Vertical Antenna’s spaced 1/4 wavelength  (5.1Metres)  apart and RX is the Remote station where we were receiving the signal o the various feed configurations.

First Test – a Single Vertical

I connected up to Vertical B and the Rx signal strength was S8, and the baseline we would use to compar all other configurations against.

Second Test – Broadside

Next test was to connect the feedpoint via a T piece to both A and B feedlines.  The expected pattern is a “figure 8” with the nulls towards the RX and the lobes “broadside” to the array.  RX signal was S7. Pretty much as expected it would be weaker than a single antenna.

Third Test – End-fire Away from the RX

To end fire Away from the RX the Feedline was connected to antenna B and a 90Degree phase/delay line was then inserted in between the feedpoint to Antenna A.    So we can say that antenna B is 0 deg, and Antenna A is fed with a 90 degree lag/delay in phase. This should be a cartiod pattern with a deep null towards the RX station and firing in the direction of Antenna A.  The RX sgnal of S6 indicated that this was indeed the case.

Fourth Test – End-fire Array towards the RX

This time, I simply reversed the delay line and had Antenna A as 0 degrees, and Antenna B as  90 degree lag/delay.  This effectively means that that the cartiod pattern is now pointing towards the RX station, with the null towards the A antenna.  The RX signal strenth was S8-9 (subjective – descrbed as a bit better than the  config 1)

The results are about what I would expect – with differences of 6-10db on the signal.

Finally, I did shoot a short video that shows the Antenna configuration as per the Fourth configuration,  Looking from Antenna A towards Antenna B is the direction I was intending to “beam” and in this case, with the very broad forward pattern.

Hope the Video gives a bit of an indication on how I set up the End-fired Phased Vertical Array

Going Portable with multi-elements rocks!

Equipment, SOTA

Working the EU long-path on 20M

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After working on other things for the last few month’s I finally had a chance to get out again at the right time of day to have a go at working EU on the long path.

We headed up to Mt Gawler – VK5/SE-013 and proceeded to set up the phased verticals on 20M.  Once set up a quick listen across 20M and it was fairly busy, and eventually found a free frequency and put up a spot.

20M vertical
A close-up of the base of one of the 20M verticals. You can see the Coax, the vertical and the 4 elevated ground radials

On the 2nd call  the spot was out and I had my first EU contact in the log with Danny, ON4VT at 05:52,  and quickly followed with a whole lot more!

Working the Pile-Up
Working the Pile-Up

Now, I normallyforget that my phone has a easonable video camera in it, but today, I asked Ray to grab a bit of video.

At 06:20 once things started to pick up, we grabbed a few minutes – and the last 30-40 seconds where what it was like for at least 30 minutes!

It was a constant go and between 05:52 and 07:10 where I worked 75 contacts on 20M.   In the mix there were 1 JA station, 2 US stations, 1 Canadian, 10 VK stations and 61 EU stations across several countries – including a new country for me from a summit – SV9RGI  in Crete.    In the mix there was around 15 EU contries in the 80 minutes I was on 20M

Full Logs – vk5se-013-20150613

Of course, I always give 40M a quick (or not so quick today) go to give the VK chasers a chance to score the points, so up went the 40M dipole.

As the sun was starting to go down and the temperature was falling, I added another 26 VK chasers to the log to give me a grand total of 101 chasers for the 2 hours.

It was a hectic time, but again, even if you are only a 2-pointer, if you are at the right place at the right time of day you can log a lot of contacts!

And yes, I love 2 elements on 20M from a summit!