Whilst on a recent trip to VK2 to participate in my other pastime of Marathon Kayaking, I made sure to pack my SOTA kit and planned to activate at least a couple of summits.

I had limited time, but managed to find a couple of hours on 3 consecutive (week) days and was able to do 3 activations

Summit 1 – VK2/HU-080

On Monday (27/10), I was only 15km away from Summit Point, which is about 5km North of Mt Sugarloaf, a hill I had climbed countless times as a kid.

A quick look at the website, and access seemed to be reasonably easy – with a drive up to near Mt Sugarloaf then a 4.8km drive on a well maintained dirt road to a small parking area just below the summit.

Carved Rock near the track to the summit

I grabbed everything and did the quick walk up to the summit, obligatory photo of the summit then moved just below the plateau and set up out of the wind.

I decided to try several bands 15-40M.

Yes, it was a week-day, and I was hopeful that the band gods would be kind and grant an EU opening, but no such luck.

I had contacts on 17 (the first 17m contact for this summit), 20, 30 and 40m with a total of 11 contacts – not bad for a Monday afternoon!

Summit 2 – VK2/IL-007

On Tuesday, we were heading down to the South Coast and after checking, Knight’s Hill, looked to be reasonably easy to access and not too far out of the way.

We were only going to have a short time to do the activation, so decided to just do 40m and 20m as well in the hope of adding some VK5 or 6’s to the logs.

Given we could drive right to the activation one with no access to the actual summit, parked up, grabbed the gear and did the walk in/out of the zone then set up, tieing the squid pole to a convenient post near the side of the road.

Knights Hill summit behind a locked gate.

It was pretty windy again, with nowhere out of the wind, so just set up and made the best of it, sitting on the ground.

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Managed 9 contacts on 40m and a single contact on 20m in about 20 minutes. Once again, not bad for a Tuesday afternoon.

You can see the RG316 being blown well away from the squid pole!

Summit 3 – VK2/IL-001

Finally, on Wednesday, we made a diversion on the drive back to VK5 and called into Mt Gibraltar. Again, this summit was chosen because it seemed like a fairly easy one to get to in the limited time we had, given that there is a road around the summit that is within the activation zone.

We drove around the summit and found a convenient parking spot near the side of the road that also had a track both up and down. Grabbed the gear, walked down and out of the activation zone, came back up across the road and onto a sparse rocky area with just enough places to set up.

A convenient flat rock would serve as an operating position, you can see the comms towers in the background at the summit.

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Just about ready to start, plugging the coax into the KX3.

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Once again, being a weekday, we decided to start out on 40m then also try 20m once the calls dried up. We had 13 contacts on 40m and again, just the 1 on 20m. Again, given that it was early afternoon on a Wednesday, I was pretty happy to get the contacts.

One of the contacts, Andrew, VK2UH invited us in for a coffee on our way past his QTH, which we did a few hours later.

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Anyone who has ever been up to this summit will know that it is not the most attractive, and this was the view out to the East from the operating position. At least the access was easy!

With these 3 summits I have pushed my Activator score to a massive 23 points, yep, maybe in a few years I’ll be up to the front left hoof of that goat 🙂 A big thanks to all of the chasers who make it worthwhile. As an aside, I was able to chase a few activators from the mobile as well – bumping my sloth count up just a little bit as well.

SOTA

The coat of arms activation

2014/10/10 vk5fo 1 Comment

.. or just some of the reasons why SOTA is so much fun!

On Wednesday evening, having finished work early, I grabbed my gear and ducked out for a quick Activation on Mt Gawler.

given it was still reasonably early, and even though the WSPR maps didn’t indicate an EU path, I gave a shout on 20M for a little while – There were a couple in there, but only managed to complete a contact with Don, G0RQL – for the 8th time from this summit.

Yet again, this summit surprised me – as when we were setting up, about 20 feet away in the scrub there was a Kangaroo just sitting there watching. I didn’t have anything other than the camera in my phone and I could not even see the kangaroo in the pictures I took.

It just kept grazing on the grass and keeping an eye on us for nearly an hour before it moved off, all the while working several VK stations on 40M, and a repeat contact when I gave a call on 30M.

As we were packing up, with the sun starting to set, we moved a little bit over the road towards the sunset – which was spectacular, and lo and behold, there were a couple of Emu’s wandering around in the Paddock amongst the Alpacas. One of then decided to check us out and came right up to the fence to check us out!

The emu that came up to the fence to check us out

I did grab a few pictures with my phone, but none of them were much good – But still thought I would share 1.

Mt Gawler sunset

And of course, the Sunset was not too bad either!

Mt Gawler sunset

And it did get better just as the sun hit the horizon.

Yeah, only a handful of contacts, but still one of the most enjoyable activation’s none the less.

Equipment

WSPR

2014/10/08 vk5fo 1 Comment

WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter is something that I recently discovered and have started to realize just how this real-time data can be used as a part of all other radio activity.

First off, WSPR is a series of low power – usually between 100mW and 5W beacons that around 500 Amateurs all over the world run. A WSPR station is usually one where you both TX and RX, and when you RX, you upload your reports to the wsprnet site. Now the beauty of this is that with a little bit of know-how on how it all works, you get a brilliant insight into the probable HF Bands and opening in near-real time, no predictions here – all real-world, right now reports.

I won’t go into great details on how it all works, but instead, I’ll give just enough info so you can learn for yourself how to use this data.

First off, jump on the site and go to the map page. Here, select a band, and then take a look at both the 30 minute and 10 minute maps for each bands that are of interest. If there are lines on the map, it indicates either a TX or RX path – but more on that shortly.

Check out the stations that are closest to you, make a note of the callsigns of a couple of them . we will use these callsigns as search parameters in the database. Go to the database, and click the specify the query parameters link. Here, put the given callsign in both the call and reporter box, select the band and time to drill down on some data!

Now, at first look, it does not mean a lot, but within the data there is a wealth of information. Just take the very first line, and we can see the date/time the station that is sending the report, the Received Signal (SNR), Grid square they are sending from, the TX power of the beacon, and finally your details.

WSPR beacons are 110.5 seconds long and are a weak signal mode, and can detect signals down to about -30db below the RX noise and all of this info is really important in understanding how we can use this data.

Lets look at the specifics of the first line of data -12b, and a 2W beacon. To determine if this might be a workable path, we need to do some basic maths. Now, to get this signal up to say, 3db over the noise floor or 15db, we can look at the 2W and add 15db to it – and we come up with a power level of around 60W. So, if you have a typical 100W transmitter, it is highly probable you would have a working path! If you listen, you can often hear signals that are around -6db, so saying 3db over the noise is a reasonable estimate of what is probably workable via SSB.

Now, if we take a bit of time, look at the maps, see where there are a lot of paths between general areas (eg, 20M lots of lines to either US or EU), look at the actual reports, do a bit of basic maths, and voila!

Now, finally, how does this help with portable operations, such as SOTA. to tell the truth, exactly the same! You just need to look at potential paths but this time based on QRP power levels you will be running from a summit, and take into consideration, that usually the noise floor is a lot less – like 10 or more DB lower, which you can take into consideration!

So, what does this mean? Well, before I go out, I take a quick look at the maps, all the bands that appear to be open and to where and give them a shot – If there is an indication of a particular path being open, then it is worth giving it a go!

If even 2 or 3 regular SOTA activators in each association put up a WSPR station running about 1W on the more popular SOTA bands (40M – thru 10M ), then this would quickly become a valuable tool for both activators and chasers alike. Just think that if we had say even 2 40M stations in all VK states we would quickly develop a picture that we could then additionally cross-reference to what it showed compared to what was worked – further validating the usefulness.

To this end, I have built a dedicated 0.5W WSPR transmitter – the QRPLabs Ultimate 3 Kit and Currently testing it. Once I am happy with it, I will be installing the required antennas and putting it into service. I will be installing it at a remote (to me) location, and hopefully, with a handful of other VK RX WSPR stations, it will prove to be a useful resource for monitoring real-time and also long-term trends of propagation.

A RX station is easy – use any receiver that you can interface to your PC – heck even an SDR with a HF up-converter can be used. Some people have also reported success in running multiple SDR’s on different bands on the same PC.

Yeah, you could go and look at the numerous predictions, but is it not more fun to measure them yourself?

Stay tuned, once I get my beacon in place there will be more details, but for now, look up the WSPR frequencies, and see if you can RX my beacon – It can be found on all bands 40-10M and beacons 3 times per hour per band. At the moment, it is running into a vertical and I have only had a limited success, but another antenna system is in the works.

Equipment, SOTA

Portable Station

2014/09/20 vk5fo 3 Comments

While out this morning on VK5/SE-013, I finally remembered to take a few photos of my setup, so here goes!

After sitting on the ground too many times, it has come down to this! A lightweight table – just big enough for the KX3, paper log and laptop (for the easy summits) -and best of all, got it on special for only $30!

This summit is a very easy one, and we have set up here, with the squid pole for the dipole tied up to a post just behind me. The 2nd set of headphones – yep – for 5RR who took the photos today. Earphones are an essential – they keep the ears warm on the cold summit, and if there is any wind you really need them to hear.

The headset just makes it easy – and the Yamaha CM-500 is a mid-priced headset that matches up with the KX3 pretty well – I always get great audio reports.

The station from the operating position – the walkstool can be seen, and for the astute, you will see the foot switch – the black disk on the ground near the corner of the table, which keeps both hands free for logging or tuning. Usually just have a 9aH SLAB for power – means we can go for about 5 hours between charges. The little blue box near the KX3 is the power conditioner – a great addition – it allows input from between 8-30V and you can set the output from 2-16V @ 6A (QS-1212CCBA 80W).

The whole lot, squid pole supporting the antenna, stools, table and bag to pack everything up in, ready for the next summit.

So, what does your portable station look like?

Oh, yeah, Forgot to mention, worked 40 stations on 3 bands and 3 S2S contacts in about 2 hours on a very nice morning.

SOTA

Multi-band activation

2014/09/14 vk5fo 1 Comment

After a fortnight ago, when we took VK5/SE-013 to surpass the 1K qso’s logged, it was almost an anti-climax last weekend to head back up on Saturday, Sunday and Monday evenings and work quite a few EU contacts on 20M including several S2S contacts as well.

Today, the noise at home was actually low enough and I managed to chase a few other summits from home!

With the band conditions even better this week, I had a little bit of time and got back out to the summit – with the aim of doing a walk from 10M down to 40M and see what I could work. When activating I normally only do 20 and then 40, but as long as there is enough time, I’ll give it a shot across other bands as well in the future.

So, I set up the dipole and wound it out to about 4M long each side, plugged in the KX3, hit the tune and made a few calls on 10M, while at the same time, self spotting. Nothing heard on 10M after about 10 minutes, so jumped down to 12M and again just hit the tune button again. Sent a spot, and again called for about 10 minutes with no takers.

So, dropped the dipole down a bit, and rolled out the dipole another meter or so on each end, put it back up, hit the tune button, and then went looking for a clear frequency on 15M. Again, self-spotted and put out a call. This is where it started to get interesting and I worked 10 stations over the next 15 minutes – including my first chaser from South Africa. When the calls stopped, another QSY this time down to 17M. Again, a push of the tune button, and self spot, and worked a couple more stations here as well.

Again, dropped the antenna and wound out the dipole to 5.5M a side for 20M. Back in the air, found a clear frequency and put up a spot and worked another 5 stations here.

It was starting to get cold and the sun was most definitely on the way down, so again, a quick extension of the dipole out for 30M. Again, find a quite frequency, hit the tune, self spot and call. And again, a few takers – this time no DX and just VK chasers.

As always, before leaving, I rolled out the dipole to the full length and spotted and called on 40M. I called for about 5 minutes without a reply and was about to give up – as Nigel, VK5NIG had been up here earlier in the day and worked most of the regular VK chasers for the day. But as luck would have it, I did get a few contacts, including a ZL chaser – which was another first for the day.

All in all, it was a quick activation, we tried 7 bands, worked stations on 5 of the bands, DX on 4 bands and had a few new countries in the chase today. So many “first’s” today – I logged the first 17M Contacts for the Summit – still a few bands to go to have contacts logged all bands, but another day.

As I worked down the bands, there were a couple of people whom I worked on more than 1 band, they were following the spots. I worked G0RQL on 15 and 20M, DL0CS also on 15 and 20M, DJ5AV on 15 and 17M, VK6NU on 15, 20 and 30M and ZS5J on 15 and 17M.

The total QSO count across the 5 bands where there were answers to my call (including the multiples) put 25 worked stations in the log.

With chasers across the bands, it was interesting to note how the signal reports were on the different bands, and a clear indication as to what the conditions were like today – certainly a lot better than they have been on the higher bands!

Again, another fun afternoon up on VK5/SE-013, and it just goes to show that even now with 10 activations of this summit under my belt, there is always something new to try – be it new bands or new countries to work, Now, the next big challenge for the regular activators is to get the activation count up from 72 to past 150 and into the world top 50 list.

VK5FO

3 days 3 new summits