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8 January 2023. In 2023 VK1 is celebrating 10 years of the amateur radio Summits on the Air (SOTA) awards program which for VK1 officially commenced on 1 February 2013. To help celebrate the 10 year milestone our esteemed local VK1 SOTA Manager, Wade VK1MIC sought and gained permission from the Australian Communications and Media…
Since building a 6m coaxial dipole in January 2016 and later a 2m coaxial dipole in February 2018, I have often thought how a monoband half-wave vertical coaxial dipole would perform on 28 MHz. Summer is here in the southern hemisphere, therefore now is an excellent time to construct a 10m half-wave coaxial dipole for…
This 2m yagi antenna is light on the back-pocket and relatively easy to construct. This project starts with an old VHF TV antenna purchased from a local ‘Green’ recycle depot for $5.00 AUD. The repurposed TV antenna was a Phased Array comprised of two aluminium booms and four elements or eight 1/4 wave elements. Each…
Saturday 13 March 2021 – working DX SOTA chaser stations in New Zealand and Indonesia, SSB voice mode. Equipment – Yaesu 2m HT, Yaesu FT817ND, 7m telescopic pole, homebrew 40/20m inverted V linked dipole and an experiment with the use of a 10m length of RG-174 coax. I normally carry a 10m length of RG58AU.…
Homebrew HF EFHW antenna for low power SOTA, Parks and field day events. Using a 19.8 metre length of wire mounted as an inverted V, a non-resonant 6.8 metre counterpoise, this antenna is resonant in the 40/20/15/10m bands. At 19.8 metres long, the VSWR is less than 1.5:1 in the voice segments. If your primary…
Tuesday 13 October 2020 – I noticed the Australian Space Weather report MUF and T index were reporting ‘enhanced’ conditions while the K index was close to zero, excellent! I checked the local weather forecast, which with the exception of Thursday, indicated rain for the week. Thursday it is!! Plan: Thursday 15 October 2020, activate…
At First use of a ZS6BKW antenna 1 February 2018, I mounted the ZS6BKW antenna on a 10 metre (32.8 feet) telescopic pole. For SOTA purposes the ZS6BKW antenna (enhanced G5RV) is quite versatile allowing operation on 80m through to 6m with the exception of 30 and 15m. With all the benefits invested this antenna,…
Saturday 23 November 2019 – I had planned to participate in the WIA VHF-UHF field day, however the forecast temperature is 33 degrees C (hot) and we have a thick red dust haze (hot northerly winds blow red dust from central Australia) which isn’t good for the respiratory system. So the plan for today is…
Saturday 16 May 2019. I am joined by Andrew VK1DA for a joint activation of Booroomba Rocks VK1/AC-026 at 1382m ASL in Namadgi National Park. Starting from Booroomba Rocks car park, the ascent to the summit is 267 vertical metres over 2.4 km taking one hour. Andrew plans to qualify the summit using CW in…
Homebrew 2m/70cm duplexer for 23 and 13cm SOTA activations. Why buy one when you can make your own? All components are mounted on a single sided copper clad board. I will use my FT-817 at 1 watt to drive the 23 and 13cm transverters via the duplexer. The duplexer will permit instant band chages. SG-Lab…
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