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Saturday 16 June 2018. The weather around Canberra is cold wet and windy as a deep low, 994 hPa passes over south-east Australia. Today’s top ambient temperature is 9 degrees C while the feels-like is a chilly 2 degrees C. Tomorrow’s forecast is for a chance of snow down to 800 m ASL. My QTH…
Saturday 4 August 2018. Radio amateurs in Australia’s capital city Canberra (VK1) are planning a simultaneous activations of VK1 and nearby VK2 SOTA summits, kicking off at 09:00 local (2300 UTC, 3 August 2018) for operations over 2.5 to 3 hours. This radio amateur event is known locally as the VK1 ‘Winter’ SOTA QSO Party,…
Sharing with my SOTA followers. Repost from my SOTA UHF – SHF blog covering 23 and 13cm activations. For your entertainment the post includes a 12 minute video. via SOTA – 2.4 GHz 150 km Summit to Summit 73, Andrew VK1AD
Portable 4 element 2m (145 MHz) DL6WU Yagi for SOTA weighing 460 grams (1 lb) Materials: 4 metre length of 3.1 mm aluminium rod (Alucom) 1 metre length of 27 mm water pipe 2 * plastic end caps 5 * 25 mm PPR plastic pipe clamps (ebay) 3 to 5 metres of RG58CU Mil Spec…
This morning I assembled a SOTABeams 4-Way 12 volt PowerPole connector box. This little beauty will form part of my SOTA kit. The SOTABeams kit includes all parts, plastic case and a lazer-cut front panel. Assembly time is approximately 30 minutes including time to make a mug of tea. Until now I have used a…
For the VK1 SOTA birthday event I activated Mt Stromlo VK1/AC-043 on 2m simplex 146.5 FM. Due to a previous commitment I hadn’t made any serious plans to activate multiple bands (HF and VHF), so I went with the option of a simple activation on 2m FM. I joined enthusiastic VK activators, Bill VK1FWBK at…
My ever-reliable ‘hasn’t missed a beat in 5 years’ SOTA workhorse is retiring in the next two weeks. 😦 With 106,000 km on the dial and 5 years of SOTA travels under the bonnet, it’s time to say farewell to the 2012 Skoda 4×4 2-litre diesel Yeti. Wow what a wonderful car the Skoda…
Summary of SOTA activity in VK by Radio Frequency Band for 2017 Below is an extract of the SOTA database report showing the 2017 Top 10 All Mode VK SOTA activator results by radio frequency band. Last year I published the 2016 results by the default report output ‘Activator Points’. Rather than focus on…
