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,…
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…
A homebrew 2m 144 MHz vertical 1/2 wave Coaxial Dipole antenna for your home QTH, SOTA or portable field operations/WICEN exercises. Elsewhere in amateur radio circles this antenna is known as a 2m Flower Pot Antenna. Materials: 7m length of 50 ohm RG58AU/CU Mil Spec coax 1 * 50 ohm BNC connector 2 * 1…
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…
During 2016 I undertook a personal SOTA challenge to activate and qualify all SOTA peaks on 70 cm 432.200 MHz USB or 439.000 MHz FM. More on the results of my 70 cm challenge later. For 2017 during which the predicted sunspot activity will be very low, I am setting myself a reasonable personal challenge.…
Exciting news, the Canberra DMR repeater was online late yesterday for experimentation and testing within VK. The Canberra Regional Amateur Radio Club (CRARC) has plans to refine the Talk Group (TG) settings for wider access. For the time being the repeater details are: Receive: 438.8125 Transmit: 431.8125 Colour Code: 1 Time Slot: 2 TG: 505…
This morning at 8:22 am this SOTA blog received its 100,000th view from a total of 36,604 unique visitors 🙂 Thanks everyone for taking an interest in Amateur Radio and the Summits on the Air (SOTA) awards program. 07:36 am 99,998 views from 36,599 visitors 07:58 am 99,999 views from 36,603 visitors 08:22 am 100,000…
Everyone needs a new challenge for 2016. My ambitious plan for 2016 is to qualify each SOTA peak on 430 MHz (70cm) either on 432 MHz SSB or 439.00 MHz FM simplex. To qualify each summit I will need 4 unique amateur radio contacts on either frequency or a mix of unique contacts on SSB…
