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.…
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…
Good Friday 19 April 2019. Tom M1EYP in the UK has organised at Good Friday DX 30m CW S2S QSO Party, in addition Tom has invited 40m SSB participants. I have considered my options and decided to activate Mt Stromlo VK1/AC-043 for the first time this year, in doing so I will gain a single…
Wednesday 15 March 2017. SOTA activation of Mount McDonald VK1/AC-048 789 metres ASL on 20m Mount McDonald is 17 km west of Canberra GPO. Access to the summit is via a walking trail (3 km long) off Brindabella Road. For route details see this post. My plan is to activate Mount McDonald on 20m and…
Saturday 5 November 2016, Goorooyarroo VK1/AC-036 Early in the week I posted SOTA alerts for two 8 point SOTA peaks in the Brindabella Ranges, Devils Peak and Dingi Dingi Ridge. Early Saturday morning I was woken by the sound of strong winds gusting 45 km/h. I checked the Bureau of Meteorology forecast, yep Saturday would…
Friday 28 October 2016. During the week I posted a note to the SOTA Reflector seeking interest from fellow SOTA activators in Japan, Greece and Portugal for a Summit to Summit (S2S) QSO from the peak of Mt Stromlo VK1/AC-043 in Canberra, Australia’s Capital Territory. The effects of a recent coronal hole were lingering yesterday,…
Saturday 26 December 2015. Earlier today I noticed a SOTA alert posted by Herbert OE9HRV seeking VK Dx on 10m 28.477 MHz SSB. 2 months ago Herbert wrote to me suggesting I substitute my 10m 1/2 wave dipole for a 10m J-Pole. Herbert went even further than a recommendation, he mailed to me a complete…
Hi SOTA fans Friday, 21 August 2015. I took an opportunity after work to try out Mt Ainslie for SOTA DX. Operating a Yaesu FT-857D at 30 watts on 14.310 MHz proved successful for long path contacts with amateur radio operators in Europe and short path to Asia, in this case Japan. The DX session lasted…
Canberra – Isaacs Ridge VK1/AC-041 840 metres ASL During the week I posted a note on the SOTA reflector seeking interest in summit to summit contacts between Australia’s Capital Territory (VK1) and keen SOTA activators in Europe on Friday 13 March 2014, yes it’s Black Friday. I received three firm responses from Mike 2E0YYY…
A week ago Mike G6TUH invited me to join a new SOTA group on Facebook, which I did some days later. The site membership has familiar SOTA activators such as Mike 2E0YYY and Mikel EA2CW. One member of the group Brian N2BTD in New York posted a note expressing a great deal of interest…
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