Blogospheric Refraction

I’ve had a 40m inverted-V dipole set up along the side of our house for as long as I’ve had the HF set.  Prior to getting the ATU, I was restricted to 40m and 15m which are the resonant frequency bands.

Once I acquired an ATU, I found I was able to tune up 80m… albeit with some limitations in signal radiation.

The 40m dipole consisted of two 10m lengths of speaker wire running from the antenna mast on the house, running down to two plastic tent pegs hammered into the ground.  I suppose the wire was no steeper than about 40 degrees from the horizontal.  This worked okay, but it had some annoying nulls, a notable one towards Ipswich… I tried a purely horizontal configuration, but found the nulls to be even worse.

The proper dimensions for a G5RV, is about 16m each leg, and about 8m of balanced feeder to form a “matching section”.  Well, I couldn’t do much about the length of the matching section, but I figured I might as well try extending the legs of the antenna a bit — nothing ventured nothing gained.  I added the extra 6m to each leg, moved the legs out as far apart as I can.  I tried tuning it up that afternoon, and things seemed to be okay… so I left the set on 3.600MHz LSB and switched it off ready for the AWNOI net.

On calling in, I asked about my signal strength after explaining the changes made.  Well, apparently my signal was a vast improvement on last week’s signal.  A S8~S9 signal (with the transceiver momentarily cutting back power) is now a S9+20dB to many stations.

I haven’t tried other bands yet… but this is a promising start. 🙂

Update: Tried tuning it up on the other bands… the results:

Band__Test_Frequency__Power__SWR__Notes______________________________________________
80m   3.599MHz        50W    2.5  High SWR is expected for a non-resonant antenna.
40m   7.074MHz        50W    1.2
20m   14.165MHz       50W    1.9  Heard a station at 14.170MHz just as I was going
                                  to tune up, which is promising also.
15m   21.190MHz       15W    1.9  This set does not like these bands (15m & 10m)!
10m   28.450MHz       25W    1.6  Might need to consider using the CB whip for these.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Well… this week for me has been a week of firsts for me.

Last Sunday, I managed to make contact with Jason ZL2FT on the North Island of New Zealand.  We were communicating using SSB on 40m — this is the first time I’ve successfully heard and contacted an overseas station.

Okay, New Zealand isn’t exactly a great distance away, but it’s a great start. 🙂

Tuesday, I was listening on 40m, when Rolf DK2MH came crackling in from Germany.  I didn’t try to make contact this time, but there was an abundance of stations trying to work him locally — mostly eastern VK.

Today, I made my first PSK31 contact … once again, on 40m.  I chatted with Laurie VK3AMA for a few minutes.  Nice to be able to put all the theory I had learned at uni regarding PSK to practical use.  I was using BPSK31, and transmitting up to 80W at one point.  (Overkill I know, I did trim it back a little.)

Guess now it’s time to actually get some work done. 😉

The WIA sent me a very welcome letter today.  As of today, I now have a Standard amateur radio license which entitles me to…

• Power: 100W PEP for SSB and CW (I’ll have to check for FM)
• Bands: 80m, 40m, 20m*, 15m, 10m, 6m*, 2m, 70cm, 23cm (* new bands)
• Digital Modes! (timely too … we’re studying various digital modes at university)

If you wish to catch up… the new callsign is VK4MSL.  And yes, it’s kinda hard now to not say FSJL when you’ve been so used to saying it the last few months. 😉

I’ve got some ideas that I’d like to try with digital modes, and also at some point I’d like to do some SSTV too… Priority at this time still is with my university studies, but I’ll be hitting up 20m and doing a bit of digital work in the coming months.

Well, yesterday I received my first QSL card. About a month ago, I was tuning around on 40m and noticed there was a station calling CQ. A station with what I thought was a rather unusual callsign, VI2AMW60.
I sat there for a moment racking my brain trying to think what country VI was… in the meantime I decided to respond. I soon realised okay, the contact wasn’t overseas — but it was a special event station.

We exchanged details briefly and the chap at the other end asked if I collected QSL cards. I normally don’t bother about QSL cards, but since this is a special event station — I figured why not. 😉 He directed me to QRZ.com where the address details were mentioned. I sat down and designed a QSL card to send off. The card I sent off is shown below.

My QSL card design (click to view enlarged in gallery)

I wasn’t expecting anything back… there was mention on the QRZ.com page about including a self-addressed stamped envelope or some such. I wasn’t sure whether that only applied to overseas or who that applied to. Much to my surprise however, I received the following card in the post yesterday (again click to enlarge).  This shows the front and back of the card I received.

My first ever QSL card (click to enlarge)

Well, I’m very happy to have received that card. For what it’s worth, this may be the first and last QSL card I receive under this callsign, since I hope to hear from a WIA assessor about upgrading my license to a Standard license — and with that, I’ll be getting a new callsign. Time will tell there. But to the people of the Illawarra Amateur Radio Society, I thank you for your QSL card. 🙂

Hi all…

I’ve been busy lately, thus haven’t had a lot of time to post on here… but I’ll save the full details of where I’ve been for another post.  People might recall my earlier attempt at a homebrew 2m/70cm whip antenna for a handheld radio.

At present, I’m out at Laidley (actually about 2km outside… near the Vaux and Lowe street intersection) and tried hitting a number of repeaters on 2m and 70cm.  Depending on where I stand, I seem to be reaching these repeaters in that, I get a response when I hit and release PTT:

• VK4RGC Mt. Tambourine 146.700MHz (-600kHz offset) — S7, have to stand in a specific spot
• VK4RDD Toowoomba 146.750MHz (-600kHz offset) — S9
• VK4RZD Mt. Perseverence 438.050MHz (-5MHz offset) — S2, too difficult for practical use (shame since it’s part of the WICEN/QDG network)

The ones I definitely can reach from here however…

• VK4RIL Laidley 147.100MHz (-600kHz offset) — S9, no surprises there
• VK4RAI Ipswich (The Knobby, Glenmorgan Vale) 146.900MHz (-600kHz offset) — S9, have to stand in specific points.

The big surprise however, was this one… VK4RAX.  I can reach it from The Gap no problems with a rooftop antenna and 5W.  Tonight however, I was receiving it S7~S9 (depending on where I stood) and managed to make contact with a few people.  Standing on tiptoe helped — as I haven’t as yet gotten around to building an extension lead that will make the on-hat antenna practical (the coax I’ve got is a little inflexible).

Apparently the signal was quite scratchy, but this is to be expected for a 5W handheld at this distance.  The image below (taken from Google Maps) shows the approximate direct path for the signal and the distance — click for an enlargement.

I’m hardly breaking any world records here, but this is by far my personal best on this handheld.