Next Meeting: Parks ‘n’ Peaks Operations with Paul VK5PAS

AREG is always looking for avenues to encourage amateurs out into the field to operate their stations. One of the unique ways to do this is to go and operate from a conservation park. Several awards systems have been established to promote this type of portable operation. These have been very effective in stimulating activity on the HF bands domestically particularly during daylight hours on 20 and 40m.

There are various forms of these awards including Summits On The Air, World Wide Flora and Fauna and other National Parks awards both in Australia and abroad. Paul VK5PAS has been a major champion of this type of operation and in particular is the founder of the VK5 National & Conservation Parks Award.

http://www.vk5parks.com/about-the-award.html

Sample VK5 Parks Award Certificate

At AREG’s next meeting on Friday June 17th, Paul VK5PAS will give a presentation on the Parks ‘N’ Peaks movement and the VK5 award in particular.

Everyone is most welcome to attend. The meeting will be held at:

Reedbeds Community Hall
Phelps Crt, Fulham

The doors will open at 7.45pm and the presentation will get underway at 8.00pm sharp.

After the meeting a short debrief will be given on the outcomes from the River Paddling Marathon that many AREG members are involved with this weekend.

Log Book Of The World

In addition to Parks n Peaks, Paul is now able to assist with the certification process for LogBook of the World. We hope to hear more about how to become registered for LOTW from Paul during the meeting as well.

VK5ARG Oceania DX Contest 2015 Results

Well, the AREG has wound up it’s activities sidebannerat Para Wirra
Recreation Park for this year’s contest. A great deal of fun was had by everyone to participated, even by those who operated under physical duress (two members could hardly walk).

A big thanks to everyone who took part and operated or provided support for the event. In particular (and if we’ve missed you out please let us know and we’ll add you to this list) those who took part in operating the station included: VK5AKH, VK5ZM, VK5QI, VK5KX, VK5FSKS (who flew in from VK3), VK5GR, VK5JO, VK5MTM, VK5UP, and we believe that VK5FGRY was spotted sitting at a few consoles however we’re not sure if he transmitted or not this year (*grin*).

With the Para Wirra CP being so close to Adelaide we were also fortunate to have a large number of visitors which included; Kim VK5FJ, Arno VK5ZAR, Paul VK5JG and Dennis VK5FDEN, Cary VK5CD, Peter VK5APR, Louis VK5FLY and Jess, Wendy, Dean VK5FAIR and Sally VK5FSAM,  Brenton VK5BZ, Ben VK5BB, Darin VK5IX and Glenys plus boys, Sharon FSAW and the Moo, Allan VK5MAK, Bob VK5FO and Ray VK5RR.

We also must thank Arno VK5ZAR and Gary VK5FGRY who helped keep the troops fed manning the BBQ and keeping the ants at bay as well as Sharon VK5FSAW who provided dinner on Sunday night.   We must also thank all of the visitors that rang ahead and checked if we needed anything, with the weather so warm the bags of ice, drinks and loaves of additional bread were gratefully received.

A big thankyou again to the rangers of Para Wirra Recreation Park (Steve and Mel!) who graciously allowed us to conduct the event inside the park for the 3 days. To find a site so close to Adelaide with such a low HF noise floor is a wondrous thing.

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The Results?

Overall our tentative scores were:

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[table “” not found /]

Band by Band

80/160m: With changes to the radios this year, it was fantastic to see the contacts and multipliers achieved out of the low band station. Peter VK5KX and the low band crew achieved contacts into ZL on 160m and into the USA on 80m. Well done!

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40m: was hard going this year. We lacked enough punch to be heard often in Europe and that cost us many contacts in the early hours of the morning. We did get a few contacts into that part of the world but often it was through multiple repeats and perseverance. The auto keyers got a work over and between Josh VK5JO, Andy VK5AKH, Grant VK5GR, Matt VK5ZM and Mark VK5QI plus other relief operators, we ground out a solid score. The tube amp and dipole did well to the USA – but the fixed orientation wasn’t helping our cause for Europe. More work and ideas planned for this station next year :-)`

20m: at times flew and at others was a grind. Again, punch to get over the European QRM made prefix chasing hard work although a solid result was still achieved with the Elecraft K-line and the Hex Beam. With 40m and 20m being co-located teams were taking turns at each station making further contributions to both stations.

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15/10m: The surprise this year was 15m. We again had a Elecraft K-line and a 3-band Spider beam which we ran for the John Moyle Field Day. With that setup and the ionosphere playing the game the crew manning 15m had a huge amount of success. Long runs of Japanese stations as well as a beautiful opening into Europe Saturday night brought a sparkle to Matt VK5ZM, Theo VK5MTM and high band crew’s eyes.

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Conclusion

All in all, a great result, a lot of fun and look out for AREG again next year!    Meanwhile, ideas for improvements to the station are already circulating, and we wait with bated breath to see how we placed.

A big thank you to the OCDX contest organizing committee for staging the event too. It certainly gave our club the excuse to get out and play portable “Amateur Radio” for the long weekend.

73’s de VK5ARG

VK5ARG entering Oceania DX Contest: Oct 3rd/4th PORTABLE

Ocdx-logo-header

11080486_10152772912846188_3502356878582205362_oNext Weekend is the Oceania DX Contest, SSB section. Members of the AREG will be activating the Club Call sign VK5ARG for this event from the Para Wirra Recreation Park, north east of Adelaide. The OceaniaDX contest provides a great opportunity for Oceania stations to get on the air as there is lots of activity in our region. Whats more, the DX chasers from around the world will be actively looking for Oceania! Hopefully the propagation will favour VK5. More information on the OCDX contest can be found via the WIA website.

Contest Times: 08:00 UTC (17:30hrs ACST) Saturday 3 October to 08:00 UTC (18:30hrs ACST) Sunday 4 October 2015  (Yes Daylight savings starts this weekend too!)

AREG welcomes all amateurs with an Para Wirra Park Mapinterest in portable field stations and contesting to come on up to the park and visit us over the weekend. Entry to the park will cost $10 / vehicle for a one time fee for the weekend.

While the park closes at dusk, the radio club has sought and obtained special permission from the park rangers to remain in the park overnight. To find our operating location, enter the park from the main gate off Humbug Scrub Road, proceed past the the park office then past North Oval until you reach the toilet blocks, picnic shelters and open paddock at the end of the bitumen.OCDX-StationLocationMap-2015

More than just contesting!

Saturday Afternoon prior to the contest AREG will be having a HF activity afternoon with a mixture of SSB and FreeDV operation on both 20m and 40m. This will be another great opportunity to test FreeDV. The VK5ARG team will be monitoring the FreeDV QSO finder, and posting regular blog updates as the afternoon evolves. Activity is planed from 1500-1700 Local time but may start earlier depending on interest.

Theo VK5MTM operating 20m

Theo VK5MTM operating 20m

Update: Friday 2nd October – Construction Begins….

The crew have arrived and are studying their blank canvas. Hmmm how to decorate this paddock with antennas? Lets put up the 40m antenna over here!

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VI5ANZAC AREG Operation – Activity Summary

AREG has now reviewed all of the activity we were able to undertake as part of the commemorative activation of VI5ANZAC, remembering 100 years since the ANZAC force landed on the shores of Gallipoli in World War One. In total, the AREG team worked a total 1290 QSOs over 10 Bands, 48 DXCC entities, 43 US States, 21 CQ Zones, and 40 IOTA in the spirit of fostering international friendship and peace.

Band QSOs
160m 2
80m 12
40m 412
20m 364
17m 44
15m 235
12m 16
10m 194
2m 6
70cm
5

You can see here how far our signals reached.

[wpgmza id=”3″]

The highlights of the activation for us were working a number of the Turkish special event stations! It was great to make these contacts.

Turkey Stations Worked 2We also made contact with many of the Australian VIxANZAC stations during the weekend.

VI$ANZAC

Detailed information on the locations we worked is available from the following links:

AREG would like to thank the Wireless Institute of Australia for all of the efforts they have made to arrange for and coordinate the state based commemorative callsigns. This event remembering  the 100th anniversary of the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War One is certainly one of international significance. Through the global friendship of amateur radio and our communications with stations across the globe, we hope that by putting these stations on air that we have strengthened global peace through remembering the impact and abomination of war.

image_1_hiresFinally, look out for more activations of VI5ANZAC from other clubs across South Australia throughout the rest of the year..

Details are available on the WIA Website.

 

VI5ANZAC Thursday 30th April Results

The last evening of operating VI5ANZAC by members of AREG has now come and gone. This operation was headed up by Theo VK5MTM and covered a wide range of bands as well as some digital modes including PSK63, CW and RTTY. Here is Theo’s description of the evening (relayed from his Facebook accoiunt).

Last night I had the pleasure of operating the special event callsign VI5ANZAC from my house.

Being a special event callsign brings much demand for amateur radio operators (hams) all over the world to “work” or make contact with the special event station.

All up I made 134 contacts across Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, Russia, Spain, Wales, Ukraine, England, Germany, Lithuania, Belgium, France, Netherlands, USA, Ireland, Isle of Man, Slovenia, Azores and Switzerland.

VI5ANZAC has been “activated” by different hams everyday this week via roster and I am extremely grateful to have had this opportunity.

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Attached is a snippet of audio one of my “pile-ups” of several European stations all calling me at the same time to make contact with me.

My station is quite modest with only 100 watts of transmitter power and a basic antenna made from speaker wire strung across my backyard so I am extremely happy with my results.

The following is some of the statistics from Theo’s activation:

SSB FM PSK63 RTTY CW
10M 11
20M 69 3
40M 43 2 5
2M 1
Sub Totals 112 1 11 5 5 Total Q’s 134

A copy of the log from this activation can be accessed here!

 

VI5ANZAC Wednesday 29th April Results

K3 on black_760I had the pleasure of activating the VI5ANZAC special event call sign as a single operator station on Wednesday the 29th of April from my home QTH in Highbury South Australia.

I managed to get home from work at a decent hour, get the family commitments out of the way and then sit down at the Radio and call CQ.  I started on 40m at 20:00 ACST using my trust Elecraft K3 plus borrowed KPA500 running 200W and a resonant mono-band dipole.  I worked a number of local and interstate stations from VK2, VK3, VK4 and VK5.  I fell out of the chair when I heard a Japanese station in there calling.  The noise and QRM on 40m wasn’t brilliant making communications difficult at times.

I switched to 20m at 21:00 ACST and continued beaming East using 250W.   Again I worked a number of local and interstate stations from VK2, VK3, VK4, VK5 and VK6 and now the DX stations started with stations from Canada, the USA, Finland and Japan being logged.   Propagation into Europe short path late in the evening didn’t eventuate on 17m, 15m or 10m which was unfortunate.

In total I logged 44 QSO’s on two bands over a three and a half our period, not a bad night for some fun an excitement.  Here’s the breakdown of the stations worked;

[table “” not found /]

All logs have been submitted to the WIA for EQSL processing.  Thanks to everyone that made last night a lot of fun activating a VI5 callsign from home.

73, Matthew VK5ZM

VI5ANZAC Tuesday 28th April Results

AREG has been looking for many and varied opportunities to activate the VI5ANZAC callsign during our time allocation this week. Tuesday evening (28th April) saw a small group of us put the special event call on air with a QRP portable activation from Morialta Conservation Park.This was seen as a nice contrast to the QRO operation carried out over the weekend near Mannum (which was very successful with over 1000 contacts).

DSC_0006The QRP operation was lead by Bob VK5FO, Two HF stations were established plus a VHF/UHF operation later in the evening (taking advantage of the elevated position above the Adelaide metropolitan area). As the operation qualified for conservation park also being activated, Bob invited the founder of the VK5 Parks award, Paul VK5PAS to also attend and join in the fun.

Operation  was planned on 20m, 40m, 80m and 160m as well as 2m and 70cm FM. The only variable during the planning beyond our control was going to be the weather. Fortunately the weather gods smiled on us and it was a beautiful (if a bit cold) still evening.

On Tuesday afternoon, Bob VK5FO met Gary, VK5FGRY on site at around 17:00 local time and we started getting set up for the evening. A quick review of where to set up antenna’s and we got started.

DSC_0007

Bob VK5FO and Gary VK5FGRY

Paul VK5PAS arrived as we were setting up and assisted with the final details and we had the station ready to go and started calling at around and the first contact was logged at 08:49UTC.

DSC_0013

Andy (front) and Paul (back) operating the 2 stations

Just as we got underway, Andy, VK5AKH arrived, and Ray VK5RR arrived about 20 minutes later.The initial flurry on 40m was to be expected and we worked at a steady pace, rotating thru the operators on 40m for the next 90 minutes or so.   As the calls dried up on 40m we wound down the calling somewhat and 40m did in fact close out for all local contacts as well.  We could hear quite a bit of DX, but not work it.

The 2nd station started out on 20m and it was very slow – as feared, we had only just caught the tail end of 20m and had just a handful of contacts.

DSC_0017

Bob VK5FO operating with Ray VK5RR and Gary VK5FGRY

Given the conditions, we decided to move the 2nd station over to 80M earlier than we had initially planned and started calling there as well.  It was a slow and steady trickle of takers on 80m and we had an unusual request – could we try 160m!

Well, this was a bit of a challenge in itself as we were not at all prepared to have any sort of antenna on top band, but being challenged, we jury-rigged an EFHW as an extension onto the end of 1 of the 80M dipole elements, hit the tune button on the KX3 and managed to get it to tune! Two contacts was the result, one in Adelaide and one in Mt Gambier – worth the effort!

The 2 stations for this operation were both KX3 Transceivers  with a headset running 10 watts on SSB, each set up with a laptop for logging.

DSC_0015Grant, VK5GR was a very late arrival and his plan was to set up and see how many local contacts we could get on 2m and 70cm to add to the mix.After announcements on every repeater within ~100km a further 10 contacts were added to the logs on 146.55 and 439.025.

Once everything really slowed down, we decided to call it quits just on 21:30 local time (12:00 UTC) and started pulling the station down.  Within 30 minutes we had everything down and packed up, with the final task to check the logs and upload them.

The final tally for the Tuesday Evening QRP* activation  (QRP on HF) was as follows.

Total contacts logged:  73

[table “” not found /]

In the mix we had 1x US, 2 x ZL and remaining VK1 (VI1ANZAC), VK2, VK3, VK4, VK5, VK6 and VK7 -so a good representation right across the country, and we only missed on getting a VK8 in the logs.

Operators for the evening

VK5FO, Bob
VK5PAS, Paul
VK5AKH, Andy
VK5RR, Ray
and Grant VK5GR (VHF/UHF)

Without the awesome logistical support from Gary VK5FGRY we would not have been as comfortable in the heated tent!

Bob (l) Andy (mid) and Paul (r) in the heated operating tent
Bob (l) Andy (mid) and Paul (r) in the heated operating tent

A big thanks to all the chasers who make such an activation even more enjoyable, and yes, all of the logs will be uploaded to WWFF in the coming days as the HF operation was compliant with VKFF and from a recognized park.

Thanks To Paul for the photos from the Evening’s Event.

More details can be obtained from Bob VK5FO and Paul VK5PAS websites!

AREG activation of VI5ANZAC 25th – 30th April 2015

The Amateur Radio Experimenters Group will be participating in the WIA organised special event callsign activation of VI5ANZAC. The major commemoration is on the 25th April 2015, which is when Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli, marking 100 years since our nation’s involvement in WWI.

The club has secured the window from 0000UTC (9:30am CST) Friday 24th April through to 2359UTC 30th April (9:30am CST Friday 1st May) to activate the callsign. After interest was also expressed from the Elizabeth Amateur Radio club to operate portable from an RSL hall on ANZAC day, AREG has cooperated and agreed to EARC operating the callsign up until 12.00pm CST on April 25th, so that operators from both clubs can share in the experience.

The principle goal of AREG with the callsign is to contact Turkey on HF after 12:00pm CST (0230UTC) on the 25th of April (Anzac Day) as well as provide an easily reachable signal across VK/ZL (and all points in between). A large construction project is underway at one of the club members stations aimed at installing a 3 element 40m beam and 4 element 20m beam in time for the event. The AREG also intends for it’s members to activate it as often as possible from AREG members stations thereafter within the club’s operating window on HF and VHF/UHF as far as possible.

More details of AREG’s exact plans will be released closer to the event. At this stage, members are asked to contact the committee to place their details on the club roster for activating VI5ANZAC between Sunday 26th April and Friday 1st May 9:30am.