2025 marked the year that the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group returned to the Oceania DX Contest after taking several years break. The aim was to put VL5X, the club contest call sign back on the air, and give our newer members a chance to participate in a world class contest. As the group does not have current access to a permanent contest grade station, our efforts revolved around building a portable station that was as competitive as possible yet achievable with only a small window for construction.
Planning & Site Selection
The event planning began back in March, when we started looking for suitable sites. Multiple factors played a part, including accessibility, weather destruction risks, operating environment and HF propagation performance. The weather featured highly in these considerations, given the destruction of the station that occurred back in 2022 when a severe storm front blew over the site mid contest, destroying several antennas in the process. The ability to operate multiple 400W transmitting stations in close proximity was also critical to the success, as we were planning a MULTI-MULTI entry – the aim of which being to give as many operating opportunities to as many members as we could during the contest.
We considered various sites and how they would perform from a terrain and antenna height perspective.
We also studied propagation charts so we could plan which bands we should be looking at and when. We aimed to enter the contest as well equipped as we could.
Final Location
Our final location was chosen because it could achieve our propagation objectives, as well as comfortably housing the contest crew. One of our members owns a home atop Willunga Hill, which in the end is where we chose to play!
Equipment Plan
Antennas & Filters/Combiners
80m Band 1/4 wave vertical DK9IP Design – mounted on an 18m Spiderbeam pole
40m Band 4-square Phased Array – designed by Oly VK5XDX
20-10m Portable HexBeam – MW0JZE design on a 10m Spiderbeam Aluminium Tower
20-10m Spiderbeam (3el on 20/15m and 4el on 10m) on a 10m Spiderbeam HD Aluminium Mast
Our secret weapon was our set of VA6AM Filter Combiners for 20-10m which allowed us to run 3 stations on the one antenna.
VA6AM High Power Bandpass Filter / Combiner set
The Team
None of this gear achieves much without an operator team. We had a great turnout from the membership, with 13 operators taking turns running the station for the 24hrs of the contest. A huge thanks to VK5AKH, VK5CIA, VK5EDY, VK5FR, VK5GLD, VK5GR, VK5IR, VK5KT, VK5MN, VK5QI, VK5XDX, VK5ZM and VK5ZQV. We also had construction help additionally from VK5SFA, and site support thanks to VK5ABG.
The Result
So what did we achieve? From AREG’s perspective, we achieved our best ever score in the OCDX contest since we first participated in 2012. Our raw score was over 1.9 million points. This was despite what turned into some of the worst SSB contesting ionospheric conditions we have ever encountered. Much of Sunday’s daylight hours were lost due to extremely high absorption, leaving us calling often into dead bands for only 1-2 QSOs an hour. Its a credit to the team’s determination and perseverance to have scored so well.
In the end, the effort was worthwhile, with VL5X victorious in the Multi-Multi category for 2025. We just managed to hold off the team from T32AZ on Kiribati to retain first place in our category this year even after count-backs for scoring errors. A very happy outcome for our return to this event after a 3 year hiatus.
Thanks must go to the entire team who was involved in this activity. It was great to see so many AREG members get involved in what was a really great fun weekend!