Oceania DX Contest

Members of the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group (AREG) will be activating the club call VK5ARG this weekend (4-5th October) for the Oceania DX SSB Contest. We will be operating from Younghusband, approx. 80km east of Adelaide, SA.

AREG will be entering the contest as a MULTI-ONE team, and the main operators will be Matt VK5ZM, Mark VK5QI, Josh VK5JO and Theo VK5MTM. We will mainly be focusing on the 20m band, but hope to work a few VKs on 40m also.

Hope to hear you on the bands!

VK5 Conservation/National Parks Award 1 year Anniversary

The weekend of the 5th and 6th of April was the one year anniversary of the VK5 Parks award, which encourages portable operation from South Australia’s National & Conservation parks. ‘Activators’ operate portable from within parks, while ‘Hunters’ make contacts with activators. Awards are available for both activators and hunters, and also for making park-to-park contacts.

Andy VK5AKH and Mark VK5QI decided to give the AREG club callsign (VK5ARG) a workout by activating as many parks as possible in a single day. They set off Sunday morning at 7:30AM, and by 8PM had activated 20 parks. Emphasis was placed on fast activations, with about 5 contacts made per park.

The parks activated were:

  1. Morialta Conservation Park
  2. Black Hill Conservation Park
  3. Montacute Conservation Park
  4. Giles Conservation Park
  5. Horsnell Gully Conservation Park
  6. Ferguson Conservation Park
  7. Clealand Conservation Park
  8. Mount George Conservation Park
  9. Kenneth Stirling Conservation Park
  10. Mylor Conservation Park
  11. Mark Oliphant Conservation Park
  12. “The Knoll” Conservation Park
  13. Belair National Park
  14. Marino Conservation Park
  15. Hallett Cove Conservation Park
  16. Onkaparinga River Conservation Park
  17. Moana Sands Conservation Park
  18. Aldinga Scrub Conservation Park
  19. Kyeema Conservation Park
  20. Mount Magnificent Conservation Park

Some pictures from the day are shown below:

John Moyle Memorial Field Day 2014 – VK5ARG

This year for the John Moyle Memorial field day 10 members from the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group (AREG) and 3 Members from the Elizabeth Amateur Radio Club (EARC) decided to combine efforts under the AREG club call-sign VK5ARG.
The Para-Wirra recreation pack, 30km north-east of Adelaide, was chosen for its low noise floor and relatively close location to the city. Theo, VK5MTM has produced a video showing the events of the weekend:

A great weekend was had by all, and we totalled 927 contacts across the HF bands.Thank you to those who attended, lent us gear and to all those stations we worked. Please submit your log and we hope to see you next year.