A number of AREG members have headed to the 2nd QTH of Chris VK5CP to activate the club callsign VK5ARG in the CQ WPX SSB Contest this weekend!
The WPX Contest is based on an award offered by CQ Magazine for working all prefixes. Held on the last weekend of March (SSB) and May (CW), the contest draws thousands of entries from around the world.
For details of the contest, the rules, background and other information, go to the CQWPX Website.
The MonstIR Yagi
VK5ARG Results
Now that the contest has concluded, VK5ARG can report that they have worked 957 contacts for a total of 1,660,662 points. By band the results are:
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The following members were involved in the event:
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All up a worthy effort from VK5ARG. Best of luck in the rankings guys, but most of all we hope you had a lot of fun!
Theo VK5MTM: Operating the AREG Club Callsign like a boss in the WPX
AREG members fielded 5 stations in the contest this year. This was a change of direction for the club’s participation which had revolved around building a single mega-station the past couple of years. The plan was to put more stations on air, thus providing more contact opportunities! VK5AKH, VK5MTM, VK5KX, VK5CP and VK5GR took up the challenge, and a challenge it turned out to be.
While the “atmospheric” weather was ideal in South Australia, the ionospheric weather was anything but. As the event unfolded, HF conditions deteriorated and contacts became challenging with a solar Coronal Mass Ejection around 0900UTC making things difficult.
T-Index Map courtesy Bureau of Meteorology Space Weather Services Showing conditions during the JMMFD 2016
None the less, contacts were still there to be had, just not on the higher bands.
The following are some of the notes from the various member stations that were active over the weekend! General comments are that it has been loads of fun.
VK5AKH’s Efforts
From Andy: Thanks to all stations that were on the other end of my 320QSOs across 40,20 &15m while portable for the JMMFD. It was the first time in 6 months+ I have had some quality HF time since moving from a house with a tribander and antenna farm into a inner city townhouse with no ham radio. Was a great feeling to be back on the bands and a reminder that having to go portable to play HF is not a bad thing. 73 catch you in the next contest”
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VK5MTM’s Efforts
Theo entered the 6 hour section today running on battery power from Morialta conservation park. One of his comments about his station was that “I got 5 hours, 20 minutes from my little LifePo battery today (with lots of TXing and calling CQ contest) running at 50 watts all day until my battery alarm went spastic as soon as it hit 11.7 volts, then I called it quits, packed up and went home. The 857D performed incredibly well. Even in crowded condx, the bandpass filter once narrowed down a bit surprised me how effective it was.”
Theo made 92 QSO’s. His observations were that the bands were very quiet in his opinion compared to other years and conditions were not fantastic but none the less he had a great day and really enjoyed it.
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Theo has also made a video of his activity!
VK5GR’s Efforts
Grant went portable under (almost) his own steam for the first time in a HF contest this year, operating from Tickera on the eastern shore of Spencer Gulf. Here is Grant’s report:
“Activity was also a bit slow, but I was also still evaluating my Buxcomm TF2D broadband antenna, trying to decide if it is the right antenna for the job or not. On 40m it appeared to work well, but not so good on the other bands (although the disturbed ionosphere may have impacted that impression this weekend). On 80m, however, it was clear that while on receive it seemed pretty good, transmit is definitely compromised.
Fortunately I had borrowed some wire and a balun from Chris VK5SA very late Friday night. So, in the face of virtually no contacts being made on 80m, I pulled down the TF2D and constructed a resonant 80m dipole at 9pm on Saturday mid contest. The decision was, either do this or go to bed because no one could hear me!
The gamble paid off handsomely! 80m sprung to life with all VK call areas except VK8/9/0 being worked. For almost 4 hours there was a continuous stream of stations, to the point that 80m was on the verge of having a higher contact tally than all of the other bands combined for a while! In the early morning (5.30am), 40m elements were added which helped the transmit performance on that band as well. All up, I managed 217 contacts over the 24hrs.
I also wish to say a big thank-you to Peter VK5KX who loaned me a generator so that I could enter the portable section of the contest, and to Andy VK5AKH who loaned me the portable tower – without which I would have been just throwing things in trees and hoping for the best!
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VK5KX’s efforts
Peter VK5KX also hit the field and relayed the following photos of his location on the ranges east of Balaklava.
From Peter: “We were intending to operate from ‘The Rocks’ just south of Balaklava, we got there and where I had intended to operate from had a nice new gate installed across the access track and it was locked, the other place has been blocked by big boulders, so The Rocks was a bust.
Drove into Balaklava and had a hamburger for lunch (huge), left there heading for the hills in the direction of Auburn, went thru a town called Halbury then saw a likely looking track on the right heading to the crest of a hill, went up this goat track for a few kms and settled on a place in the middle of nowhere (S34º 08.27′, E138º 34.06’).
Set the operating point in the bus up, then out to the antenna, erected the 8m pole with a 23m delta loop tuned thru an SGC-230, this would give me multi-band operation, alas something was not quite right with this arrangement (hadn’t been tested at home) so down with the delta and up with an inverted V for 40m, this worked well.
I only did the 6 hours, all on 40m apart from one 15m contact with VK4QD, all up I did 78 contacts of which 77 counted for the contest, we stayed the night and negotiated the further goat tracks in a pear shaped voyage back to Balaklava then onto Mallala race circuit for a look-see at some V8’s circulating.”
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VK5CP on the air.
Chris also participated for a while from his shack at Younghusband in the Murray Mallee. From Chris: “I got about 65 QSO on 40m in an hour – MonstIR was working well and noise floor was low (much to QI’s surprise)”
Conclusion
All up a great deal of fun was had by everyone involved. I’m sure plans are already being drawn up to have another go next year! See you then!
It’s that time of year again! Break out your portable masts, tents and generators it’s time for the John Moyle Memorial Field Day! Unlike the past couple of years, the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group has this year encouraged it’s members to scatter and run their own stations.
A number of portable operations are planned including VK5AKH in Sedan, VK5MTM in Morialta and VK5GR in Tickera. VK5CP is going to operate from Younghusband in the Riverland and VK5FO is going to operate from his shack near Waikerie. VK1KRM (a long distance AREG member) has also been bitten by the bug and may get up on the air! You may also hear VK5SA (home station) and rumor has it that even VK5IX might sling up a dipole and have a go! We are also hoping to hear from VK5FDEN and perhaps even VK5FGRY over the course of the weekend. So, plenty of stations to work every 3 hours, not to mention the other clubs and operators around the states who are hitting the trail and taking their radios out into the bush for some exercise.
CONTEST TIMES: 0100 UTC Saturday to 0059 UTC Sunday, 19-20 March 2016
All of the members of AREG look forward to making as many contacts as they can with stations across Australia and the world during the contest. Good luck everyone and may the ionosphere be with you!
Mark VK5QI and David VK5DGR attended the linux.conf.au conference again this year, this time held in Geelong. At the conference Mark gave a presentation on the balloon tracking systems that Project Horus uses. David then gave an introduction to what he is doing with the new binary telemetry system that has been flown experimentally on the last couple of Horus flights.
The Australia Day launch of the Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program high altitude balloon payload under an AREG / Project Horus balloon was a great success! Launched from the Mt Barker High School, in the Adelaide Hills, it was an almost “text book” launch.
AREG Flight Support Preparation
The AREG launch team were on site early in the morning to prepare for the event. Matt VK5ZM made sure very knot was tied correctly while Mark VK5QI, Scott VK5TST and Ben VK5BB prepared the AREG payloads. Andrew VK5AKH and Gary VK5FGRY helped set up the event “environs” with the marquee and bollards/bunting to guide the crowd that was expected. Grant VK5GR meanwhile recorded the event (and will be making a short launch video soon). The flight used a 1600g latex balloon and was “powered” by Helium. Two AREG payloads flew, being the primary RTTY telemetry on the 434MHz band and the telecommand LoRa package used to control early flight termination if the need arose.
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[fve]https://vimeo.com/153665896[/fve]
The AREG crew were joined by the SHSSP participants and event organisers from the University of South Australia and International Space University a little later in the morning.
ISU Students getting involved
Balloon filling operations were supervised by Mark VK5QI who enlisted the help of several of the ISU students to control the balloon as it went through flight preparations.
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ISU Payload Preparation
The ISU payload included multiple sensors and a telemetry transmitter of it’s own. There were three cameras onboard, a video camera looking down and an IR camera looking down and a stills camera looking out. The payload telemetry consisted of a 9600bps VHF data feed that the Uni was testing on the 2m amateur band (for a future Cubesat mission). The controller for their payload was based on a Raspberry Pi. The end result was impressive considering the students had little more than a week from concept to realisation!
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Balloon Launch
The launch was attended by visiting dignitaries from the Mt Barker Council including Mayor Ann Ferguson, various media reporters from several TV and radio networks and by more than 150 members of the public. It was presided over by John Connolly from NASA who is their ISU representative, as well as Associate Professor David Bruce from the University of South Australia.
The launch itself went faultlessly, with the surface winds dropping off at the last second to make it an easy gentle vertical ascent.
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Flight Tracking
A major contribution to the success of the flight was the reception and relaying of tracking data from a large network of amateur radio stations across South Eastern Australia.
To enhance the sense of involvement by the amateur radio community, the AREG operated the main telemetry beacon under the special amateur radio callsign of AX5ARG-1, to mark the occasion of the launch taking place on Australia Day. This captured the imagination of many first time tracking stations. It was great to see over 35 stations, including many first time contributors adding to the successful collection of flight telemetry.
AREG will be offering a special commemorative QSL card to mark this flight to all stations who can show they receive the telemetry. If you managed to upload data to HabHub.org then you automatically qualify. However, if you copied telemetry but didn’t manage to get it into the HabHub system, please send an email with a screen shot or captured telemetry frame to vk5gr@wia.org.au for inclusion in the SWL QSL card logs.
Screenshot of tracking courtesy AX5RM (relayed from VKLogger Forum)
Stations who heard the balloon and reported via HabHub:
AREG member Peter, VK5KX also made a major contribution establishing a remote telemetry command post high atop of the eastern rim of the Mt Lofty ranges. From there he was able to not only collect telemetry but also help the ground chase crews with liaison communications. Thanks Peter for your important contribution.
AREG’s good friends out at the Riverland Radio Club also made an impact not only with tracking but through publicity on ABC Riverland radio as well! Thanks Ivan VK5HS and the team!
Chase and Recovery
Finally, probably the most significant task considering all that had gone before, was to recover the payloads once they landed. Three tracking teams were out in the field lead by Matt VK5ZM/Grant VK5GR in car 1, Mark VK5QI/Gary VK5FGRY/David VK5DGR in car 2 and a team from ISU in car 3.
The chase was one where best laid plans changed at the last minute. By quirk of fate, the VK5ZM team didn’t actually obtain the wind predictions used to drive the tracking system until after the 1800Z Global Forecast System model was released, which gave us a surprise. Overnight, the jet stream had intensified, which resulted in the balloon traveling ~25km further down-range than planned. This changed our chase route quite substantially at the last minute and instead of targeting Bow Hill, the VK5ZM team headed for Karoonda. Meanwhile the VK5QI team which had departed earlier was already heading for Bow Hill.
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In the end, the two AREG recovery vehicle teams rejoined each other out on the road and were on site before the balloon landed. However, due to local terrain and access restrictions, we did not catch sight of the parachute landing this time. The recovery teams had 3km of rough 4WD tracks and paddocks to negotiate and a further 2 km round trip hike through the thick Mallee using classic radio direction-finding techniques to navigate to the payload and then back to their vehicles.
Flight Statistics
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[fve]https://vimeo.com/153663387[/fve]
Thanks to all involved!
The SHSSP and AREG teams were ecstatic over the success of the event and there was also very good media coverage. Stories were aired on ABC891 radio in Adelaide and on ABC Riverland (thanks to the Riverland Radio Club who were following the event) as well as on NWS9-TV Adelaide and the ABC-TV South Australia news. The SHSSP event organisers were thank-full to the AREG for their contribution to the success of their stratospheric balloon launch project.
Many thanks must also go to all amateur radio operators who tracked and uploaded the telemetry data as well as to the UK High Altitude Society who built, maintain and provide access to the habhub.org system for tracking balloon flights!
Due to technical issues this morning the FreeDV broadcast team were unable to take callbacks using FreeDV.
Announcements were made using analog SSB and a few reports were achieved.
Stations wishing to provide a signal report are encouraged to email the AREG with the usual details, email addresses can be found on the “contact us” page.
Thanks and our apologies again for not being able to participate in the callback in DV.
Just a short update to let everyone know that we have successfully recovered the payloads from a scrub landing. Photos, stories and more soon. People in Adelaide should watch the ABC TV news tonight to see the publicity!
Thanks to all of the Amateur Radio operators who helped collect telemetry for the flight too!
A number of AREG members have headed to the 2nd QTH of Chris VK5CP to activate the club callsign VK5ARG in the CQ WPX SSB Contest this weekend!
