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.

I 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;

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

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).

The 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.

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.

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.

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.

Grant, 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

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!

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!