ben

Worked All Continents

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Well that was a long time coming. Was excited to finally get my the last confirmed QSL needed from Pieter V51PJ in Namibia to successfully achieve working all continents. Africa and Antarctica have been (unsurprisingly) difficult to obtain a QSL from, but with Igor operating RI1ANE and exceptional propagation conditions, it had left Africa as … Read more

2024 Tassie Ham Radio Conference

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Over this past weekend (2-3 November 2024) I attended the Tassie Ham Conference that was held on the UTAS Campus. The Biennial event has changed this year to be only presentations, where in previous years theres usually been a bit of an expo hall with the ability to buy equipment, along with a flea market … Read more

Contact Form working Again

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The web form is now working again after failing silently for an unknown period (could have been days/weeks/months!). I am guessing the hosting provider made a change (possibly when forced to PHP 8.x) that stopped the mailer working using the php mail() function. Apologies to those who have tried to contact me – I wasn’t … Read more

The Domain Saga

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For those eagle-eyed users, you will notice that you are now visiting www.vk7ben.au and not vk7ben.id.au. This is the story about why.

In 2007, I acquired my advanced license and callsign VK7BEN. At this time I was quite big on websites and domains and having my own identity online. However it was not possible to own a .com.au/net.au/org.au domain if you were not a registered business or organisation. However you could register for an id.au domain if the domain name contained your your name or nickname. Beauty – VK7BEN could indeed be considered a nickname. I applied for the domain with this information, application was approved, happy days.

Earlier this year however the happiness came to an abrupt halt with an email from my domain registrar shortly after renewing my domain.

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Suddenly 3 Years Later…

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I’m not going to lie, when I last posted to my blog, I didn’t think it was going to be 3 years until I posted again. Time flies at an amazing pace. A big part of that was due to the Covid-19 pandemic and shortly after my last post it exploded in Australia and borders … Read more

2020 Summer Field Day Contest

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Perhaps one of the most fascinating things going on here in VK7 is the surge in interest in communications above 30Mhz. I think this is largely due to the poor HF propagation conditions and the release of the Icom IC-9700. I think the most visible manifestation of this is that the VHF/UHF field day contests … Read more

More Experiments with EFHW Antennas – Part 2

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EFHW Match Unit

It’s been a couple of years now since my first post on EFHW Antennas. Notably since then I have acquired a Mini 600 Analyser. Armed with technology it was time to revisit this “no-tune” portable antenna. What followed was 3 months of confusion, learning and experimentation.

Before I go any further I would sincerely like to thank David VK3IL for his patience and assistance over the last 2 weeks in helping me troubleshoot my issues and teach me a bit more about what I was doing along the way.

It all started when I thought it would be a good idea to re-test the end-fed antenna now I have a new analyser as I was preparing ready-to-assemble kits for my local radio club and didn’t want to see people ending up with an antenna that didn’t work as described. To my dismay, the antenna definitely was not working as originally described.

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Hands on with the Mini 600 Antenna Analyser

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Picture of Mini 600 Analyzer

For a long time now I have had a home-brew antenna analyser based on the VK5JST design. While this has served me OK, the accuracy of the 6m frequency was questionable, as the notes on the side of the tool suggested, and I was really needing something for VHF and UHF with my new interest in satellite and antenna construction.

I had in the past drooled over the Youkits FG-01A, but this again was HF +6m only, and the costs of an MFJ analyser were just wildly out of my range taking into account USD – AUD exchange rates. However we’ve once again seen electronics commoditised over the last few years, and this has led to inexpensive alternatives becoming available. It didn’t take long for the Mini 600, based on the EU1KY design to catch my attention, ticking all the boxes.

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A V/U Handheld Moxon Antenna for Satellites

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The Completed MoxonAs per my last post, I have been getting pretty excited about working satellites. However relying on the little ‘rubber duck’ antenna that came with the IC-T90A hand held does limit the range in a way that I could only really work the satellites at high elevation angles. With costs of commercial V/U antennas for satellite work usually over $200 AUD, it was time to build my own.

I did have some constraints around the antenna design:

  • It had to cost under $50 to make.
  • No speciality materials required – I could either readily purchase from a shop, or I already had materials on hand.
  • It had to be made using tools I had on hand.

The last point ruled out making a crossed yagi antenna to my standards as it would require a drill press to successfully fabricate (I am bad at drilling square!)

In the end a quick google found me looking at making a Moxon designed by LY3LP and modified by M1GEO, but I really wanted to get some close ups of some of the more important parts of the build. What follows is an abbreviated build guide with photos. In all, it took less than 2 hours to construct.

Update 22/12/2018 2.15pm – Yep, this antenna is a winner – here is the audio from the AO-91 pass @ 2018-12-22 1342 AEDT. Big improvement – action starts at around 2mins in.

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