Operations – CQ DE VK7BEN

My First Satellite Contacts with AO-92

December 15, 2018 by ben

I’d only ever heard it was possible to work amateur satellites with hand held radios, and all the accompanying photos usually involved waving around a modest sized handheld Yagi. All that changed when I saw a posted a video posted on the Central Coast Amateur Radio Club Facebook page showing AO-92 being worked with Yaesu VX8 handheld with an after-market whip antenna.

A quick check of the passes saw really favourable conditions to work AO-92 as it passed overhead on Friday 14th December 2018 from around 11.22pm local time.

I quickly set up the frequencies in my IC-T90A, gave a couple of friends a heads up to listen for me and waited.

RD Contest 2017

August 13, 2017 by ben

The 2017 RD Contest was over the weekend of August 12-13 and I was keen to participate this year, having been unable to participate last year due to my involvement in the Festival of Bright Ideas. With Tasmania winning the state vs state competition, I was keen to do my bit to defend that title.

With the waning solar cycle leading to pretty poor propagation conditions in my near NVIS antenna setup, my focus had been working local stations on VHF and higher bands. Critically, I was now in a position to take advantage of the allowed RTTY digital mode, which was worth double points on 144Mhz and 430Mhz, 4 points on the 23cm band, and a triple multiplier between 1am and 6am meaning there was up to 12 points per contact on offer!

Where the Heck is VK7BEN?

June 29, 2017 by ben

It’s been quite a while between posts, and in fact this is only my second post since January. It’s not because I have been slacking off though. So I’ll try and give a bit of an update as to whats been going on.

A couple of weeks after my last post, my Grandfather died 🙁 It was for reasons known about to family, but it always happens sooner than you would like and the loss has been immense. I was particularly close to my grandfather and even 3 months later the thought that I can no longer see him is very raw and hard to deal with.

“Pa’s” influence on me has certainly be that of love for Tasmania’s vast wilderness. When I am not playing with amateur radio, I love taking photography of a wild Tasmania, of which you can see many of these photos over on Flickr.

Pa also encouraged my technical abilities and was fascinated by the things I was doing in the radio space, from who I contacted via DX, to how light could be modulated with audio along to being able to broadcast Television. As I said, I’ll miss my conversations with him.

2016 Oceania SSB DX Contest

October 3, 2016 by ben

Over the weekend, the 2016 Oceania DX Contest was held. This was my first contest for the season, having missed this years RD Contest due to other commitments. This year was definitely hard going compared to last year, with band propagation conditions truly terrible throughout the contest and then suffering the static crashes from a … Read more

Letting the Smoke Out I

February 7, 2016 by ben

Above is a rather fine example of letting the smoke out. My last post talked about replacing a dipole that had worked well for many years but suddenly not so much. With the options of breaking it all apart to check the inside pieces, or throwing out the antenna, I chose the former. What you are looking … Read more

2015 CQWW SSB DX Contest

October 25, 2015 by ben

The CQWW DX Competition would have to be the biggest radio contest of the year for the casual contester such as myself. It is also important reminder that you need to be under no illusion of the capabilities of your equipment, otherwise you may quickly find yourself very frustrated. This is my first crack at … Read more

Oceania DX Contest 2015

October 4, 2015 by ben

If my saved contest log files are anything to go by, this is the first Oceania DX contest I have participated in since 2008.

I’ve been looking forward to this contest now, as it is one of the “big ones” for the year, and a big opportunity to obtain some new DX countries. It guarantees me a eQSL eDX award as well as more uniques DXCC. It also means I really need to get around to getting some real QSL Cards printed (Do people have suggestions?).

It made for a bit of a busy weekend, as most of Saturday was spent cruising around Hobart, getting home in the afternoon an then settling down to contest in the evening (0800 UTC = 6pm AEST).

I decided to use the N1MM+ Logger for the contest. I have used it before in the Penstock Lagoon RD Contest, where it worked well but was largely hampered by not having a definition file for the RD Contest. N1MM+ does know about the big contests though and I was keen to get hands on with it again.

Packet Communications!

September 27, 2015 by ben

I’ve played about briefly with AX.25 in the past when tinkering with APRS, but never really had much success with it and with TNCs being both hard to come by and damn expensive for what they are, it has always been out of my reach. Recently I acquired a couple of second hand TNCs and have … Read more

RD Contest 2015

August 16, 2015 by ben

This weekend I participated in my first radio contest in at least 3 years with the annual WIA Remembrance Day Contest. This is a 24 hour points based contest, open to all VK, ZL and P2 stations. The first thing that was noticeably different was that the rules had changed. The biggest change is that … Read more

Attack of the RFI

August 9, 2015 by ben

After having a successful setup of the radio shack over the weekend, I took the HF rig to the local radio club, but when I returned, and plugged everything back in, BUZZZZZZZZZ. S20 over 9 noise. not good.

Troubleshooting kicked in. Whats changed? Earlier in the afternoon I had put up the 6m dipole antenna and finished working on installing an earthing stake and earth wires back to the rig. By process of elimination, I removed each. Noise still there.

It was late in the night by this point so I made an assumption that the noise was in fact being caused by nearby power lines having damp insulators, so went to bed with the though of investigating the issue if it existed the following day. Yes, it did exist the following day.