Tasmania – 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.

SOTA Activations VK7/SC-001 & VK7/SC-045

January 29, 2017 by ben

Today I finally got around to activating my first summit – Mt Wellington VK7/SC-001.

Given I had a “very long weekend” for Australia Day, I was determined that I would get some portable radio operations in over the weekend. A work colleague Richard, VK7FLCS, had also expressed an interest in seeing how easy portable operation was so the date was set for early afternoon to activate Mt Wellington, and then Mount Rumney if time permitted.

Festival of Bright Ideas 2016

August 24, 2016 by ben

I recently had the pleasure of helping my radio club host a stand as part of the Festival of Bright Ideas in Hobart, held has part of National Science Week. This has been one of the first public events that the club has been involved with for some time, and has it turned out, it was a great success!

Going Mobile

January 1, 2016 by ben

QRV Mount Rumney — Mobile test run at Mount Rumney. not a bad view!

For a long time it has been a goal to take my own station portable to work HF. This week I finally achieved that goal.

It’s taken me a long time to get there, with the project starting in 2006 when I purchased a portable aluminium mast for the car that can be assembled as high as 12m (39.3 feet). With the help of Bruce (ex VK7MBD) a custom tow bar mount was made, allowing the assembly and raising of the mast to be possible by 1 person. After this, things went quiet on that project as a result of my hiatus from the hobby.