2019-11-10 Samford Conservation Park (VKFF-1639)

I was supposed to drive back to the Central Coast today. Given the current fire situation, I thought it best to remain until things quiet down a little. This freed me up to do the other park that I meant to do yesterday but couldn't get to. It was a bout a 40 minute drive …

2019-11-09 Bunyaville Conservation Park (VKFF-1493)

I spent this week working in Brisbane. I had planned to get out in to a couple of parks last Sunday but the drive up the previous day left me too tired. So, today I had planned to do this one and a park near it. A slow day put pay to that plan. I …

2019-10-26 VKFF Team Challenge – Munmorah SCA (VKFF-1361)

That time of year again. VKFF Team Challenge! Again I joined forces with Gerard (VK2IO). This year we entered as The QRParktivators. As the name implies, we did QRP again. The advantage about that is that we can get away with being relatively close geographically without interfering too badly, as long as if we are …

G7FEK Limited Space Antenna

Given that I've now wound the balun that I wanted and it's come up pretty well for a first attempt, I've finally started cutting the new antenna. This one appealed to me for a couple of reasons. It's small. It will do 80m, 40m, 30m, 17m, 15m and 12m without an antenna tuner if I cut it …

L-Match Issues

As mentioned in the previous blog, I had some issues trying to tune my 22m end-fed with the L-match. So, let's do some testing. First let's check for continuity from centre conductor to the active. Given it's switched inductances, it should be a short circuit to DC. Well, that's how this meter displays an open …

2019-08-17,18 RD Contest – Bouddi National Park (VKFF-0049)

The Remembrance Day Contest is one of the biggest contests on the Australia/New Zealand calendar. The only question that I had was where was I going to activate from; keeping in mind that I'm also trying to increase repeat activations in some local parks to go for the Boomerang Award (5 parks with 5activations; consecutive …

Baluns

I've just watched three excellent videos on baluns. First some theory and testing a couple of baluns  Building and testing a 1:1 balun  Building and testing a 4:1 balun (making use of the 1:1 as well)  A lot of the work in here is based on the work done (in German) by DG0SA at http://www.dg0sa.de/inhaltbalun.htm …

2019-07-20 Brisbane Water National Park (VKFF-0056) Trans-Tasman Low Band Contest

OK this one is a little late getting typed up. I've been having fun participating in contests so I decided to do the Trans-Tasman Low Band contest last Saturday. I also took the opportunity to make my fifth qualifying activation at Brisbane Water National Park to add it to the list for the Boomerang Award …

2019-06-29 Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (VKFF-0272) and Berowra Valley National Park (VKFF-1162)

I decided I wanted to head south today, so these two parks were the likely two suspects. Unfortunately, as per what seems to be becoming the norm, I left a lot later than I intended so ended up finishing and packing up in the dark Ku-Ring-gai Chase National Park - VKFF-0272 APRS A decent drive …

Gir-um-bit National Park (VKFF-0589) and Port Stephens – Great Lakes Marine Park (VKFF-1410)

Doing my Google Earth research last night I thought I had hit upon the perfect spot to activate both of these parks from, requiring no movement between activations. What I hadn't planned on was rain. That spot above was on a sandy surface around sea level.  It was marshy and swampy; under about half an …