Five years of portable VK (Australia) ops

Random Wire Aerial Info

2011-06-12T14:45:00.001+10:00

I use a random wire a fair amount now with the ft817 and HFpacker amp. Why? simply put the random wire only requires one high point when putting up, the feed point is down at the ground and the LDG Z100 Pro with a 4:1 Balun or 1:1 Balun gives me all bands.

On our next outing, (which has been a long time, especially since we stopped in Cairns and then relocated to Brisbane) is to Fraser Island on 23 of July for a week. I will be beaconing on HF APRS Mobile as Vk4KWI-15 and you can look me up on http://aprs.fi. In the now much smaller 4WD I have installed a TS480SAT coupled to either a diamond mono bander for 20m, 30m or a Maldol HMC6-s. As we travel generally the 20m and 30m aerials are installed and I switch between them using the TS480SAT's internal switch.

As for the random wire, I figure more wire in the air is better at camp and I get a choice of radios, so the hard decision is sit in the car or sit at the campfire. Anyway here is the random wire info I use as copied from the writers web site and reproduced here.

"Random" Length -
Wire Antennas
WØIPL

Many people use what is referred to as a "random length" wire antenna for HF, quite effectively. The problem occurs when the wire ends up being a half wave multiple on one of the bands you would like to operate on. Odd number quarter wave lengths work very nicely. Even number quarter wave lengths (half wave multiple) do not.
With eight bands to contend with, how do you find a good "random length"? Well, what I did was to make a table of lengths that you should not use and then extrapolated out from there. Guess what? No longer random, is it?
Look at the table and you can easily see why a true random length will work beautifully on one band and not worth beans on another.
The formula that I used was 300/Freq[Mhz] = 1 wave length in meteres (spelled with the European trailing e to minimize confusion with meter - a measurement device, i.e. Ohm meter, etc.). Divide that in half to get 1/2 wave length. Thus 150/F[Mhz]. Take that number, multiply by 39.3701 to get inches in a metere, then divide by 12 to get feet. I used 39.37/12 = 3.2808 rounded to 3.28 to convert from meteres to feet.
Final formula is (150/F[Mhz]) * 3.28 = 1/2 wave length in feet. Then multiply by 1, 2, 3, etc. until you exceed my self imposed limit of 125 feet (maximum you can fit on most city lots). Lengths shown are rounded to the nearest one tenth of a foot.

"Center" of band

Frequencies (in Mhz) used for the calculations were: 28.6, 24.93, 21.225, 18.11, 14.175, 10.125, 7.150 and 3.928. Yes, I understand that it has its focus on 75M phone and ignores 80M CW, but it also exceeds 125 feet for 75M phone.

#1/2W	10	12	15	17	20	30	40	75
1	17.2	19.7	23.2	27.2	34.7	48.6	68.8	125.3
2	34.4	39.4	46.3	54.3	69.4	97.2
3	51.6	59.2	69.5	81.5	104.1
4	68.8	78.9	92.7	108.7
5	86.0	98.7	115.9
6	103.2	118.4
7	120.4

Most easily used lengths are: 63', 74', 89' and 111.5'. OR, not very random if you want all band coverage (center of band).

"Full" band

Frequencies (in Mhz) used for the calculations were: 28.0-29.7, 24.89-24.99, 21.0-21.45, 18.068-18.168, 14-14.35 10.1-10.15, 7-7.3 and 3.928.

#1/2W	10	12	15	17	20	30	40	75
1	16.6-17.6	19.7-19.8	22.9-23.4	27.0-27.2	34.3-35.1	48.5-48.7	67.4-70.3	125.3
2	33.1-35.1	39.4-39.5	45.8-46.8	54.2-54.5	68.6-70.3	96.9-97.4
3	49.7-52.7	59.0-59.3	68.8-70.3	81.2-81.7	102.8-105.4
4	66.3-70.3	78.7-79.0	91.7-93.7	108.3-108.9
5	82.8-87.8	98.4-98.8	114.7-117.1
6	99.4-105.4	118.1-118.6
7	115.9-123

Most easily used lengths are: 63', 74' and 111.5'. 89' is omitted because it would be within about one foot in length of two bands on either side of it.
If you want to cover all of every band with minimum loading problems (that does not imply it will be perfect - only that it should load) 74' is your winner.
Department of redundancy department - Not very random to be able to load all bands.
W0IPL

More about Topaz

2010-07-23T22:06:00.000+10:00

Where does the time go, so much for my getting to part two about topaz. It's now even getting to be long enough that I've nearly forgotten where I was up too. Back into the study and another subject down, that's five papers this year to date and all with good marks. Makes for being a bit boring in the blog front, thankfully we were able to get some time and escape the city ahnd head out west.

Well who cares where I was at? Well not me, unless I've bored you with repeating myself. So to carry on.

What got us into chasing topaz or even fossicking? I guess the tour was enough to want to try a little more, but the real deal maker was meeting Lesley and Graham. They were camped just up the hill from us and were planning to be out on the gem fields most days for the next month. On our second day (I've lost track now and never made notes) I was wandering past their site on the way to the facilities, I stopped for a chat and invited Julie and myself along to fossick with them the next day.

Having only walked around on the gem field at Obrien's Creek I had no real idea where and what to do. we found out one of the challenges this year is the late wet, meaning wet ground and the difficulty this causes for sieving and finding the gems. Not to mention the weight the water adds to a bucket of gravel. On our first day they took us out to a creek bed (now dry), with a shallow layer of gravel (about 30cm/ 1 foot) over granite bedrock. After some practice in dowsing the creek bed and learning to spot stones in the seive Julie and I managed to find a few topaz pieces. That was between being regailed with tales of the gem fields and other stories by Graham, tea breaks and lunch breaks. Graham and Lesley must have had a good day too, they asked us to join them the next day.

Next day was another spot on the gem field, near some equipment Graham had left out a few days earlier in a hole they were working on. Out came the dowsing rods and Lesley found a spot for her and Graham to work on. We got the rods for a go and selected a spot to work on also. This was one day that we found nothing but granite. Even Lesley was still dowsing topaz in our spot, but it was in the bed rock somewhere and not to be had. We selected another spot to work on but the day was getting on, we moved a lot of topsoil and and gravel spilt from an old hole by someone else. No topaz for us, but Graham and Lesley had a great little run, and at the end of the day had found a number of very nice pieces.

We may not have found anything on our third day, but Julie and I were hooked. On our way home we picked up a mid sized gem pick at Mt Surprise Gems. Once home I started the process of trying to finding sieves so we could fossick on our own without spending a fortune. Over the next two weeks I burned the ether looking on the web for second hand equipment then anywhere that sold them new. At one point I began to think I'd have a better chance at finding hens teeth. Eventually I found a set of 13" diammeter sieves including shipping for less than I could get anywhere in Queensland. Better still the set of two sieves, were with mesh sizes appropriate for Topaz, Agate, Garnet, Saphires, Quartz and Zircon. Why those, well they are all the gem fields that will be close to Brisbane and the sieves are the right mesh sizes and diammeter for the washing process in Zircon, Garnet and Saphire. The largeest mesh size is also a good for dry sieving for Topaz, Quartz and Agate.

So we are now armed with sieves and a gem pick, already have the spade, we just need the chance to get back out into the gem fields.

Outback again with the radio gear

2010-06-16T13:48:00.001+10:00

Can you believe it? It's now nine months since Julie and I unpacked the caravan and took our apartment in Cairns. Time does fly especially when you take radical changes in life and go back to school again.

After being in the apartment for that long and hanging out to get of the city, even if Cairns is small it is well past time for a trip. With a long weekend and a couple of Julie's rostered-days-off to use, we packed up and headed south west then west. Back towards our old stomping grounds near Undara. However the purpose of the trip this time is to get out to Obrien's Creek Gem Field, possibly scratch around for some Topaz, definitely be out in the sun and heat and definitely do some Ham radio.

The road trip was great, faster and in fact far better than expected, gone or going is the last of the strip seal (2 lane gravel road with single lane of seal in a strip down the centre). Sealed two lane highway the whole way except for the last bit of road works and a two kilometer piece between Ravenshoe (Ravens-Hoe) and Atherton. Arriving at Mt Surprise, diet went out the window and I enjoyed three quarters of a devonshire tea, Julie succumbed to temptation and had the other quarter. Then we also loosened the purse strings of the student budget a fraction and booked a Topaz Fossicking tour with Pete and Pam of Mt Surprise Gems (That gets a blog on it's own in a bit).

Fossicking was booked for Saturday, giving us the afternoon and Friday to get into the swing of enjoying Savannah Country with it's day time heat, cool nights and away from it all. Being out early we beat the crowds and got the pick of sites by the creek. Plenty of room for the long wire aerial and plenty of room for us. Later only spoilt by the townies that set up camp on top of us on Saturday.

That long wire was used on Thursday night to join the Hervey Bay Net on 3615 KHz. It was so good to catch up with the gang in Hervey Bay, again it has been at least 9 months since I could join this group. Good signals over a path of around 1500 km (roughly I must work out the straight line distance some time), and other than a couple in the group struggling with their local noise floor I was heard by all. Gosh I love QRP NVIS on 80m in the evening, it just about never fails. Friday night the nets just did not happen for me, most were further away in physical distance and 5 Watts was just not enough for good participation by me, reasonable signals though. Next trip the HFPacker Amp will be repaired and helping out.

The long weekend crowds arrived on Saturday. Lots of families and kids running around all over the place. That meant pulling up the radials to save lots of tripping incidents and no radio activity until Monday. However to make up for it we had a great fossicking tour and learnt what to look for and do when chasingr Topaz. Added to that we came home with a few pieces too. That afternoon we chatted to a couple that are regulars out in the gem field and talked our way into joining them over the next couple of days. Now that was probably a greater, though different experience to the tour. Nothing like spending plenty of time with a couple of people who know what they are doing and find gems. We came away from that experience with the fossicking bug, new friendships and a few more Topaz pieces. Overall for three days of digging, Julie and I came up with six pieces and while they are not the best a couple will look rather pretty when cut to accentuate their faults.

We elected to stay Monday after I had a run in with drinking some bore water. Piece and quite again as the world packed up and went back home to Cairns or wherever else they came from. The radials were spread back out again in the afternoon and I had two fantastic QRP contacts on 20m. One with VK3VBC mobile in Geelong (near Melbourne) and the other with VK3WHO home station South of Melbourne. Then conditions dropped out, but I did enjoy the long QSO's with these two. Had a go with 40m but was lost amongst bigger stations calling in from the USA, good signals with 5/7 and 5/8 common. Even the mobiles were 5/2 and 5/3 but, my 5 watts was not quite enough. Later on I joined the Mackay net on 3597 KHz and had solid signals into that. Early Tuesday morning (well we had been getting up early every day to fossick) I was up and decided if I could join in a net with old friends in ZL. Well I could hear them, however I suspect my inverted L facing west and not east really knocked the signal, they were there and I listened but with signals in my noise floor (which was non existent being this remote) and not even registering on the s-metre no chance of being heard even though I called a few times. Still nice to hear the team ZL2CVA, ZL1ACM and ZL1RD.

With great reluctance and now feeling better we headed home. Via Mt Surprise Gems and lunch, plus a purchase towards our fossicking gear. Our first gem pick, now to build or acquire the sieves, shaker stand and bucket. Leaving Mt Surprise, our thoughts turned to how soon we could come back again to this magic part of the world.

Study Meanderings

2010-04-13T12:16:00.004+10:00

I'm getting close to the end of my first four papers. What an effort, correspondence study is tough enough part time and I have struggled at times with focus doing correspondence full time.

My first assignment was great to get done and even better when the mark came back. 100% in my chemistry essay, wahoo! Now keeping that up in more opinion rather than fact based essays will be tougher, but it sure was a great boost to keeping on with correspondence study.

Julie and I have also decided to go down to Brisbane later in the year and attend classes. Oh, by the way Julie is going back to school too. Now we are both into major career changes. So at this stage the intention is to be in Brisbane for the start of Summer School with the Australian Institute of Applied Sciences.

Ham radio took a dive, even after playing with APRS for a while. Though I can say I run a tracker in the car every time I pop out. Sadly even the 2m radio does not get turned on while at home that often, especially when writing assignments. I also successfully established, palm trees are not suitable for long term HF antenna supports, because the fronds come down relatively frequently along with the aerial.

I am not going to chase a mast yet. However the president of the body corporate is supportive (that was a big surprise) and may even help by providing something for a mast. So you never know I might get on HF here when I need some time out.

Looking forward Julie and I are going to get away to the west in June so I will definitely get in a spot of portable operation. On the 3 to 4 week road trip south I will also be getting in some portable operating too. However, updates will happen as we get closer to the time.

Watching the weather

2010-01-24T01:10:00.004+11:00

The first Cyclone to affect us is on the way, maybe it will get here in the day Sunday, maybe Sunday night, either way the rain has arrived off the front edge.

Threat Map showing warning and watch regions and likely path.

Satelite image of the Cyclone as it approaches us.

IDQP0005
Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology
Queensland
Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre

Media: The Standard Emergency Warning Signal should NOT be used with this
warning.

TOP PRIORITY
TROPICAL CYCLONE ADVICE NUMBER 5
Issued by the Bureau of Meteorology, Brisbane
Issued at 10:59pm EST on Saturday the 23rd of January 2010

A Cyclone WARNING is now current for coastal and island areas from Cape Melville
to Cardwell.

The Cyclone WATCH from Coen to Cape Melville and Cardwell to Lucinda has been
CANCELLED.

At 10:00 pm EST Tropical Cyclone Olga, Category 2 was estimated to be
250 kilometres east northeast of Cairns and 365 kilometres north northeast of
Townsville, and was moving west at 21 kilometres per hour.

GALES are expected to develop about the coast between Cape Melville and Cardwell
on Sunday.

DESTRUCTIVE WINDS are likely to develop about the coast between Cape Tribulation
and Innisfail on Sunday afternoon as the cyclone centre approaches.

Very heavy rainfall with localised flooding is expected to develop about the
North Tropical Coast during Sunday.

As the cyclone crosses the coast, abnormally high tides are expected between
Cape Tribulation and Innisfail, but the sea level should not exceed the highest
tide of the year. Large waves are likely along the beachfront.

People between Cape Melville and Cardwell should immediately commence or
continue preparations, especially securing boats and property.

Details of Tropical Cyclone Olga at 10:00 pm EST:
.Centre located near...... 16.2 degrees South 148.0 degrees East
.Location accuracy........ within 35 kilometres
.Recent movement.......... towards the west at 21 kilometres per hour
.Wind gusts near centre... 140 kilometres per hour
.Severity category........ 2
.Central pressure......... 983 hectoPascals

The next advice will be issued by 2:00 am EST Sunday 24 January.


This warning is also available through TV and Radio Broadcasts; the Bureau's
website at www.bom.gov.au or call 1300 659 212.  The Bureau and the State
Emergency Service would appreciate this warning being broadcast regularly.

Being stealthy at Yorkeys

2010-01-11T22:35:00.004+11:00

Wanting to get better VHF coverage I tried to be really clever idea with a slim jim to get it way up in the air above roof line three floors up and operate an APRS Digi at my place. I can hide the aerial from obvious view but getting coax there well that's another story and one that will not go down with the body corporate and possibly the neighbours. So back to one hidden in the court yard that gets me onto local repeaters, until I come up with a cunning plan or something a little left field for a solution to get better coverage for APRS.

I tried using the FT8900 in the Landcruiser today in cross band repeater mode but noticed the tail in the cross band coupled with the relay delay in the audio interface inside really did not work for digipeating, still I was decoding data from VK4GO's digipeater. Then UIview started acting like it was deaf or was it the lap top but still had Audio coming in. Hmmmmm looks like I will discount using that interface with digipeating and the cross band, still I am all set up for digital modes. Turned the digi off in UIview and still no decoding on receive.....look into that tomorrow....or maybe the path went bad in the middle of the day. Lets look at the cross band again tomorrow and see what happens. The other hassle with this solution is I thought of using the solar panels to keep the car auxillary battery topped up but they will be in shadow. There is power right beside the car, maybe I can do something there to float the auxillary battery.

Taking the cross band out of the loop and not relying on my audio interface to digipeat is probably a good idea. I recently sold the magnetic loop I brought over with me and bought a digipeater by Fox Delta, now if I put that in the car when I am parked up at home could solve the problem, which is what side of the building the aerial is on. Well part of it at least and I can work on a power supply or charging solution for the car and a good place to park the car for receiving VK4GO's digipeater and my beacon. Power out put from the FT8900 would also be useful too for transmitting.

A few days after typing this I was listening to the APRS signals from VK4GO and thought I should be able to decode those. It was an S2 signal but nice and clean, but the PC just acted like it was deaf. I had been loaned a APRS Foxview by VK4GO, a nice device that decodes UI Packets and displays them on a LCD screen. Plug the audio in apply power and hey presto packets decoding in front of my eyes. Well, well, there must be an issue with my sound card and software sensitivity with regards to signal to noise because it want at least S5 to start decoding and very little noise.

Hmmmm, time to get the Foxdigi going inside without using the car in the middle. Just the incentive I needed to hook up a tracker with GPS and get the Digipeater going as well.

12V ponderings

2010-01-05T13:53:00.003+11:00

I've ended up with what I considered relatively slick portable operation for travelling. Easy to put up aerial...it's a long wire over trees. And there have been plenty of trees around. Good radio and Amp combo with the FT-817 and HFPack Amp and of course the LDGZL11Pro with 4:1 Balun to make tuning a breeze. Massive (120W) solar panel to recharge the car battery or the caravan battery so always had plenty of power and been to places with plenty of tall trees.

Now I live in an apartment, ground floor level, plenty of 240v, but car and caravan prohibitively far away. Oooops I never planned even in my wildest dreams to be in an apartment. So much for planning for all possibilities, then again Julie and I both thought we were going to be in the caravan for the whole time.

Now what to do for 12v DC power...with the ft-817 and HFPack amp all I need is 11.5 to 12V. I'm back to school soon, so for now out the window goes the idea of buy a lovely new power supply even a cheap one. What ever I doo need to fit a budget of arouns $20, so time to put on the thinking cap and get outside the square.

Only needing 15 amps maximum the supply requiremnt is not huge. I started looking at converting ATX12V or the ATX12V2 supplies...good possibilities. Now to find an old PC to pull apart and a few bits and I'm away. Or look around for a retired but not dead battery and hook the solar panel onto it full time. Options, options, time to see what I can find out there.

Anybody out there around Cairns with an old PC power supply to give away and/or a useable battery I'm interested.

A Change in plans

2010-01-05T12:58:00.004+11:00

I arrived in Cairns expecting to settle using it as a base for shorter travel excursions though the dry season, pick up a job build up the reserves so we could do this and generally get out of the caravan. Don't get me wrong the caravan is great just after 18 months getting a bit more space either out of the weather or mosquitoes is a relief. I certainly want to experience a wet but not living in the caravan, especially as we do not have air conditioning fitted.

Well I found work and after seven weeks of humping furniture flat out all day....I flagged that job and resigned. Right on top of Christmas and of course not much happening around the place. With a bit of space to think about where we are going and what Julie and I really want, plans for the future were talked about and a plan formed.

The plan was certainly not travel related and does not include much radio. I have decided to go back to school effectively full time for the next two years to study an Advanced Diploma in Nutritional Medicine. Julie is doing a couple of short courses and the first up is as a practitioner in New Zealand Flower Essences. Getting a bit left wing for some well may be it is, then again how many of you know of Rescue Remedy, probably quite a few. Then, you may ask why New Zealand Flowers and not the Australian Bush Flower range?

Here's why; we set a time line for heading back to New Zealand, which we more and more keep referring to as going home. Hmmmm have we had enough...possibly for this time around, we'll be back as there is so much to see in Australia, but not as a working travelling holiday, more like short trips to regions of specific interest. I could do Cape York again, and not got near Kakadu, the Simpson Desert, the Kimberly or Pilbara regions.

What's the time line you ask? No fixed date but certainly at least 2 years away, it's going to take me a lot of that time to finish my diploma. Thinking back to when the plans were laid to come over, the time frame of three to five years was always bandied around. This would get us to around 4 years, so our thoughts were not far out in the beginning.

What about radio? That's still to be decided, time will certainly be lost to study and I have not come up with a nearly free 12v PSU system for the house. That will get a Blog of it's own to follow. Club involvement will probably fall through the floor and as I'm not out driving much so will my 2m activity. Portable I can hit the repeater inside but not very well, in fact I think it has got worse for access as we head into the more humid weather. I certainly hear the repeater at an s5 level. Then again the 817 and external aerial would improve things significantly...some constructing to do while I have time and acquire a 12v source. In short Ham activity will likely go into a bit of hibernation except the odd HF portable day when I just need to get out.

The end of another year

2009-12-25T20:11:00.004+11:00

Another year slowly draws to and end and like every one else we look back over the year and feel like it disappeared so fast. What adventures and what trials, small or large they certainly come to us all.

Julie and I settled for the medium term in Cairns, that translates we'll be here for months at a minimum if not a year or two. Well I have said that before about other places but we need to make this work we lease a place now and can't leave for a minimum of 6 months anyway.

Arriving in Cairns created a somewhat abrupt end to radio and all it's activities. Something about that process from swapping from a nomadic (at times) lifestyle and the end of the extended holiday (trip up Cape York) does that to you. Now I have to stop and think about work (when I get another job) and living in a ground floor apartment with tough covenants. Looks like portable will be the way to go and dragging out the magnetic loop. Glad I actually brought it with me looks like it will get some serious use.

I was even going to get an APRS station running at home and ran into a real stumbling block, something I never had to worry about traveling. POWER. How do you run a radio, laptop (my ham shack one, no battery and runs on 12V DC), hfpack amp and other 12V goodies without a power source at 12V? In short you can't...Caravan is for sale an located 8km away 100AHr battery not available. Hmmmmm.....Battery in truck...parked on road 200m away....doesn't go with out it. Oh thats right I have a 4.5 AHR SLA that's good for about 2 hours with the FT817.

In all my planning and changing gear, well aerials mostlyto get it nice and slick I never considered operating on this trip without a handy 12V battery source and floating with solar. Now what to do with lots of 240V instead...looks like I need a power supply...but not included in my Christmas stocking this year. Time to get creative until I'm employed again...any thoughts on a dirt cheap Power supply solution. I'm contemplating looking for old PC's and getting their PSU's to make up enough current, any other thoughts are welcome.

As for the employment front I did have work working for a chain furniture discount store called Super A-Mart as a retail assistant. In reality work in warehouse and hump furniture all day lifting weights that should be a two person job. I survived 7 weeks and called it quits, not worth busting my gut or something else for what I was paid. So not employed at the moment and looking around and seriously looking at retraining in something I can then take and build my own business out of. That way all the management education can still be utilised but I get a trade out of warehousing. Which by the way in a tight job market is hard to do, employers have loads of choice and round pegs may fit a square hole but they prefer square pegs.

That's cool I like the idea of going back to school for something. More on that later after Julie and I have had a life planning retreat.

New Clothes Wahoo!

2009-10-19T22:52:00.001+11:00

I finally did it, the clothes I brought with me from NZ some 18 months ago are warn out or now so big they look better as a sack than an item of clothing on me. It was time to go shopping.
We discovered a great little shop in Kuranda called Trintika. While the clothing is still imported into Australia the items are coming from countries like Thailand and Nepal. Their advantage over the Chinese is material and production quality plus some nice designs. I'll have to get Julie to take a couple of pictures to put up, in between catching up blogs from the travel section.
So a couple of T-shirts later, plus a nice bamboo/cotton item from down the hill and I was on the way to looking civilised instead of nearly a beggar. The biggest hurdle which you would think might be easy in this part of the world was decent shorts. Look this is the tropics, and every one wears shorts, but finding decent shorts for guys was getting pretty tough if you don't want a board short. We traipsed all over town looking for them and finally found a pair in Tarrocash and another in Just Jeans at the local Direct Factory Outlet Mall (DFO). What a mission, at least the dead clothes can go, and the potato sacks will go to an appropriate charity.

So many blogs to write on different topics. Now we have queues to get at the PC for job applications let alone blog writing. Hmmmmm, I wonder what we can do about a second decent computer, laptop of course.

Band width crisis

2009-10-17T23:25:00.001+11:00

Ooops a lack of planning internet bandwidth this month on my part. Used up 50% in the first couple of days and we have a busy month sending out CV's and the like. With two of us looking at jobs and sending CV's and the like, it's just not quite enough have 1Gb. We'll just have to do a little less skype calling until month end next time.

So if your wondering where we went, we are still here in Cairns looking and applying for work. Helping out at a local aboriginal gallery to get out of the caravan and generally trying to keep out of mischief. As for the radio thing well I put the wire up just been focussed on other things, though I did get to the Cairns club meeting. Next planned activity is joining the Townsville net on 80m tomorrow (Sunday), as for the frequency I can not remember though I think it might be 3613KHz. It will be interesting to see how the 19m long wire works verses the 39m one I used while travelling.

As for the blogs they will happen along with more pictures, after the 25th when we role over to a new month.

This is a test of email up loading

2009-10-06T21:43:00.003+11:00

Well I never, I just discovered the ability to create blogs by emailing them into Blogger. How handy saves logging in to the site all the time. Might even get more done that way, well speedier at least. Still, Blogs will happen just a little slowly as we tie up time and bandwidth with Job applications in Cairns, so please expect a few time gaps in the writing of Blogs.

As for the job hunting Julie and I are finding plenty to apply for even if Cairns is now the highest for unemployment in Australia, running at about 12.5%. Julie is off for a contract role interview on Thursday and so far for me only one of 12 applications has said "no thank you". We will be looking for permanent residence too of the building variety....that will happen after one of us have paid employment. For now we are enjoying being in the rain forest at the top of the range in Kuranda.

The end of the road for now - Cairns is home for a while

2009-09-29T19:47:00.003+10:00

We have finally reached the end of the road for now. Julie and I still have heaps to write about, that's the trouble with travel, your out there looking at the world, not sitting at a computer blogging or face book or other electronic stuff.

Having the Ham Radio gear provided entertainment and to a certain extent comfort/safety. Eighty metres on any night provided a net that could be joined, meaning people knew where we were and had the option to pass on messages if required. Now we are based in civilisation again, I'm no longer operating a radio sched. Thank you to those that have continually persevered in working my weak portable signal or just turning up in the hope it might be heard.

Once we get settled in the region I'll get up on air again and try and arrange the odd sched or you may here me calling CQ.

Playing Radio at the Iron Ranges

2009-09-07T16:20:00.004+10:00

What a drive in that was, the Frenchman's Track is one decent journey and a rough one at that. The Pascoe River was a nice spot for a swim, figured the faster water around the ford was not exciting or enticing for crocs.

We made it in and decided that a rush to Chilli beach late in the day was not worth it. Tossing it around Julie and I decided on a Rain forest setting and we ended up at Gordon Creek. Great little spot and nice trees to put a wire over especially as it was going to be easy to find the other end after casting it. That's the only tough bit I have with my set up now is finding the fishing line and small lead weight after a successful cast. Any tips gratefully accepted.

Great spot we have, the world passes by on the road and still on our own at night. Quite nights and not many mosquito's, but enough to dress up but not enough to hide in the tent from. Plenty of opportunity to get on air and my luck included a contest as well this one was the All Asia. Really good timing as the JA's have always been good signals and a contest means they are listening hard, that means my lower signal has a better chance. And it certainly did get heard, my log has had more entries in the last fornight than the whole year. Then again I have been working nights for lots of that too.

Right now we are at Chilli beach, no radio the last two days just time chilling out. Radio again over the next week as we go into Mungkan Kandju National park. From here we go to Merluna Station on the top edge of the park stay a night, then take the three hour 120 km trip in to the park. Staying there approximately three nights, then out to Archer River and see if I can catch Peter VK3ZPF and any one else around on 20m, I suggest 14.190 as a starters from 0430 UTC on Saturday 12 September. That will also tie up with VK4KUF being around as well.

Will still be out on bands as per my eariler skep with a slight change, I will get on 7120KHz at 0900 UTC as that seems to be better for 40m for Vk contacts. Other wise 3650 from 0950 UTC then a quick listen and call on 3985 at 1000 UTC.

Drifting away on the cape (Cape York that is)

2009-09-07T15:47:00.005+10:00

What a place, beauty, changing environments in such short distances, fascinating wetlands, with thousands of mosquitoes, gorgeous campsites beside crystal clear streams with white sand bottoms, peace and quite, the roar of a four wheel drive, voices of doubt and concern.

Cape York is this and much more, the Old Telegraph Track is a challenge to many an adversary to overcome. Do they see it for what it is - a place of beauty, magic, amazing birds and streams without crocs? So many rush though and barely pause, some pause a little longer like we did, then on return we paused even longer.

To feel a place to see what it has to offer you have to stop, breath and feel the place. We travelled north and kind of did that but not enough, the tip was there but not quite ready for us. I should have known - our first day out to explore the tip sent us home. I backed into a tree and really squashed the bumper, an hour later I drove under a tree and took half the roof rack off. We came home, to camp and enjoyed the beach instead, still no swimming here, crocs again.

Travelling north was about company and friends, facing challenges together and achieving/overcoming learning that we could do it, that the OTT was really quite doable, just care and attention was needed.

Travelling south, now that is different, it is about feeling the place, leaving when it is finished with you and you with it. Stopping and living, feeling the space, discovering, experiencing and exploring - that is what this south bound trip is for. We are still heading south and it will take the bulk of our travelling time to do. We had to do the Old Telegraph Track both ways, we missed something on the way up, I don't know what but we found it going back down.

Bridge Creek, for many the last crossing in a long and arduous journey, a creek to be feared, a creek that swallowed 40 vehicles so badly they went home on the container ship last season. A tough creek to cross, but a beautiful place to camp. White sand and clear warm water, a place to swim - no crocs here - and a place to play with Ham Radio.

Mutee Heads South on the Jardine, pictures best describe this and the slide show I will insert in the side bar will be where to find them. It felt remote here, probably the most remote we have felt all trip. The OTT can get busy at times like a main road and popular camping spots are well utilised. Mutee Heads really let us get away and be alone, be remote. It was also a great place to put the HF aerial up and talk to those that could hear. Tough up there to further south of Cairns, conditions at the time, a tweak not made yet to some gear possibly, where I put the aerial and radials. Who knows but it was nice to finally make a first successful 2 way contact into New Zealand while portable.

Here I am now around the Iron Ranges National Park at Chilli Beach, finding space for us in the rain forest. Bats falling out of the trees, I really mean big bats too, big as monkeys. Wonderfully coloured birds, Julie may make a bird watcher of me yet. An Eclectic Parrot what a gorgeous bird and to be different the female gets all the really cool red and blue colouring. The forest here is quite different to most of what we have camped in aside from around the Daintree area.

Now it is Chilli Beach and a short break from the radio in the evenings and time to chill and read Julie's book. I finished mine and her other one and I'm nearly finished this one too. Well not too long and we will hit civilisation again in Cooktown - not just mobile coverage but hopefully we will find a place with second hand books. What a spot, oh for a swim in the warm sea water, drat the crocs, oh well how about a cup of tea instead and another blog and picture upload.

Radio at the Jardine River Cape York - no Crocs just lotsa Mosquitoes

2009-08-27T13:51:00.000+10:00

Thanks heaps to the die hards amongst you that keep coming back each night to hear a really lost in the noise signal or nothing at all.

I've lost track of the last blog contents and this is a quick note while we pass though mobile coverage up here. Service is really limited and satellite or HF is the only way to go.

I enjoyed my contact with Peter VK3ZPF and missed him the next two planned nights. Drat that kind of thing happens. However I had a gap, i.e. places I could not put the random wire up. I'm thinking about a crappie pole or other option for places like that. So not on air for a few days while on the Old telegraph Track. However was on over the last few days while at the mouth of the Jardine river. Sheeeesh! was it hot or what and dang, no swimming because of the large Salt Water crocodiles, not that we actually got to see one there.

When it cooled down the mosquito's came out to join me on the radio. So between slapping mosquito's I finally made some ZL contacts and had a successful contact on 3650 with ZL1RD. The next night we tried a little earlier and a little later, I heard ZL2CVA and ZL1RD they were to me a nice 51 and 52, the only noise I had was the odd S8 static crash. Trouble was I only made the grade of 20 or 30 if such a report exists and definitely not enough to make a decent two way conversation. Also worked a number of VK4 80m nets and also had contact with Vk4WAL, VK4DQU and VK4HDT (I think, log not in front of me).

However in the effort to catch the ZL's for a decent conversation Friday 28 and Saturday 29 I will be operating on 7120 plus or minus QRM at 0630 UTC. Then carry on with my sked at 0930 UTC on 7120 and 0950 UTC at 3650 then 1000 UTC on 3785 (80m DX).

On going I will be operating most evenings at 0930 UTC on 7120 and then 0950 UTC on 3650 and moving to 3785.

Well I finally made a contact on HF on the Road

2009-08-13T19:00:00.001+10:00

Well I am progressing slowly up the peninsula, via Lakefield National Park. Managed to have one good contact in the last couple of days. Thanks VK3ZPF for sticking it out and getting through the noise and VK6TO for trying but not heard by me. Some of the noise I suffer from may be a piece of 12V apparatus from a fellow travelling companion and I need a bit more time to track that down.

When we stop for longer chunks of time I'll give 20m a go as well during the day. The JA's were all over the place last night with a domestic contest and while very strong either did not hear me or choose to respond. Certainly heard no one calling or responding to CQ's so if you were there last night thanks for trying.

No sched tonight, as the stop at the side of the road is not conducive to safe antenna raising.

Catch you all later at 0930 UTC 7120 MHz and the 0950 3650 MHz both on LSB.

Update to 40m freq and Sched report

2009-08-10T20:18:00.000+10:00

Thanks to the VK2 stations that have been calling me. Pity noise ex indonesia and some OTHR flattened you completely. I think you may have even tried me with some Morse Code but I've got to learn that again and you were smashed by S8 to S9 QRM.

To get into a quieter spot on the 40m attempt I am heading up band to 7120 as it seems to be better there. I had hoped to have made contacts on the 80m nets but forgot about the weekend so 80m was quiet. Had some very good signals out of VK2 when I caught the end of nets and also lower VK4.

Just a reminder for thpose that want to try and make a contact try 7120 +/- QRM at UTC 0930 and if nothing heard I will move to 3065 at UTC 0950.

Thanks to those that have tried, hopefully the new freq will work.

73 Trevor R ZL1UO/VK4KWI

Radio Scheds while on the road around Cape York

2009-08-07T17:32:00.002+10:00

We have finally got on the road again, doing a short shake down four wheel drive run. Good practice at what we can get the campers and 4x4's through. We certainly chose a tough road, 7 hours to travel a grand total of 16km. While we are on the road I'm going to get regular and hold a sched each evening. So for those of you that feel like trying to get hold of me via HF radio, I'll been on at 0930 UTC, this should be the same as 1930 Queensland Time and 2130 NZT.

Planned frequencies are 40m LSB 7065 plus or minus QRM and then a shift to 80m if nothing is heard by 0950 UTC to 3650 LSB.

I hope to speak to some of you one evening.

Hitting the road again

2009-07-29T11:42:00.004+10:00

Yahoo! we are hitting the road, this time with friends and their friends up the Cape York Peninsula. For many Australians especially those that four wheel drive, Cape York is a world of adventure with famous tracks such as the Old Telegraph Line (OTL) and Frenchmans Track.

For Julie and I it is an adventure we have been planning towards for around 10 years ever since we saw Steve Irwin the Crocodile Man do a documentary up into Jardine National Park, closely followed by a 3 hour video produced by second cousins on their adventurous trip in 1999. Back then the Wenlock river had no bridge and Jardine Ferry was not even thought of. Still we will have enough challenges ahead of us without dealing with those old diabolical river crossings with Salt Water Crocodiles.

Part of the preparation has been about taking what we need which does not include our caravan. We could take it but by crikey the fuel consumption let alone the hassle and slow journey it would create on the OTL. Even my radio gear is getting paired down again, not that I had much in the first place. Still managed to get some gear in, the inventory this time is getting towards true portable like my tramping in ZL days.

The radio gear list this time is: Ft817, LDG100AT tuner, LDG 4:1 Balun, my long random (not so random) wire and ground wires and interconnecting coax jumpers. Pretty much the only stuff I ever use. Now the key thing this trip is actually using it, then I might actually talk to someone. I think this time I will do a sked system and post in a couple of places. Let me think on it for the next couple of days and come up with a plan. Seems likely if I am known to be on a frequency at a particular time daily then someone might be around to here me call.

The truck is all prepped and ready to go, we have two water only Jerry Cans to arrive and be put in place then it's pack the food and clothes and we are done. As for the caravan it gets filled with what will not travel with us and is getting parked up a couple of hours drive from us for the next few months.

Expect blogs again from us as we once again travel and have adventures. Plus I get time back for radio.

Another four days off

2009-06-21T19:31:00.003+10:00

We have made it through another ten day week and have hit a four day weekend again. This time the travel is really limited. We are only going as far as O'briens Creek camp ground which is nearly on top of the Topaz gem fossicking area and only 70km one way. Now that is just down the road in outback terms

I am taking radio gear with me and it will be set up. The plan is to mix two fun activities, sitting around the camp fire and Ham radio. Look for me on 40m and 20m, I might stick my nose onto 18m and 15m but don't expect to do much there. I might even appear on the odd 80m net. Also I hope to be back in time on Thursday to join the Atherton Club 80m net, whose frequency I cannot remember but Julie wrote down for me.

Where would I be with out here, certainly QSY'ed to the wrong frequency. As for time, well definitely in the afternoons and evenings and for 20m I hope some times in the morning and through the day.

A great Patchwork quilt for the railway carriage wall

2009-06-21T19:11:00.004+10:00

We have dubbed this camp Kiwi as this end of staff accommodation is predominantly Kiwi staff, well it was at the time. Our carriage room is the carriage to the right of the caravan.

The other end of Kamp Kiwi.

When Julie was in NZ to see her Dad, we asked mum for a nice patch work hanging to put on our carriage wall. This is what she made for us, a real nice patch work quilt with lots of Kiwiana themed material used.

Thanks Mum for this is really cool.

What the Carriage room wall looked like
The Wall Hanging made by my Mum
The other end of our carriage room

I have a Ham station at Undara

2009-06-06T16:33:00.002+10:00

Well, for those of you that follow my Ham Radio antics I've been highly organised and now have a HF station set up and use it most afternoons. Still consists of my FT-817, however it now drives a HF Packer Amp and gives me a whopping :-) 60 Watts PEP. This HFPacker Amp is brilliant still get full RF out put even at 10V, just what I need most of the time when operating portable. Aerial is end fed 37m wiree with three radials with the longest just over a half wave on 20m. the centre of the wire is up at around 15m.

On the first night I had a just workable 40m contact down state to Murgon just a tad north of Kingaroy. Far better the next night with the storms south of Brisbane easing and heading south. Also had a couple of brilliant contacts yesterday on 20m into VK7 (VK7XX) and managed to work into Hawaii as well.

Keep an ear out on the bands for me as I call in the afternoons AEST. At some stage I'll get my head around converting AEST to NZT and then UTC by skipping the NZT conversion step. Hard to believe I've been here a year and still have to work it out that way.

More days off and another adventure

2009-05-30T19:32:00.007+10:00

The gaps between blogs seem to be getting longer, then again we work 10 days on and have a four day week end. The last round of time off was a brief escape down the road to the Gem Fields this time with Julie.

However we planned a better trip away for our time off and got away to a town called Chillagoe. Head farther west down the road towards Mount Surprise and 14km out of town and turn right heading north along the Savannah Highway Alternative Route. Some 150km or there abouts of real back country roads and several creek crossings you arrive at Chillagoe. Driving into town we passed these amazing weathered rock formations all sharp and spikey.

Around town were other formations that again are all weathered, this time they are all rounded and quite different. It was not until we got a tour through the marble mines we learned what the formations were. The spikey ones are all lime stone resulting from old coral reefs that were buried and heated converting them to lime. They weather quickly (for a rock) creating the spikey pointy effect. They also have lots of cave systems under them. The rounded ones are again the reefs that have heated and compressed but more heat and longer (I hope I remembered that correctly) forming marble.

We new there was limestone, as our plans included going on a cave tour. However my expectations of the lime stone is of what is around Otorohonga and the King County in New Zealand. Not these massive former coral reefs rising above the ground. The area was formerly ocean floor and the coast was another 30km south of Chillagoe. The tour was amazing and is one of three complexes that are accessible in the National Park. We were also given a cave map and mud map directions to a system on private land called CH77 that we eventually found and wandered through.

In an hour we had barely scratched the surface of this cave complex and we really want to come back up this way so we will be into this one especially now we know where to go. What a great place.

A marble mine tour took us through a working mine where they are pulling out small blocks at 25 tonne each. Not quite my concept of small, mind you it's not my trade. We watched a setup for a section with white marble and went and looked at where pink had been worked. There was plenty cut just waiting for orders to take it away.

We finished our trip away with a jaunt by 4x4 down an old railway line between Lappa Junction and Tabo (near Mount Garnet). What a great piece of real back road. The tracks have long since been removed and the corridor is a public road. Not a road to take a car down definitely need the height of a 4x4. Not a tough road either as it had recently been cleaned up after this years wet season. Julie spent her time a s co-pilot on this enjoyed the view and found some good spots for bush camping. All this is granite country and on the Great Dividing Range.

Some shots of things happening

2009-05-12T20:59:00.004+10:00

This is me playing with a Night Tiger snake. These guys hang out of trees to catch micro-bats on the wing. they also don't stay still for long, lots of hand over hand to hang on to these ones. Staff got a preview of the snake show on offer at Undara

Sunset over Barkers Knob on the sunset tour Undara Volcanic National Park.
What a sight, we drove through the wind farm just out of Ravenshoe. We were on the way to atherton for a spot of shopping.

Millstream falls at Millaa Millaa National park, these are just off the highway between Ravenshoe and Atherton. The area was also used as a training and acclimatisation camp for Australian infantry befor being posted into islands in the Pacific during World War Two.

A portable escapade at last

2009-05-12T19:10:00.003+10:00

Well, I finally got a chance for a portable field trip. With four days rostered off from work I contemplated where to get asway from it all. Julie had flown back to NZ to spend time with her dad, leaving me with a guilt free radio opportunity. Finally got some local advise to try Oak creek around Mt Surprise. Never made it there though.

I stopped in at the gem shop at Mt Surprise looking for some Australian quartz, why you ask, well I might cover that another time. Anyway they convinced me that the camping area on Mt Surprise station right next to the gem fields was the place to go to. The gem fields by the way are good for finding Topaz, Peridot and a bit of quartz with the occaision piece of Aquamarine. Wanting to get out and explore the countryside as well I grabbed a fossicking licence. Now I could look for gems or just go for a four wheel drive or bush walk.

Made camp at Mt Surprise Station campground to discover they offered hot showers and flushing toilets. Pretty damn good for $7 per night. This time I prioritised my campsite on where to hang my aerial with only me to worry about it was easy. Being next to a big creek with plenty of water meant lots of nice big gum trees to sling wire over.

I had packed up my old amp to send back to NZ and brocken out the HFPack amp which had arrived a week earylier. So much physically smaller and runs on lower voltage, which later proved to be a big advantage. Deciding that a quick test before organising dinner and and evening of more serious radio, I set up and did a quick test. Something was a bit funny the amp was just not working as expected, and I could not measure RF out and the Tx LED was continuously on. The classic fix with a solid tap turned the LED on and off. Looks like a dry solder joint to track down.

Fortunately also I left the radio toolkit in when packing, so full scale field repairs were on. The amp was stripped and all the boards removed. Found a few dry joint on each of two boards so after chasing those gave up and reflowed solder on every joint on every board. Fortunately this amp was of a generation with non SMD devices and my gas soldering tip was small enough for the job, and hour later it was reassembled and behaving like it should. It appears the shipping from the USA for this one knocked a number of joints around and all is go. One day I will get an RF power meter and check what it really outputs.

Then I discovered the batteries in the truck were both down, the auxillary batterry at 11.3V and the starter down at 11V. Now that's a hassle barely enough to keep the fridge running all night let alone lots of radio work. Good thing for big solar panels, afternoon sun and a good view to the west.

Discovered 40m was wide open into the USA as my sunset went down with some excellent signals of 58 and 59 heard. VK3, 4 and 2 were heard with varying strengths and I made a couple of shaky contacts with them. Local noise floors for the DX stations heard must have been around the same as my signal strength as I was not heard. Kept going until the voltage dropped below 11V.

However the next night I decided time to run out a decent length of wire and the solar panel had been out for large chunks of the day. This time instead of 18m of wire I put up the 35m length much better for a possible go on 80m and 40m mind you it was also loading well for 15m and 20m. Stations were heard on all bands with 15m surprising me with the number of JA's to be heard after dark. This time I managed to talk to a couple of guys way down in Mildura Victoria (VK3) some VK4's and K1GUN all on 40m. Portable and wire just does not compete in current conditions with full legal power and multi element antenna farms on 20m; I heard heaps just could not be heard. Another time with changes in conditions I'll get some of these guys.

Next morning I rose really early hoping to catch up with ZL1RD, Zl2CVA and Zl1ACM in a net I used to join in with. Unfortunately they were barely above my noise floor, did not hear me and disappeared as the sun came up. Beautiful sunrise though and a glorius day of clear blue sky without a cloud in site.

Our First rostered Week and Undara

2009-04-10T08:38:00.003+10:00

Phew what a week. We were rostered on for seven days and just finished two days off. All the shifts are out of sync as Julie and I opted to started earlier than expected and all staff are needed on for Easter weekend and next week end with the Country Rock and Music Festival. We're meant to be 10 days on and 4 days off.

Seven days actually went by in a flash, and only proved a little tough when on my own for the last two nights. Anybody want a job for the season there are still two positions in the Bar/bistro, two in reception and possibly even with house keeping. Even better still staff get on all the tours free if there is space and they are good (we did one yesterday). Accommodation is very cheap and all meals are catered. All at a pretty small cost of about $70 per week or a bit less. You could be like us and self cater though that can be a bit hard with busy peaks and needs a bit of organising. It all depends on whether you want to manage what you eat and where it comes from.

For me the beginning of the season has been pleasantly slow, that is the number of clients around. Which is good as the wonderful old DOS feeling system is not the most logical or the easiest to get around. So I've had time to get my head around the system and the procedures and all the prep and clean up. Which seems to be just as much whether you have 1 guest or a full house. Well maybe there is a bit of difference as there is less tables to wipe down and dishes.

Not had any time to do anything about radio, then again Julie and I decided to relocate our caravan in our RDO to the staff area and now have a room in one of the old converted railway carriages plus the caravan. All very conveniently located near some nice tall gums for hanging a piece of wire off. Sadly not until the next round of rostered days off for that activity, and that may be next week for two days or in 10 days time at the end of the festival weekend. Then again I might get up early enough to get it all done before breakfast. Dependent of course on when the bar closes the night before.

Undara the first week and a bit

2009-04-09T19:21:00.002+10:00

Well what a week, so much to learn to operate front of house at this place. Mind you it is so beautiful here. The sunrise and sunset chorus of Kookaburras, Curawongs, rosela and Parrots. Absolutely spectacular.

Julie and I work rather opposite shifts to each other, a bit like emerald she gets earlies and I get lates. To solve the disturbance issues we ended up taking on a room in addtional room to the caravan. Now Julie can get up and do her thing in the caravan early leaving me to sleep a bit later and I can bump around late at nught before slipping into bed. Convieniently it also gives a free bed to the family if they choose to visit.

We have both had a couple of days off to get us into a cycle of 10 days on and 4 days off to get all staff on for easter week end and the weekend after with a Country Rock and Blues Festival. We are going to be busy and in some ways I am glad we are out of the main caravan area as the place is totaly packed out. Not a spare site to be had anywhere and most of the accomodation is gone too even the expensive stuff. Julie just told me everything is full.

On the next rostered off now we are parked up for the next 6 months or so I'm going to make use of some trees and hang some wire. With four days off I'll get some time to play with the ham radio gear.

The last 2.5 of 6 weeks

2009-04-05T14:57:00.005+10:00

Needing to fill in a couple of weeks and job hunt as we need work for the next few months to replace cash taken by the gearbox replace in the truck. We decided to give wwoofing a go, as wwoofing is a labour trade for free food and board it certainly is a way to save money while traveling. Perusing the large directory of WWOOF member properties we limited our choice to places between Bundaberg and Brisbane. I have a follow up at the Naturopath in 'Bundy' to go to so there was no point in roaring off on a 6 our drive to South West or West Queensland for a week.

We found a great place up in the Sunshine Hinterland near Cooroy. Seven Acres dedicated to Orgainic, Biodynamic and Permaculture. What a piece of luck, they do everything I hope to do in the future when we have a piece of land for ourselves. The Hinterland reminds me somewhat of where I grew up in the Waitakere ranges, lots of ridge lines and valleys, bush clad with patches of grazing scatterd though out. Winding roads that follow ridges crossing many streams instead of the classic long straight Australain Road.

We were very lucky in our wwoofing timing, and got to participate in some Autumn specific Biodynamic practices like spreading 500 and cow pat pit. We had plentytime a great place to recoup and recover even while doing masses of weeding from our travels of the last few weeks and associated driving.

Within a couple of days of arriving Julie and I received work offers from Undara Experience about 4 hours drive in from Cairns at Undara Volcanic National Park. Yahoo! and another 1600 Km to travel to get to work.

We took up the offer setting an arrical date of 31 march leaving us a week and a half of Wwoofing, and enough time for a few days traveling to get to Undara. We arrived on the 31st and opted to start work the next day. Julie dove into reception duties and I went straight to the bar. Well behind the bar, as Front of House staff doing a combination of bar, tables and restaurant set up.

Where did the last 6 weeks go

2009-04-04T10:23:00.004+11:00

I've been thinking about blogging for the last while and realised today it's been around 6 weeks since last putting anything up. Well I do have a valid excuse for some of that time we have been out of cell phone coverage so no wireless Internet for a week and a bit scattered through. Then we got busy seeing nephew and family in Brisbane, WWOOFing (Willing Worker On Organic Farms) for two weeks.

Where did we go? After Agnes water we hid for 4 days at Deep Water National Park. The weather was spectacular, with wonderful warm stinger, and croc free water. A place we really did not want to leave. The radios came out and wire was flung around and I got a number of contacts on 40m with the ZL contest on. I even joined in another 80m net with the Noosa and area club.

Sadly supplies were an issue and it was off to Bundaberg to resupply and visit a naturopath. Mon Repos a logger head turtle sanctury was a beautiful place to stay. We discovered late march was the end of the turtle season so missed seeing landing turtle or hatchlings. No radio allowed here, CB and other radio usage is specifically banned on the caravan park grounds. Oh well it can weight for Burrum heads.

A little further down the coast we stayed at Burrum National park. This was a deep soft sand entrance that takes about 5 to 7 minutes to drive in and four well drive is the only option. Being relatively prepared we put the manual hubs in. We'll Julie did, she got out of the car before I did. We bogged about a km in, left me stumped so dropped the tyre pressures low still nothing like movement. Pushed Julie into the drivers seat to so I could see what was happening. Hello, Hello nothing happening on the front wheels. Checked the hubs were in and found they were set on free. Oops no one checked the markings and one of us left them engaged from the last 4x4. No wonder we were going through fuel a little quicker. Engaged the hubs and away.

Nice spot, warm water to swim in and very shallow until quite a way out. Got the wire back up in the air again specifically to get on the Noosa 80m net. Good conditions heard everyone and I think even worked them. Later reaslised the amp was off so a good go to work the New South Wales Guys with 5w. I did discover the lack of amp from reports and put it on to get excellent reports. Being so close to Noosa by this stage a member (whose name I will have to ask Julie for as my memory is really slack) came up to visit us in the park the next day (Friday). Had a great yarn, learnt a bit about the area and talked just enough ham radio not to bore Julie.

We popped to Brisbane for the weekend, which turned into four days. Saw our nephew and family and had a catch up. Saw a couple of amazing art exhibitions at the Queensland University Art Gallery.

The rest is for the next blog

A journey across Bulburin National Park (Rain Forest)

2009-03-10T19:25:00.005+11:00

We thought we were in for a pleasant drive through the forest. Well did I get my hopes knocked back when we got to this. The first of a number of dead trees fallen across the road.

Fortunately for us the first log was rotten and the winch could pull a cracked section away without looking to become a lumber jack.

So much for hoping to not become a lumber jack. After this exercise of cutting by hand a 50cm diammeter hardwood, we can see why people carry chain saws as essential 4x4 equipment. An hour and a half later we were able to pull the section tthe right of where I am cutting clear of the road (vague track in the grass). There was of course not option again but to keep going forward. After this Julie and I were really hoping we would not see another tree like this.

Fortunately we didn't. Only this one which was conveniantly positioned to get under and another couple that were rotten and broken into bits we rolled out of the way by hand.

I was so glad of the hot showers at Agnes waters that night.

Byfield manouvres

2009-03-10T18:45:00.006+11:00

Well we knew there was a sand dune ahead, did we know it was 1km to get to the top? Absolutely not, but we still give it a go anyway.

Looking like we are ready to go. Notice all the softsand and trees on top of the track. Lots of trees means nowhere to do a U turn and come back out.

Ooops, not enough momentum and we lost traction. Good thing we have a winch and gear to make it all go. We were told by the salesman that we would be umlikely to use the winch more than a few times in our whole trip. We got to use it 6 or 7 times in 1 km on the same day. Guess that piece of mind insurance paid off.

Winch cables are suprisingly heavy to pull out, especially the wire ones at nearly full length.

Me doing some clean up at the first winch run

Phew, last pull to the top of the hill. I was so knackered after burying the spare tyre three times and hauling all the gear around I never saw it untill the next mornigna and see more now that I look at the picture.

Waterpark creek crossing after being warned by the ranger of rising water

Forty Five minutes later when we drove the crossing looked like this. Photo taken after getting accross.

A Place of magic, we paddled up Byfield Creek from Water Park Creek while the water was high and found this spot.

Beyond Byfield, to Cania

2009-02-20T21:12:00.003+11:00

It is amazing where a week can just disappear. Just simple things like resupplying in town again takes time and you really do not notice it going. Our short term drop into Toyota Rockhampton for a one day clutch turned into a two day replace the gear box job. Mind you it was only two days and they did have it in stock. so when we said go to getting the car back was only three hours of fitting. The guys at Iain Weigh Toyota Rockhampton were fantastic, happy to talk to us and explain what was going on.

Apparently the gear box fluid had never been changed in its entire life and is not even in the service log book. Would you believe it? we were certainly surprised that it was not. Well with a car that spends a fair proportion of its life in the tropical and near tropical areas under Queensland Rail it needed changes every 40000 Km. Well we know what we will be doing on those services given a bit more travel.

Leaving Rockhampton behind we headed south west via Biloela to visit Cania Gorge National Park. Stopping at a rest area near the park to check it out as we wanted some real cheap if not free camping and it is just the pick. At least 100m off the road, rubbish bins, flushing toilets and really nice and quiet. Aside from the odd truck climbing the hill that is, but who cares it's free and there are only a few trucks passing through. Did I mention the trees, very nice trees for hanging an aerial from, well there are and I did hang an aerial on the second night.

After checking the place out we headed into the gorge a short drive away, and walked our socks off. How stunning walking in a park in the late afternoon with animals and birds coming out. We got to pass a yellow and red ochre sites, ochre is used by the Aboriginals to do all that amazing rock art. Walked under a hanging rock and climbed to the very top for a view up the Gorge. It's a good view but Isla Gorge is still my Gorge pick. Not having climbed to the top of Carnarvorn Gorge I can't compare it. We walked out on a setting sun and dragged the van up the hill to camp arriving in the dark to find fellow travellers also settling in for the night. Phew, what a hill down to second just to get up one spot in the climb.

Dark does not work for throwing lead weights around, so that happened late Yesterday afternoon. That was well after another morning (well we kind of got up early) walk for a couple of hours on the other side of the gorge. This one took us along a side branch gorge floor to a large pool with heaps of ferns then up the gorge wall and along the top to a spot called Giants Chair then down again. We rewarded ourselves with a lazy afternoon at the end of the road in a park overlooking Cania Lake. Getting back to the rest area with plenty of light to pull up and aerial, then time to relax and join in with a club net based around Harvey Bay while Julie cooked dinner.

Today the alarm went again to get up so we could walk in the cool. Ignoring the alarm we eventually got on the road down hill to the park mid morning and spent the day lazing at the picnic area in the Gorge. It was a very warm day and certainly not pleasant to go hiking in again. Julie was busy reading her bird book and feeding me snippets of information, while I organised various articles collected from magazines about different ares in Australia to explore. Well we are in the mood and friends have advised our Cape York trip is on for mid July early August. For now we head back out to the coast via another park as we slowly in a rather convoluted way head toward Brisbane.

The great escape

2009-02-12T17:48:00.002+11:00

The alarm went off, and I opened gritty eyes to the morning light. Gritty, well not surprising after all my digging in the sand and camped on the top of a large dune that had taken four hours to hall the caravan and land cruiser up. The good news, it had rained all night and there was some light drizzle around. That meant the feared soft sand was now much firmer and we had a chance of getting turned around and out a bit easier.

After breakfast and a quick pack up and a brief but worried discussion and deciding the spot we stopped at we could not turn around in. We carried on off the top of the hill heading further in and dropping off the top. The driving was quite reasonable especially for sand and five rocks could be possible however we feared lots of winching to get up a 300m section of track to the top when the sand dries out. We carried on for around three kilometers and found a turn around and headed out. We climbed the feared 300m section back onto the top with relief and idled down in a few minutes what took four hours to come up the day before.

On the way out we meet the ranger in the truck again. He asked how we went, on telling him it took four hours of winching he hid his face in his hands, looked up again and said "I didn't think you would make it". I advised we were heading out to Red Rock camp for a couple of nights which we never made. The decision was approved as a good choice and on that note headed on our way only to get as far as Waterpark camp.

Well we stayed the night and it rained and rained and rained. Woke in the morning to an early visit from another ranger warning us the monsoon rains were going to result in big rises in the creeks which would close the road leaving us in for 4 to 7 days. She left us saying check the creek level every couple of hours so we could get out if needed. Well after breakfast an hour later we went down to check the creek and could see it rising and decided time to pack and go. Got back to cross the creek and it was twice as wide, higher and faster than our look 45 minutes before. On the other side we saw the water level had risen 20cm in 45 minutes. Later that afternoon we looked at the stream again and it was up to 40cm depth over the ford.

Looks like two great escapes in one day, not a bad effort for a relaxed holiday.

A hard way to go camping

2009-02-11T21:04:00.006+11:00

We left 'Rocky' as the locals refer to Rockhampton for a bit of camping in Byfield National Park about 73 km from town. Had a very nice drive out to Yepoon on the coast however really started to notice the clutch grabbing under load on the hills towing the caravan. A good thing we were onto it after finding it harder and harder to get into reverse and booked in to get it serviced next Monday. For now we put up with reverse being a bit hard to get into, the grabbing was not continuous.

Arrived in Byfield National Park and started heading in to a camp called Five Rocks. Good or not we met a Ranger coming out in a large tip truck who warned us that the big dune we were climbing was going to be a bit hard but let the tyres down and pick a gear and keep the momentum up and we'll probably be right. We let the tyres down and headed further in, then we got to the start of the climb. Well the caravan felt like a lump of lead on the back and the sand was softer than I thought we were going to get. Turns out the other side is pretty firm which makes getting out easier, not getting in. Total climb was about 800m of track we got about 200m in and hit the first point of no traction.

Have winch, can keep going, so out came the gear and we pulled ourselves about 20m forward. Julie was driving now while I pulled heavy cables around, found traction and I sent Julie on her way again, got another 50m and winched again. Julie got a similar distance on again. I pulled the cable out again looked around the corner thinking we were near the top and saw the hill keep going and the sand looked softer than we were on. Now we were fully committed to going forwards only, because of the van on the back. Only enough room to just do a 6 point turn in the truck by its self at the wider points and passing bays.

Julie came for a to look at what I saw and I asked her to go for a walk and see just where the track went and how far to the top. I carried on with a short 10m winch to some firmer ground and let even more air out of the tyres. Now down to 12 PSI on the front, 17 on the rear and 20 on the van all giving the same sized foot print on the ground. Julie came back after a short hike saying it was about 400m to the top but there was space up there to turn around. So deciding the top was the option I climbed into the driver seat and away we went. Made good progress this time and got another couple of hundred metres. Out of luck again though the lower pressures did let us get further. Looking for winching options I noticed a track running parallel to the one we were on that appeared to have a firmer base. Backed down the hill and managed to get going on the other track.

Phew! We were away again and the top of the hill was coming up then we lost momentum again. Now what? We were out of the trees with nothing to winch off. Julie found a spot we might be able to back the caravan into and turn around about 40m back down the track. Going forward meant real hard work like burying the spare tyre. So we decided to back down and try and turn around. The backing was easy, the ruts kept the van and car in line. In fact so well is was near impossible to turn the van and impossible to get the truck to follow. Looking at a probable Jack-knife situation we gave up on turning around here.

Bugger! Plus a whole bunch of four letter swear words. Now we had to go forward and we were looking at least two winch pulls from the top, and burying of the spare wheel. Two and a half hours later after burying the spare wheel 3 times because we kept pulling it out we got 20m on and only needed another 25 to 30 to make the top. Four hours after starting and two more pulls and buring the spare wheel once (I love whinch extension straps). Julie drove away and made the top while I dug out the spare wheel. We made it half way to Five Rocks and with the light now gone, mosquitoes out in force and feeling rather buggered camped for the night on the side of the track. The question on the top of our minds collapsing into bed was how do we get out of here?

Farewell Emerald

2009-02-08T20:55:00.005+11:00

Will we miss you Emerald? Sadly probably not, but then Emerald was a place to escape to after the farm and a place where jobs were plentiful and easy to get into. I must say I enjoyed the work at the Roadhouse in the end. Just a pity all this wet weather was slowing the truck movements down so slowing business off. That coupled with a drop through small in the number of miners around and work was getting a bit slow. A number of the coal mines near Emerald and Blackwater were reducing staff as coal volumes fell around 15%.

We headed out of town after a stop at the Caltex to hand in my uniform and have a cuppa before the three hour run to Rocky (Rockhampton) as the locals refer to the place. Well the tyres in the caravan and truck were down a couple of pounds and I really should have topped up before the trip meant we went through a bit more diesel than planned for the trip.

Note to self - if you check the tyres you should put air in as well.

There really was no excuse as we carry a 12v compressor for topping up tyres when off roading.

Rocky is a nice place and we got the needed shopping done. Like clothes that fit now our change of diet is kicking in. For those that are interested in our diet approach go look up Vern Verona. He writes from an anti cancer perspective however the other benefits are worth it even if cancer is a non issue.

I even picked up a cheap fishing rod and reel to cast a small weight and line for antenna raising exercises. I have for some time been using a hand line for the job but been struggling to get over trees. Often I get the weight and cord just over the tree but not back to the ground again.

We head off to Byfield National Park tomorrow for a weeks worth of exploration up there and around Yepoon. Looking forward to a non work related travel part of our trip again and even getting back into living in the same time zone. It's been a bit weird living 5 hours behind the world around you. Well that is how I look at working those 3pm to 1130pm.

Why the English wear socks and sandles

2009-01-19T12:16:00.005+11:00

We always laughed at English tourists, discreetly and out of sight of course. It would be rather rude otherwise. What at well, of course this habit of Shorts, sandals and socks. However after extensive investigation of the mosquito and sand fly bites we are receiving. We have developed the following theory.

Wearing socks while wearing shorts with or without sandals prevents a vast majority of midge, mosquito and sand fly bites which occur typically on ankles and feet.

In an attempt to test this theory last Saturday Julie wore shorts, socks and sandals, Trevor wore shorts and had bare feet in his sandal equivalent. While Julie enjoyed breakfast in relative comfort, Trevor was eaten alive and suffered from multiple bites. Upon wearing socks the biting of these insects was significantly reduced.

It may not be fashionable, however the English were onto something it seems. No sand fly bites.

A storm that never happened

2009-01-19T11:55:00.002+11:00

The temperature rose, the humidity climbed. The locals around us started to look like they were hot. The malls and other shops filled with those seeking cool air conditioning. It started Thursday and kept going Friday, the locals talked of a storm. The sky stayed clear no clouds around not even on the horizon.

Saturday was worse melt in the heat, thirty one degrees Celsius still at eleven thirty at night. Surely it would rain, surely it would poor. Never a drop not one at all, we melted on Sunday though not as bad as before. Off to work to escape from the heat to work in the kitchen what a treat.

The wind came up the clouds started to build. Surely it would rain, surely it would pour, the locals said it would. Once again, never a drop not one at all. The temperature fell all through the night, to tepid at midnight to cool at dawn. The clouds hung around, then blew away. They are back again threatening to rain. But it's not hot no thunderstorm underway. Enjoy the wind , enjoy the breeze it's a welcome respite from the breathless heat.

Outside with the midges and mosquitos

2009-01-15T13:59:00.006+11:00

Life toddles on in Emerald, slowly slowly the place wakes up after Christmas and New Year. It really is amazing the impact the mine workers part of the community has on the business of the town. That and there was lots of rain around Mt Isa cutting the Highway to Darwin. That meant even less truck travelling through. The Road House still stays open quiet or otherwise and were some long slow nights. Pity that doesn't make end of shift clean up any easier or less.

We have had cloudy weather for about the last week and this has made for rather pleasant living. Well the temperatures have been much more pleasant getting only into the mid to late twenty's. The only downside is the place really never dried out quickly from the last round of rain and the mosquito's have been rife.

The sun came out today quite early and I've been sitting out on the porch in a balmy 30.6 degrees Celsius, busy shooing the little midges away that all seem to love flying around my face. It really wouldn't be to much of a bother but half a dozen flying dots when trying to watch a monitor are awfully distracting. As for the mosquitoes it seems the tea tree oil I put on for bites that were itching are keeping them away today. That and a gentle breeze helps.

I really find the late shift all a bit odd. Then again there are not a lot of places to go in the caravan after work to wind down before crashing to bed. Well not with Julie in bed asleep for an early start. Still it gets us the money we want to travel with in a few months.

Work again in another hour and a bit. Thursday is a bit busier and we get a group that comes in for coffee and things about half an hour before closing. Truck numbers are up on the road again though not up as it was before I started. We even sold out both roasts last night and most of the specials, a rather rare event for the last few weeks.

I even have my HF radio out as well. Not that there is anything on the bands for me to work but nice to have it out and listen around. I received in the mail the other day some traps to put together a trapped dipole for 15m, 17m, 20m and band of choice, for me I might look at covering 30 and 40m with extendable wire. We'll see how that affects the other bands. I have the wire, just need a day off after a recovery day off to get that done. Next Tuesday and Wednesday will be the time to look at that. Sadly our site is not conducive to dipoles due to the poinciana trees we are under. They look similar to the picture bellow just a bit denser due to lack of management.

Beautiful shade trees, but damn near impossible to throw a line over in current situ and certainly near impossible to throw a line through. I'd be lucky to get a dipole more than 4 metres off the ground and pass over too many TV aerials in cabins and caravans. For now the dipole is going to be my trapped travel antenna for day trips and weekends away while we are in emerald.

After some considering of Antenna Matching unit options, listening and reading I have decided to ship the Half wave aerial gear back home and go with a random wire as an alternate to the trapped dipole. With this in mind I splashed out on a LDG Z11Pro, 4:1 and 1:1 Baluns. Now the random wire which apparently to be useful can't be to rand and subject to another blog, was eventually run through the poinciana trees that overshadow us, with a counter poise on the ground following the fence.

The Auto tuner makes changing bands a real breeze, it sits at the base of the random wire. I love the RF sensing fully automatic tuning, and it's fast. I had considered getting my one out of storage, but it is a manual one and I can sit in the van and tune at the same time. Or in today's case away from mosquito alley. Now it's time to pack up some things and send them home.

IRLP is going again and the wonders of Skype

2009-01-07T14:43:00.002+11:00

Well done to the local guys out here in particular VK4SMW for the work in getting the IRLP node going again in the area. After discovering the node when we first hit the farm many weeks ago now it went off air to get relocated. I just have to work out the node number however it was down for Rockhampton. Then again I've been dialing out, finally after many failed radio attempts spoke to Rob ZL1RD well kind of by radio. Just bad timing in the days for catching each other with me on nights and the time difference.

I've also been dialling into the Mildura node 6320 to catch up with the guys down in Sunraysia. So far not caught anyone but then I am trying in the middle of the day. Looks like I'll have to give Ray VK3HSR a call via Skype to find out when he is near his 70cm set.

Now Skype has been around for a long time but we have only ever had dial up and not bothered with that technology. With the advent of wireless broadband we get the bandwidth to make it worthwhile and have been making the most of a plan to make unlimited calls within a country and in our case chose Australia. Saves going for a couple of km's to the phone box. Absolutely brilliant, what a great idea and it only costs 4$ a month. TXT's are dirt cheap and so are the international calls.

Added to that calling friends on skype PC to PC is a great way to keep up, free and very easy. I just need to remember the data cap so we make long calls towards the end of a month rather than the beginning.

I approach again the working hour so time for a spot of lunch before another round of serving dinners and cleaning.

A time for melting

2009-01-07T14:27:00.004+11:00

Crikey its been warm recently. Whose idea was it any way to come to Queensland during the summer season? Both our ours I guess and the drive to get work. Thankfully we both have employers that have air conditioned environments. Well mostly the Caltex's kitchen one gave up the other day. It made for a hot couple of days with 33 plus outside and inside the kitchen with fryer, grill and toasted sandwich maker going all day. Well I tell you that got fixed quickly, faster than all the other faulty gear in the kitchen. Three weeks later and still one piece of critical gear broken down. Lets see what happens now that the world is coming back from Holiday.

We've had cloudy steamy days for a while and as I listened to the radio I'm glad it was not the weather of further west and north. Cloncurry and Mt Isa received circa 18 inches of rain in two days. Now why it's quoted in inches in a metric country I have no idea. Mind you 'out back' some things operate like they are out of the 1950's so that may be a reason why. The news today reported Mt Isa to Darwin will be closed for another 2 to 3 weeks as they lost a 100m section of highway.

I managed to get two days in a row off, whoopee no what to do. Fortunately one lined up with Julies day off and we went west to Rubyvale to have look around and get out of Emerald and the caravan park. We rolled into Rubyvale and headed into the Gem Gallery for a Devonshire tea and with real clotted cream to. Absolutely fantastic. Two pots of tea and much cream later we wandered out for a stroll about two hours later. The stroll turned into a 5 km walk up into the Gem fields and a fossicking area called Reward. What amazed me was the number of people living out on the gem fields working claims. A bit of a drive later and we headed back into town thoroughly relaxed.

A blur behind the counter

2008-12-28T14:03:00.002+11:00

Crikey the first week and a bit has come and gone. Life behind the counter of a truck stop gets easier as time passes by. All I can say is I'm glad I've started in the quiet season, finding items in the till system defies logic at time and I would hate to be looking at ques out the door while trying to find calamari rings under chips and not deep fry snacks.

That aside the toughest bit was eight days straight and adapting to life at work between 1500 and 2330. The hardest nights are when it's slow, usually a Saturday night all I want to do is snack and it's not food I want to snacl on. Last night must have been the slowest ever. I am on again tomorrow and off on Monday.

Got a day off on Christmas day, the truck stop closed along with the rest of the town except the service stations selling fuel. We went and hid out at Lake Marraboon found a shady spot read magazines and watched a DVD of Ice Age 2. Then we wandered back to the caravan and stepped out of the car to 39 degrees C and a building thunderstorm. So we headed off to the pools spent all of 5 minutes in the outside pool before it closed due to lightening and we spent the rest of the day soaking in the covered pools.

Motivation to do much in the heat of the day is a little limited, especially with thunderstorm build up. Not so much physical activity gets done through the day in the heat. Then again I'm always on the go at work, well mostly at least.

We were going to get out today and go somewhere, however the rain started last night around 8:30 PM and kept going all night only just easing now at 1:25 PM. Had some real good down pours and lowered temperature. The result a big sleep in today with no heat to drive us out of the caravan. So no trip out of town, then again where to go between Christmas and New Year in regional QLD when the world closes down and I'm back on again at 3:00 PM.

Julie is off to work tomorrow so I get a day off doing my own thing. Maybe I'll get some radio in.

Behind the counter of a Road House

2008-12-19T13:06:00.003+11:00

It's started, I've been let loose behind the counter on unsuspecting public at the Caltex Road House in Emerald. It's not the easiest job in the world some of the time, it's hard work especially around dinner time. Anybody for Pork or Beef Roast? And the specials are pretty good to. Mind you a good crew helps and all the guys are fun to work with. Anybody want work they are still short staffed and have the odd position available.

Well if any of you are travelling through Emerald over the holiday season or even over the next 6 months stop in and say 'Hi', I may be on I may not, however seem to be getting the late shift up to closing at 11:30PM. Hey you won't miss me I'm about the only guy behind the counter in the restaurant.

Two days in and it is all rosy so far. My feet may not agree at the end of the day and that is no different to nearly any other job I've done.

What to do in the middle of the day?

2008-12-19T12:35:00.005+11:00

Yes indeed what do you do in the middle of the day in Emerald? Well that really is an open question with answers dependent upon circumstances that vary. I now work at the local Roadhouse/Truck stop. For at least the first week I seem to have picked up the late shift with a 3:00 PM start and 11:30PM. To get on air with amateur radio I will need to be on bands other than 80m. So more wire to put up in the air using what I have right now.

What choices from here? To be real honest I never actually worked that much with other bands, let alone DX spotters and predictors for band openings. I've made contacts on 20 and 15m in limited number and only ever once on 17m. So time to embark on a new area (for me) in Amateur radio. First up though is to make the most of this daylight time and deal with radiating RF on 20 through 10m. Something like working with the wire and couplers I have at the moment.

In the past all my contacts on bands above 40m was by chance of timing. That is I had time at a particular moment and used the radio and happened to find someone calling CQ, other times produced dead bands, a real random experience. If anyone has useful tools they use to determine band openings I am interested. I have decided against ALE as the circumstances of our accommodation prevent me from be able to leave this running. Does any one have good sites for predictions or MUF and MLF? What about DX spotting groups, are there many or one and any better one than others? While I wait on feed back Google will be kept busy. Tomorrow will be some aerial work.

Oh the other downside with 80m at the moment around this part of the world is all the Thunder storms which build up in the afternoons. Not daily but every few days. We had light rain with plenty of Lightening Wednesday night and we had storms passing through all last night into the early hours this morning. Makes for a very noisy time, if you want to get on a radio with that around.

A time for action

2008-12-17T10:11:00.006+11:00

It is interesting the space that one gets into without quite realising you got there. Now we are off the farm and in Emerald Julie mentioned how much I moaned on the property. Certainly we were both not in a good space towards the end but I had not realised I had become a moaner. Did the moaning really come out in the last couple of Blogs. Well looking at them they certainly were not positive and certainly a reflection of where I was at. We certainly missed having time to do small things for just us. Crikey even getting time to shop for food was a mission.

Well we finally got to take some positive action and control back in our lives. The 'we' extended to looking for work, we tried looking for options around Queensland however just like the possible title of Julies one day to be written book 'Upside down, down under' we continue to travel to Australia backwards to any sensible Aussie traveller. We did Victoria in the winter and now we are at the edge of the tropics doing them in the summer. Suffice to say there is limited hospitality work around further west or north due to the wet season. So door knocking we went and there certainly are places with signs up wanting employees. A couple of days later I am employed at the local roadhouse on the edge of town and Julie is at a news agency. All just like that, and mine was the slowest as corporates do corporate things like call referees.

With the work front settling down and getting some direction and control back I took further action in dealing with Ham Radio and getting that into gear. For all the quibbles of gear type the end fed half wave on 80m is pretty good. So that is up though rather low running down the caravan park boundary our site is against. Even had a go at contacting my friend Rob ZL1RD in a coordinated effort. Suffice to say NVIS arrangements at my end are not conducive for VK to ZL contacts. However I could just hear Rob and we finished off on Skype. Other action involved finding a local Jaycar reseller. That means access to items like Power Poles and RF connectors and doing a few jobs that have been pending. Still got a couple of bits of gear that use the Auto T connector to convert over. Now that was a project I should have finished before leaving, to late now.

I have been offered assistance including sourcing an HF Packer Amp, digging my manual tuner out of storage and trap construction. My efforts now are going to focus on hanging multiple end fed half wave from the same sky hook and attached to the same couple and see whether the couple will still match it. This would certainly reduce throwing lots of wires. My theory I hope to disprove is the hung wires will look like a fat element on the highest frequency. Then again fan dipoles work so why not end fed aerials. One line to throw for 15, 17 an 20m is another option and either tree or some telescoping pole for a support. For the higher bands getting away from needing a tree all the time is useful especially in caravan parks.

Melting in Emerald while on the hunt

2008-12-12T18:26:00.003+11:00

Crikey we've melted in Emerald most days now since arriving last Saturday. the first weekend was the worst, real high humidity and late thirties (Celsius) with good storms each night. the rest of the time its been either hot or hot an humid. Wee seem to be seeing the start of summer temperatures now with the average day thirty something and lucky to see nights below twenty.

For some one that hasn't done a lot of swimming the escapades to the local pools have been frequent. well at least three times this week so far and I think with high temps forecast again we will be heading there this weekend as well. Good and cheap though only three dollars each to get in and they are nice pools.

Now for the hunting, we've been looking for work since arriving. Initially through Work About Australia and VisitOz. Sadly we are still doing Australia backwards and we are in Queensland looking at work where they are closing. Summer is a real off season in the desert and up north in the tropics. That's okay since we have now moved sites to get away from a dieing air con compressor for the office and are staying in Emerald.

Julie has said yes to a role in a local news agency and I am awaiting reference checks with the local road houses (for some of you read Truck Stop). It seems likely as everything was hanging on the checks at this stage. Certainly will be good to be earning again for a bit. Money is needed in the bank to fund further legs on our adventure.

Mind you the whole piece is adventure, living in heat like this is totally new for me and while having days where I wish I would stay dry for a while a experiences indeed. Mind you the farm was an experience and I can definitely drive tractors now. Going on it will be interesting to see what happens with working and travelling. Rio Tinto are all through the news here about laying off staff globally, no one knows where and that will take jobs out of the market.

Julie mentioned that in WA as mine workers were being laid off they were going back on the land. Good on them, just hope that by the time we get there work will still be plentiful enough. Then again that could be a few years away and the world will be merrily back on it's feet by then and the mines back flat out. It's tougher times for a while just like after the 1987 crash. Still there is work outback just get it in the right season.

Further gear ponderings

2008-12-12T17:47:00.004+11:00

Again for those of you not tracking the radio end of this Blog feel free to skip this one.

After much navel gazing and contemplation of equipment, costs and of course bank balance versus current no income the whole new radio path is out the window. The Linear will however be replaced with an HFpacker Amp. That will reduce the power budget requirements and allow for a 17AHr SLA supported by solar panel. Well at least the solar panel when we are not really remote and it's keeping fridges and other things going as well. The current panels would be a slow down hill slide if I go too hard out, then again I'm down form 20 Amps peak to 6 Amps on peak so definitely in the running to keep going over days.

The bigger question is what to do for a better gain yet portable, easy to assemble and disassemble, higher gain antenna system than the current magnetic loop. One option is the very nice multi band Yagi by supertennas, a very nice option actually. My limit on this one is the erected size and the square footage available in the average caravan park such as where we are in Emerald. Not to mention all those overhanging trees. Mind you it's portable so I should head off to a park or similar anyway and make the most of it. The other negative is the current low Aussie dollar against the USD.

I have however found a possible option for a multi-band vertical by TTS Systems called a Scrub Pole. Standing at 10m tall and requiring guying it will fit in a caravan park site and is a quarter wave on 40m. Two options exist for matching it, either a auto tuner such as the SGC230 and 237, or the more efficient couplers TTS Systems have developed. The pole can be found at http://www.ttssystems.com.au/ on its own page. I have no prices and am pending that to get a comparison on that versus a supertenna.

Choices between the two aerial options at this stage will come down to price and versatility. I also need to consider the Squid pole option, does anybody in VK know where to get these or other cheap telescopic poles? Preferred option is to be non conductive fibreglass or similar and not Aluminium. I could keep using my wire and couplers, tape all bands (20,17,15m) to the pole and put the coupler at the base. Hey presto self supporting wire, with bull bar or draw bar to use to hold it all up. I wonder about attaching all the half waves to the coupler at the same time somewhat like a fan dipole. I suspect that this may not be too useful as there will be negligible separation, well that I can kind of give a go now and see what happens. Less the squid pole but plus a tree.

Three wires could be separated by bits of scrap plastic such as cut up ice cream container's and lids, that would result in only one tree to hold it up and I can try out all wires attached to the coupler at the same time. There is even enough wire folded back to adjust lengths on 20, 17 an 15m. Good thing I brought the MFJ259B with me, unbelievable how much I have used it so far this trip. Makes tuning in the field so much easier and of course nicer on the FT817 finals

Finally nothing beats the ability to make contacts on Ham radio than actually getting and spending time calling CQ or answering CQ calls. Now we have time on our side and work opportunities while shifts will give far more time off to actually play radio.

Now how to squeeze in the 80m and 40m end fed half waves, I'm sure I can slip them up the fence line behind me the cabin next door, the clothes lines, toilet block and the next couple of caravan sites after that. Lets see if people notice, pity 80m is bright orange wire, Oh well it was free.

All that planning did I make the right choices?

2008-12-07T11:21:00.005+11:00

For those of you not following my Ham radio plot then skip this one, otherwise join me on my rumination of the gear I brought.

One of the things I miss from a nice home QTH environment is having the radio gear set up, the aerials in the air and evenings or mornings to play ham radio. Life permanently portable changes many things, but the big one to impact me has been always setting up and packing up. Additionally in the case of full caravan parks how to get a decent aerial up, or did I plan things the right way and bring the correct gear?

I went down the half wave aerial path, which is fine however I find a little limiting. Particularly if dependent on the time you have available will affect the band of choice, this means putting out lots of wire for different bands when staying somewhere for a while, or limiting the times with in the limited time available based on the bands of choice made. At the farm I had chosen 80m and 40m, because they are quite good for QRP especially 80m in an Near Vertical Incident Sky wave type setup (there are few of us who are not NVIS anyway on 80m) and the times I was likely to operate favoured those bands. However 30m and 20m are fun and could fit into possibly the same late PM or early morning windows as well especially around sunrise/sunset. The trouble is the half wave path means more trees and more wire. Then there is the coupler swapping between wires to make a band change and the lack of sufficient cord to put up more than three bands up anyway.

So was the half wave approach the right way to go? For band hopping flexibility definitely not an option. For only having to spend time on hanging one wire also definitely not an option, assuming you want more than one band to access. On the otherdied they are a good wire aerial, needing limited ground, only a single support, plus in general they radiate as well as they are raised though generally omni. Of course the higher bands such and 20m to 10m are very easy to get vertical with good angle of take off.

Now I did bring a dipole and a 300ohm ribbon feed line set up, however chose not to bring a manual tuner to go with it. I figured this would be a back up aerial and manually tune the band by rolling in the ends. Again I am limited on band swapping ease, and what to reduce my set up time to extend my operating time.

What to do, well it might be that I use the half wave wire lengths and go down the path of random wire and ATU such as an LDG z-11 Pro or similar. Or even utilise a manual tuner to do the job, mind you I have always wanted an automatic one. Time to ponder this further later, for now the half wave will do.

The other thing that really annoys me is the set up of gear every time I want to use the radio. Typically it's dig out the 817 and linear plus other bits, hope the campsite works with the tree supports to get the aerial to the coupler and linear. If not it's a QRP event, not that I do not mind QRP, current conditions make my SSB signal real hard work if I even get heard at all, one day I'll sort out the Morse. Two things to do to fix this and make life a little better. One get a battery that I can run the linear and FT817 on for a couple of hours before recharging. Get a longer lead to float the auxillary battery with the new battery and hook on the solar panel to either one to extend time. I currently only have a 1.3 Amp Hour and 2.9 Amp Hour and they are getting a little long in the tooth. Good for the FT817 when tramping and you only want an hour or two. Definitely not for the linear.

Finally I must get the tool box I talked about long ago in the beginning and mount everything, I would love to be able to grab the box open the lid attach the coax to something and attach power and be done with it. All sitting there plugged together and ready to go. What I currently have, I lived with for holidays and weekends away. It worked well, just doesn't work for a permanent travelling situation with limited space. Plus we still seem to be aquiring stuff, well things we need though do not use daily. That's the trouble with a 12 foot x 6 foot 6 caravan.

I still ponder the ft817 and linear combo. Was this the right way to go? I am beginning to think the linear choice was not the best, or at least the linear I have isn't the best. It was good in the car in ZL as it gave me 100 to 150W output on 80m and 200w on 20m and above, however current draw of 22 amps is big. Do I need that kind of power now especially with the still relatively high draws of lower power settings. I think stepping back to 30 to 50w would be a better option. That, and not being voltage sensitive would help, this linear really likes 13.8V and not anything below 12.4V. What to do now? Sell both linear and FT817 and go with an FT857 or bigger format FT897. Go to higher receive current radios like the IC7000 and IC706 and it's need for higher voltage ie around 13.8. Or look to get rid of the linear I have and get a smarter option such as the hf Packer amp and run 30W and have less sensitivity to voltage. What ever the option current living arrangements will dictate fully assembled and ready to go. We just have nowhere to do kit work.

That and the laptop will go for digital modes, well the old one will, I like the look of a PSK31 self contained unit I saw on the web ex the hf pack forum. It's small uses low power compared to the laptop, no noise and I can read the LCD in sunlight.

Time for more cold water, it's a very hot day here in Emerald and it is only 11:00AM

Where did all that time go?

2008-12-07T11:09:00.003+11:00

Crikey, where did the days go since putting those two aerials up. Well they were certainly filled with loads of work. We've been so busy I never got back onto HF again, there's something about working 10/11 hour days, 7 days per week that tend to slow you down from well doing anything at all besides grab some food and sleep.

Life is tough when your farming, well at least on this particular farm. In the last few days Julie and I have been both hanging out for even just one day off to get some rest. Not to be unfortunately, and amongst other things we finally get told we are too slow. Mind you I would really like to see someone move by hand 20 cubic metres of wood chip in three hours or less in 38 Celcius heat. Some how I think the time measures were a little optomistic, a couple of days would probably be more accurate.

I did enjoy the big machinery mostly, proved to be a good challenge and hopefully some more use for work a little further on. We have left the farm hence the comments about later on. Eventually we got fed up of our managers other issues unrelated to us be taken out on us, so we left. We also never could get an answer of the expectations for our work output, or even if the job was being done correctly. In short he needs to go and do a diploma in operations management particularly the people managing end. Working in an information vacuum, does not help get the job done especially with a couple of greenhorns that have no idea what needs doing. Farmers common sense does not always appear the smae to those from different background.

Well we are in Emerald now, which is a bigger smoke than springsure though, really a large town. It's a minng town too with a number of coal mines near by. We are looking at work options and deciding whether to apply for work further afield or whether to just sit tight and pick up work around us. I must say I have enjoyed being in the country, it's years since you could go away for the day and leave keys in the ignition, doors unlocked and stuff scattered around with nothing disappearing.

The other side of the coin is the lack of opprtunity to interact with other people, especially for me. The concept of going weeks with only three other people to speak too takes some adapting. Haven't even had the time for talking on the phone or even on the local 2m repeater. That I guess is where the expectaions around time come in just getting into town for a couple of hours makes that easier. Now I can see why these farmers wives just chat and chat and chat when you show up.

Well, that's life on the farm, next time we go in with a better understanding of what goes on and with a list of what what we need and questions to ask about expectations. Certainly going to be asking about regular days off just to live a bit.

Well what to do about radio now, we are in a caravan park in the heart of Emerald with barely enough space to swing a cat by the tail (or should I say wallaby). The temperature is heading for 39 degrees again, so we are definitely in for a scorcher. Time to ponder over a glass of very cold water

Harvest is over break out the radios

2008-11-24T21:03:00.004+11:00

Made it too the end of harvest. Man, what a haul it was! Early starts with the light well at least our hours started with being up and ready for work at 0600 and finishing sometime around 2000 to 2200. However with a small chunk of thunder storms in the middle we survivied.

Well the thunderstomrms wet the place so much even the tractors wouldn't go anywhere. So that created a couple of days off in the middle. The last two days of harvest finished with thunderstorms, fortunately just enough to dampen things off and create a late start on our last day. On our last day we were hauling gear out as fast as we could. Another storm was bearing straight down on us and it was a biggie, with lots of lightening and thunder. I tell you what, with lightening like that bearing down on you and your in a large metal object in the middle of a huge bare field it's a somewhere to get out of in a hurry. Suffice to say we made it before the downpour came, we even made it home before the real down pour.

With harvest end came some spare time, not to mention able to sleep in. I even got off the property to go shopping in Emerald with Julie. When you're busy it's not too bad to be away from people and isolated. However it was so good to get into town and interact with other people.

I even have had enough time to throw a couple of wires up for HF. So far I picked on 80 meters and 40 meters, I even got to use them Saturday and made a few qrp contacts (2.5 and 5 watts) on 40m. However it was a bit of a struggle to be heard over all the rain static crashes, still so satisfying to get on air again. This was pretty minor in the scheme of things, Brisbane has been hammered and we watched the storm that smashed up Blackwater. Spectacular lightening show for the evening, so entertaining and rather beautiful.

Not a peep from anyone outside of VK4 and VK2, however considering the noise crashes going on they could have been there just not heard. With our first day back into post harvest work today, it looks like I'll get some evenings back to give it all more of a go. Might even get a chance at some ZL again. For all our trying I still need to acheive a two way conversation with my friend Rob ZL1RD. Here's hoping for an early morning success on 80m, after I deal with portable power for the linear.

Driving, driving your car, speeds so fast I thought I was drunk

2008-11-17T22:49:00.008+11:00

I wish it was that fast, Well I could go fast on the Suzuki bike but those tractors and the header are fun to drive, just soooo slow. Dragged a bin able to take 50 tonne of wheat behind one of the smallest tractors here 20 km down the road to the other block, 2 1/2 hours later we got there. My personal favorite is probably the D850 tracked Caterpillar even slower but I do really like to drive. It has the bonus of working air conditioning, particularly with local temperatures in the 30's through the middle of the day.

D850 Cat with 25T Finch Chaser bin

Case Header I've been able to operate for three days for harvest work. Mostly I just move it around and do the cleaning.
The after effects of cleaning (blowing down) the Header (combine harvester). Apparently I was over enthusiastic, well there certainly was limited dust left to catch fire.

The middle of nowhere much is somewhere

2008-11-17T22:25:00.004+11:00

Yes we ended up in what is described by some as the middle of nowhere. Well you could be led to think that, we are 3 1/2 hours from Rockhampton, 1 1/2 to Emerald, 50 minutes from Springsure and Rolleston. Looking at Google Maps and Google Earth around a search for Orion Ten Chain Rd it really looks like the middle of "nowhere" and not much.

However there is still local repeaters out here and appears to be part of a linked grouped that also links out to Rockhampton and Emerald and even has an IRLP node attached as well. So "nowhere" is really somewhere worth having a linked VHF repeater, now the only thing is 'A' talking to someone on the repeater and 'B' having some time to actually utilise the FT8900 in the car to even dial home. Well it would be nice to catch up with friends, especially as I've not had any gap in the harvest to throw a wire up for any HF band.

Talking of harvest we are racing against the coming weather. Rain is forecast for tonight possibly and tomorrow. That's meant long hours over the last few days, the worst was yesterday started at 0600 and finished around 2230. Quite a day especially with lots of physical labour. Are we making it, not really sure, still the chickpeas and wheat are coming in. We just need that third harvester to make real in roads. Then again I would be even busier.

Spent most of yesterday ferrying chickpeas 2 km up the property to augur into a shed for storage. The local depots aren't taking it at the moment they are too full of wheat. Today we were on another block and we had two road trains through on chick pea alone and anther road train was being filled with wheat. Julie and I are both on stand by to race down the road and help tarp up bins if the weather comes though tonight. I wonder how much help it will be with the other block 20km drive away.

Mind you the time off has been nice and a chance to catch up with emails and a blog again.

Blog slow down

2008-11-06T20:52:00.002+11:00

With Julie and I now working on a property and being in the middle of harvest, I'm not getting to much radio opportunities and of course lacking in time to write blogs.

Mind you the bulk of my day is not that exciting anyway at the moment. I'll see what happens just expect a few delays between blogs for the next month or two.

2450 plus kilometers to get a job

2008-11-06T20:26:00.002+11:00

Who would think it would take that much travel to finally get work. Well I guess if you knoow where work is in an area it's okay to head that way. Sadly Julie and I made the wrong decision with regards to Mildura. Certainly for work at least, I really enjoyed meeting and making new freinds and the Sunrasia Radion Club. A very welcoming and inclusive group. Sadly we left them three weeks ago on our epic journey to finaly land that ellusive employment we had been seeking.

What is it you ask? Well it's harvest time here, in a spot half way between Rolleston and Springsure and the first major piece for us will be assisting in the harvest. So far I've spent most of my time in the Header bringing in Chickpea, when that's done it will be onto the wheat. This will pretty much tie me up for the the next 8 weeks from around 8:00AM to dark.

After that there is all the ploughing then some work with re contouring some of the fields. A spot of building when the new guest accomodation goes in. Somewhere in amongst all this the cattle get branded and horns trimmed as well. What a list, so far it's been a battle to keep ahead of the machine down time resulting from breakdowns.

Had a close call yesterday, an alarm came up for the air screen. This is a screen associated with the radiator fans. It it was on and off and being a right pain, however it eventually came on constantly. Suddenly engine temperature sky rocketed, and I could'nt even get an idle down period. I climed out and was tracking where the smoke was as I appeared to have dust smouldering somewhere. Walked around the back and discovered the fan belt had gone. By this stage Justin had arrived and he went up top and discovered the smolder around the main drive belts in the engine bay.

Well thaey were found at least. They took so long to track down and put out, all sarted by bits of hot fan belt going everywhere. Today was a none harvest day, the belt was replaced and the harvester was blown out and washed down to get the dust out. Looks like it's all on again tomorrow.

Considering todays temperature of 38.9C in the shade today the air conditioned cab on the harvester/header is a great place to be.

We Survived

2008-11-06T19:57:00.003+11:00

The title says it all, we survived our week of intensive training with VisitOz to get Australian Farm Ready. What a week, we've learned to ride horses and muster cattle, branding, dehorning, drenching and general handling in the yards, tractor driving, chainsaws, then it was around the property for a wide range of fencing practice. I al

At our own request we did a good amount of restraining, it's kind of neccessary with barb wire and unfamilair tools to get that to some level of competence. I could of course have left it but the cuts would be worse the next time out. Barbed wire is pretty hard on hands.

There were eight of us going through this week, four including myself and Julie were on a property 15 minutes drive from Gympie. The other six were at two other farms around Goomeri. The point of the course was to be farm ready and sent off to employment for as long as you want and in the case of those with Visa's at least 86 days to get Visa extensions.

Our details were whacked up onto a website to be viewed by prospective employers. Viewed they certainly are, before the end of day one Frida was receving calls. By the end of day two, Julie and I were tossing up between three roles and by the next night we had turned down four Jobs and accepted one, and the course was going until the end of Friday to travel on Saturday.

It was hard work, I'm not sure about fun but certainly not unpleasant. Definitely a good dose of hard work. If you ever wanted to work your way around Australia this is well worth looking at. Once in the system all you do is ring in for the next job and the calls role in. Time it to be listed on Sunday night and your probably bound to get work by Wednesday. The pay is also pretty good, just be prepared to be remote.

We made it to Mildura - Where to from here

2008-10-19T20:20:00.005+11:00

We made it to Mildura, survived the country music festival and even got applications for work out. Work you say? Yes work, we need to earn some money at some stage to keep the boat afloat and the show rolling. Of course I could come up with my own phrases but they just roll out so nicely.

Well the work front all been a bit of a drag. Julie never considered the water issue in this part of the world and I certainly never looked into the area before arriving. We knew that there was a bit of a drought but no one mentioned issues with the food bowls in Victoria. For those that do not know, high amounts of agriculture are carried out along the Murray river. Unfortunately the surrounding land is typically semi-arid to arid which means everything relies on irrigation. That has worked over the years however lack of decent rain for the last 10 to 12 years has resulted in increasing pressure on the river and reduced allocations of water for irrigation.

The result is many permanent plantings being left to dry out and die in the citrus and Grape industries. Asparagus never really happened this year and some growers are hoping for next autumn. The net result is there is limited seasonal work and casual work around and vintage does not start until January. In the hope it would help I set off to add an Australian Fork Hoist licence to my repertoire, since I had NZ ones it seemed reasonable to look at that option for added employability.

Well We got hacked off with it all and started looking around the web. We had heard there was lots of work casual or otherwise in a range of industries in Emerald Queensland. Added to that we had been there two years ago and liked the place. I found a site called http://www.visitoz.org/ that trains backpackers in agricultural work in a one week course and puts them into work for up to six months. We applied and are off to experience this, well for as long as we like however eight months would suit meeting up with friends to go up Cape York next year. Then again we could end up on a station in NT or WA, it seems to be there is more work than takers and the organisers are guaranteeing work. How cool is that just what we want to experience.

Next time around we might go the Hospitality path and work in a road house or country pub. Options, options, the light appears to be at the end of the tunnel. Mind you lets survive summer in Queensland first.

A Magnetic rebuild

2008-10-19T10:52:00.006+11:00

My first build of a magnetic loop utilised coax for the main element and was deliberately made to pull apart. I utilised SO239 and PL259 connectors at the top by the capcitor (can still be seen in figure 3). While allowing the main loop to be removed this did compromise antenna efficiency. Those of you that have made loops realise that the radiation resistance is very low. Adding friction based connections adds impedance and decreses loop efficiency (meaning a qrp signal really goes qrpp).

Using coax and connectors does work just not as well as copper tube and soldered connections. How well I did not realsie until travelling here in VK land. I struggled to make contacts or even be heard on the coax based loop and in a fit of frustration decided to replace it with the same length and larger diammeter annealed copper tube. The OD on the loop moved from 11mm to 19mm and the copper tube is readily available from Bunnings for around AUD37.00 for an off the shelf 3 metre coil. The loop I have is for 20m through 10m and has a diammeter of apprimately 90cm and uses two metres of tube. The limit on bands is due to the capacitor at the top. At nearly full mesh I have the 20m band tuned.

To feed the the loop I opted in the beginning to go with a Faraday Loop. Most of the reading material on the web suggests the Farady loop is one fith the size of the main loop. However further reading suggested that it is hard to always get optimal tuning. Then I ran across a site (no address on record) that suggests making the loop a fraction over size and rotating the faraday loop to minimise SWR.

The process is adjust the cap to lowest SWR for a chosen frequency then rotate the faraday loop to bring the SWR down to as close as possible to 1:1. I found in practice that the lowest frequency to be used is where the Faraday loop adjustment should be made. With the main loop and faraday loop in the same plane 10m would tune to 1.1 to 1.2 to 1 with ease however 20m would only achieve 1.7:1. Roataition of the farady loop brought this to 1.1 to 1.2 to 1. This is a one off adjustment as the faraday loop is now adjusted for all bands.

Figure 1 - the completed loop sitting on a camera tripod for a mast

Figure 2 - The faraday loop, note the angle in relation to the main loop element. The faraday loop in this case ended up approximately 45 degrees to the main loop.
Figure 3 - View of the tuning capacitor - It is possible to still see the SO239 connectors used when coax formed the main loop. When your travelling modification is the key as tools and parts for a full rebuild can be limited.
Figure 4 - To achieve tuning control. That is not shoot past the correct capacitance value for a given frequency I use step down gearing via two vernier drives. I did the counting once, and came up with something like 32 rotations of the shaft to go through 90 degrees on the butterfly capacitor

The vernier drives ended up in a contaner after one trip to a west coast beach near Auckland in New Zealand. These beaches have a very fine iron sand that readily blows around. Added to that the west coast beaches are known for their win. Suffice to say the vernier drives filled with sand and had to be stripped, cleaned and greased again. the lower one still feels like there is some grit in there howeve it will be used unitll it collapses. I do have a spare with me, since they are hard to come by.

Our new organics place

2008-10-01T22:17:00.003+10:00

With changes in the way we live and eat, Julie and I have moved to a higher input of Organic food products. With some places particularly country towns getting organic produce and other goods is hard if not impossible. however get to somewhere a little bigger like Mildura and sudeenly there is is enough population to create demand.

We found ( well julie really did by searching the web) a little shop on eleventh street. A friendly little place that felt a little light on the hygeine side. Turns out the shop is the access point for a cooperative and they also sell to the public as well. Well we rocked up looking for some goods after not being able to buy organic since leaving Colac (Colac had heaps in Safeway). nearly ended up with applying for the coordinators role they put out and gained an instant and seemingly well informed network.

Go the locals, talk about aware of what's happening around the place. Every time we go in there is some one new there and there is another bit of info to help us gain work or get involved in the area.

By the end of our first week here in Mildura we have started volunteering in the shop as well as joining the co-op. Beside the need of extra hands we gain the benefit of additional discounts on purchases. Kind of handy with the pricing differences from regular to organic products.

We also discovered the ADFA (Australain Dried Food Association also have a range of organic products as well as non organic health foods. We will also check out the local IGA apparently demand is enough in town that they have a dedicated organic vegetable section as well. Not bad going for a small outback city.

Country Heaven

2008-10-01T22:03:00.004+10:00

Dig out those cowboy boots, hat and jacket and get on down to the 22 annual Mildura Country festival. If your in to country your found the right place, because for ten days every year avoiding country music is an impossibility.

It's a great thign and it drws in 12000 people to the area. The caravan parks are all full, people are everywhere wearing hats and out fits normally kept hidden in the wardrobe at home. Mind you I just don't get why the average country fan around here is well that much older than either me and Julie, Certainly even many of the musicians are yonger than many in the audience. It's one of those things you never quite fathom.

From my perspective I'm starting to get a bit countried out. So I look forward to the grand depopulation on monday when most of the caravan parks become deserted and the price per night returns to normal.

Talking of changes I'm swapping caravan parks in another week. We found a nicer one over the river with pricing we like for long term staying. Really, the best part is, they take people for more than fifty days. Over the river means we will be accomodated in New South Wales and working in Victoria. For the trivia minded among you the river is the Murray River and forms the border between New South Wales and Victoria. Fothe those of you not into trivia, we just have a nice place stay at.

I’m here give me a call

2008-09-28T21:47:00.000+10:00

We made it into Mildura on Monday, pulled up to the camp ground and got asked if we were here for the Country Music festival. Our prompt response was what festival? Apparently the third biggest in Australia, crikey even down the road in Nhill it never crossed our radar. Not being huge country fans we’re not off to every show however it sure makes Mildura busy.

Anyway I’m going to swap from the Coax with connector main element on the Magnetic Loop to soldered copper tube. I’ll be off down to Bunning’s for some of that thin walled stuff that comes in coils. In between the local 70cm repeater has IRLP node 6320 attached to it, and may be my “DX” method for now. Connect to the node and give me a shout, we’re here for the next eight months.
The camp ground is so busy (and will be for the next ten days) with very little space between sites I’m likely to hit a caravan or car getting a wire up. Mind you I’ve got some tennis balls to try in place of the lead weight currently on the throwing line and there is a nice branch overhead that could work. I might even be able to make an inverted V out of the end fed half wave on 40m.

That and this is what the Magnetic loop was made for as well. Though, I will go for more efficiency by taking the coax connectors out of the equation on the main element. Don’t get me wrong it does work, however running low power even with the linear I want to get all I can out of it. That and a lead from the car auxillary battery long enough to get me away from operating on the bonnet.
Anyway try the node 6320 if I don’t answer one of the many active locals will. The local two metre repeater is even busy in the middle of the day. Then again there are only two repeaters around and plenty of visitors in town.

Hello is anyone out there?

2008-09-28T21:46:00.002+10:00

Well, Wyperfeld National Park presented some opportunity to operate Ham radio. More importantly it gave me the chance to get antenna lengths fine tuned for the end fed half wave antennas I had left to do. Well nearly all I cannot make the coupler work on 40m and 10m so 10m stayed in the bag, 30m is still left to do. If you’ve lost track, I dealt with 14, 18 and 21 MHz join the club. Considering the delay in getting on the PC and the phenomenal amount of Blogging Julie has done (still to be uploaded to http://kiwisandkookies.blogspot.com/) I’m lucky to get at the PC tonight.

Finally some practical bands to work with first up for a real go was 14MHz. This was somewhere mid morning, operating QRP with the FT817 only. Well I could here stuff on the band. With no local noise it’s not surprising I could here S0 (yes zero) signals up to S3 for VK stations and Hawaii up to S8. Well I called CQ until blue in the face, tried calling off the back of other QSO’s not a peep. Either the FT817 was dead or QRP was not in the game. Tried 18 MHz as well that was even worse. One JA station right on the noise floor, remember my noise floor is an S0. So not even worth calling back there was nothing to give me even an “S” reading. Flagged it away for the day.

As for not using the Linear I had not considered the relationship between vehicle parking antenna support and cable lengths to power it up. Better site planning next time, note to self: always think radio first (when allowed by YL an I wake up on arrival). Another evening I got the 3MHz antenna up and it’s position allowed the linear to be used. A success there was someone there to talk to. It’s a good thing about Thursday night, there appears to be lots of club nets around. Signals were all pretty good for VK2, VK3 and VK5, however I had some settings to sort with the new headset based on audio reports.

These were easy to sort and had a go with 14MHz two days later. Well no audio issue reported and I managed two QRP (low power less than 5w) to VK4KUS in the morning and later in the afternoon to ZL2JBR. I could hear plenty of US stations and a range of European stations. The US ones were good signals, and in the morning I heard them short path then in the afternoon via long path, however no replies to my QRP CQ. The ZL opening was fantastic, but the QSO ended just on 0600 UTC, and typically right on most ZL hams dinner time and of course main news time. Pity as the received signal was 58 and my QRP was a 55.

There ended the great radio escapade, the wind came the next day again and it all got rather unpleasant. The wind then went and the last attempt on 80m had static crashes so loud the attenuator only got them down to S8 and S9. Phew! That was damn hard on the ears. Even with stations out there every VK heard was checking out and disconnecting feed lines from radios.

Camping in the Desert

2008-09-28T21:45:00.000+10:00

After our get away from Nhill, well get away may not be quite right, Julie and I were ready to get out of town. This was definitely needed, particularly after a knackering week as solo caretakers for the caravan park.

Needing a week of “out in the bush” we headed north towards Mildura our intended destination for the next 8 odd months for work. However, wanting some time off we decided that Wyperfeld National Park was a place to get away from it all. Added to that it was all on the way about 2 hours drive away and really quite a short drive in Australian terms.

What a place a huge camp ground and only three sites used and we were number three. The sun was shining and the temperature rising, certainly to the hottest we have experienced so far. A pleasant 20 odd degrees Celsius with limited humidity. Well this was it the kind of weather we’ve been running to aside from the deliberate stop in Nhill.

Over the coming week we clocked up a rather hot walk over three and a half hours (running into the heat of midday); a desert loop for about 2 hours with a long photo stop in the middle (felt lazy and sat around for a while); and a small walk in hope of seeing a Mallee Foul, however the nest mound was a start.
I mentioned the great weather; well aside from the first couple of days and another in the middle we got lots on wind instead. Strong enough mid-week that the awning came in and stayed in. We even got some rain one night as well; thank you oh inventor of inverters, laptops keep going with them and DVD’s were fun to watch. The dust storms around the state even made radio news too.

My new friend

2008-09-14T10:01:00.002+10:00

Meet Nicadaemus, our freind while looking after Nhill Caravan Park this last week. A very chaty fellow who demands lots of attention and always wants the last word.

Sun in my hair, sun in my eyes

2008-09-14T09:44:00.005+10:00

A first attempt at PSK31.

Note to self; Do not attempt to use laptop for any reason in bright sun!

It was a beautiful day and I had plenty of time to play with a bit of radio. Glorious days and laptop screens do not go together. Especially older laptop screens. While not the best, towels do make good covers to get away form the light. Next time I'll get on the South side of the caravan and into the shade. Possibly even look at aerial lay outs verses caravan location and get inside as well.

At least I got it all going. It's amazing how quickly you forget what plugs where when you do not do it very often. Setups take so much longer.

Until next time, probably this coming week.

Mr Mop

2008-09-13T15:36:00.002+10:00

What and experience looking after this camp ground is turning out to be. I'm becoming something of a dab hand at mopping floors. Mind you it's a daily occurence without option. Well without option untill the managers come back from leave tomorrow.

Not a moment too soon, after a manic week chasing down enough linen to cover all the beds booked in cabins this weekend. We look forward an extensive day of cleaning again. This time it's seven cabins. Guess what? more mopping.

Talking of mopping we had a crowd of indian males in from a well known power providor. I have never seen such and ineptitude when it comes to cleaning up after yourself. They left a mess everywher, shared facilities or otherwise. Nice people but man to indiian guys not clean up after them selves. How do you get that curry smell out it just pervades everything.

Now before everyone gets up set thinking I am racist. It is definitlely something about the clash of NZ and Australain culture with Indian culture especially with newer imigrants. They just don't seem to get it, they ignore rules, operate in their own blythe way impacting on others around them and really do not seem to care. More specifically this certainly seemed to apply to this group.

Well enough said of that, customers at the door

It's a happening thing, it's happening to you

2008-09-11T20:10:00.003+10:00

Yes it finally happened, pick the right band and the right time and you actually get to talk to someone. Well twice actually, what an effort to get 80m and 40m sorted but they are all up and go now.

It's been a strange week from a travelling experience. Julie and I came to Nhill two weeks ago for a long needed shower. We had been bush camping in the little desert, and as to be expected deserts in the winter get very cold. We had the odd warm day but froze at night. In saying that some of the temperatures at Nhill must have been colder, then again we have power and an electric heater here. Where does this lead to?

We came to Nhill for a shower and to wash some clothes. Theres only so many weeks one can wear the same sets Polyprop with out issueing hazard notices for the smell. The day it arrive it bucketed with rain and drowned us thouroughly. So a planned 2 night stop became a week to do the repairs and then let the silicon cure.

Still not really able to radio, it gets so cold plus regular rain at night that 80 and 40m were the door. Who's up for nightly damp cold conditions? not me and neither were the couplers at the base of the wire aerials either. Then we took up the chance for a bit of work experience in operating a campground.

Would you believe there is a near science to cleaning? Well there certainly is for doing it well in a Public use environment speceilly with those high strength chemicals and managing bacteria resitance to disinfectants. Mind you Julie and I can do 8 toilets, 8 Showers, 10 Basins and mop 40 square metres of floor in under one hour. Not bad really, we might actually be able to get releif work at other grounds as we travel around.

Now back to having a radio go. Tuesday I had just posted my coupler was going and aerial trimmed for 40m. Received a Text from Rob ZL1RD to have a go at a sked around 4PM NZ time or 0400 UTC. this is around 2PM for us here. Sadly this proved particularly useless as a time on that day. Another go one hour later coordinated by highly expensive Vodaphone text messaging (0.80c NZ per text on our NZ mobiles ex Australia) we had a go 1 hour later.

Hearing Rob ZL1RD was fine at this end I have no noise floor so to speak at this end so S1 to S2 was fine, however no luck for Rob. With some help from VK2BSV who joined i we found a quiet spot on 40m and communicated in relay via VK2BSV. We were to attempt a PSK31 at 5PM local 0700 UTC however old laptops got the better of me.

After that go and suddenly much warmer evening temperatures last night It was a shot on 80m. I picked the right time for people around and there were some great signals from VK2 and about an hour later from Vk6. I spent most of my batterry power and about and hour chatting with VK2FWVB, untill QRP started suffering from too much QSB (fading).

Then a pack up and in before the rain started for the night. Tomorrow is a go on 40m to ZL1RD with PSK31. Hopefully the full cabin bookings and late arrivals spare the time for me to do this.

Good news I have help from VK2DMH and VK3ZPF who will post on HFpack and HFnow when I will be on air via SMS from me. That might help the higher bands, ther might be someone there listening for my little low power QRP signal.

Let the tuning begin

2008-09-09T09:21:00.004+10:00

Well after fixing my own muck ups with the 40-10m End Fed Half Wave coupler, never again will I fiddle without doing some testing BEFORE going into the field. I finally strung up some wire for 80m and 40m. Tuning 80m was easy that coupler has been going for some time and field tested. The only hang up was me dealing with thowing a weight and line up and over trees. Given a bit more practice I might be able to get this down to a 10 minute job.

I also dragged out the 40m EFHWA as well, now that took some effort. I knew that 40m was a compromise having lost 10m and keeping 15m, the coupler was well down in inductance. With the 40m Wire up in an inverted L feed point resistance was out on the test load (A 1.7 to 1.9 to 1 SWR expected). At calculated length I was great for about 8.5Mhz, not quite what I wanted. Down the end came several times and the Full extra metre was out. Now down to 8 Mhz, again not useful. Fortunately I had a few metres of wire with me, mind you it is the end of it. Added that on slowly adding length until a total of around 3 mtres extra on calculated length. Now I had a good SWR of 1.4 to 1 able to adjust for moving freq and generally seeing 69 Ohm & x =21 Ohm on the MFJ259b. Adding a fraction more went a little worse so back to that point and mark up. An hour of time spent not on the radio but but playing with radio was great.

With a short day for work around where we are staying today, I'll get on 40m and see what is around.

Next step 20, 17 & 15m wires to see where they resonate. This lot will be so much easier to put up, there is less wire. Then backwards and do the 30m Wire another time as I just do not have enough cord with me for holding three ends 12 to 20m off the ground. Time to shop for more of that, next stop Mildura in a couple of weeks.

Radio Skeds to NZ

2008-09-02T11:53:00.002+10:00

After looking at the band plans over here I will have to look at options for 80m back to ZL. Rob 3743 is above the VK plan that I can use. I'll send you a text with where I can go later or look at the comment posted on "Travel plans" done last in August.

Looks like I will need to see what can be done in the evenings on 40m or 80m. Fisrt though for 40m is some winding wire to get that coupler going.

Field repairs and installations

2008-09-02T11:44:00.003+10:00

Well, we moved from Kiata to Red Gum swamp in the central section of Little desert. After exploring this section to the western edge it was time to take some time out. In my case I had a list of things to do including getting articles out of 4wd magazines for reference and divesting 10kg of paper from the caravan.

Then it was out with the tool kit. After my decidedly lack luster effort with QRP the other day on the Magnetic loop it was time to change over the rest of my gear from the Auto T connector to the 30 Amp anderson connectors and get some points to tap off the auxiliary battery in the van or Trooper.

With that done it was out with all the bits and finish installing the FT8900 into the Trooper. It was the works including running coax through the fire wall and power as well. Mind you all done in a couple of hours and up and running. Now time to reprogram for VK repeater frequencies.

Not a bad effort for self contained 5km 4WD from the highway and 30km from the nearest town. A satisfying and entertaining day. Now to sort out the coupler but that is a visit to Dick Smith for some winding wire.

Magnetic loop out again – 26 August 2008

2008-09-02T11:41:00.001+10:00

After the failure with the half wave coupler, I dragged out the magnetic loop again. Having done the hard work yesterday tuning was a breeze. Just like Alex PY1AHD advises just get close based on marking for the cap and peak on noise then SWR. Pretty quick and easy to move around in a band and I’ll get better at band swaps especially 17m to 20m. There are lot of turns with the step down gearing I have and I expect to be there sooner than reality.

Well looked at 17m again at around 2:30 PM Sydney time and that was pretty quiet. No one around and no one I could hear was answering. My noise floor way out here in the Little Dessert Park is pretty much down to atmospherics. Nothing showing on the meter anyway. Called CQ for a while 15m and gave up on that as well. Listened up and down the band for a while definitely not a day for 15m. Next stop was 20m, activity here, maybe worth a shot. Well activity was from around 14.245 down to 14.140. Had a very good receive signal of 56 from Maui. Not bad I thought into the little loop, tried to join in the QSO with KH6WLF and WA8??. Unfortunately they were mid conversation and I think my 5 watts was not enough to crack in. Moved lower down to 14.196 and called CQ for a while not much heard and every other signal was S1 to S3. Eventually heard a strong S8 VE station talking to some VK4’s in VK4 (I’m VK4 currently in VK3) and tried to join in here. Again QRP was not quite enough to be heard in amongst the QSO. Higher up a nice strong S6 to S8 W7VY, however at the end of the QSO he went off fast or I was just not enough at QRP. By 5:30 PM Sydney time nobody much was around the band except some very low Italians.

It’s time to sort out wiring for the linear off the Landcruiser auxiliary battery and get a bit more out the spout. I contemplated getting the 80m wire up over a couple of Grey Mulga Gums, but with dark coming on and the temperature dropping decided it was time to come in and catch up on my blog.

Wildflowers in the Little Desert National Park

2008-09-02T11:37:00.001+10:00

Cold Night and the failure of a coupler – 26 August 2008

2008-09-02T11:36:00.001+10:00

The Night started out far nicer than expected, we had a bit of cloud cover and things did not get as cold as the night before. However it really chilled out in the early hours, we recorded a minimum of minus 1.1 degrees C. Just a bit chilly! The day was beautiful, however we both hid in bead with the warm until around 9:00 when we got out for breakfast in the Sun. A cold westerly wind was blowing though and not a lot of places to get shelter from it.

After a day of Lounging in the sun I decided it was time to pull the End Fed Half Wave Aerials out and give those a go and possibly even time to compare these to the magnetic loop. With the loss of the sling shot, it was time to practice throwing the line. With that over I hauled up the 17m EFHWA and the coupler for 40 though 10m. After hooking it all up I tried to give it a tune for 17m. Not a chance at all, baffling the last and only time it was used was admittedly on the bench only. Fortunately I had shipped the MFJ259B over as well so out it came and time to see what was going on.

For 17m nothing much was going on at all, switch in the cap for 40m still no difference. Dang! What now, well nothing else except to leave the cap switched in and fully mesh the variable and see where it was resonant. Oh and I used the test load as well a known 4700 ohm resistive load. I came all the way down to 26 MHz and switching the cap out got me to 27.335. I have no idea what planet I was on when reworking this coupler. There is not enough inductance to tune lower in frequency. I cannot remember the reasoning but I took additional turns off the primary and secondary on the T106 toroid. Oooppps! I took too many turns off to gain 10m, 13 turns on the secondary was not enough and 2 on the primary results in a ratio of 6.5 to 1 I kind of need circa 9 to 1 with a lot more inductance. Well that put an end to the EFHWA plans for the day.

Playing radio at last – 25 August 2008

2008-09-02T11:33:00.000+10:00

We’ve been running away from bad weather for a while. Well we did come to Australia expecting it to be dry. Well we finally got to a nice dry place, the Little Dessert National Park. After a couple of days and now being settled down and dried out. I finally got the Radio gear out of the back of the Landcruiser. First option out was the Magnetic Loop. I made up a new drive shaft from a piece of dowel we had picked up when passing through Colac. I commandeered the camera tripod for a while and sat the loop up on to after taking the tripod head off. Well I called CQ on 15, 17 and 20m not a peep back to my calls. Mind you 15 and 17m all seemed dead, I couldn’t hear anybody else around on those two. As for 20m well I did hear stations however they were not even moving the meter.

Well it was good to play, I was outside the weather was fine and warmed up after our drive. We still got to work on the temperature a bit though. Really cold wind and the temperature worked hard to get to 15 C. Will pull the ft817 and verticals out tomorrow and see what that does for me in those bands. I could go to 80m but is gets so cold out after dark.

Little Desert Drive – 25 August 2008

2008-09-02T11:29:00.002+10:00

After freezing last night Julie and I decided it taking a drive though the park and down to the central section to look for a bush camp site might be warmer than sitting around here at Kiata freezing. The temperature by 10:00 Sydney time was still around 9.5 degrees C. The heater in the Landcruiser is damned fine.
Around where we are camping and up to the trig is really nice bush with loads of wild flowers coming out. Loads of yellow, red, white and mauve scattered around under the broom and mulga gums. At about half way to the lake we entered another world, A bushfire had been through last year looking at the stage of regrowth with a lot of charcoal twigs sticking up to chest height and masses off green and the bases.
Further across after the salt lake we left the fire zone behind and entered Banksia dominant brush. What a long way to get to the highway, about 75 minutes of sand driving. Once hitting C206 we turned left and headed for Red Gum track. Julie was keen to get to Red Gum Swamp and see what was in there. I liked it there, your well away from farm land and the highway. In fact we are going to pull the van around most of the way by road and pull it in to Red Gum Swamp to bush cam for a couple of days, possibly Tuesday or Wednesday. We’ll see how warm it is here Tuesday, not that we have a timetable for anything. Other than we are short 100L of water with the spigot getting snapped off that tank coming into Kiata (Kye-at-a). Still we have 60L in the cruiser and arrived with 70L in the other van tank.

Drowned in the Otway’s

2008-09-02T11:25:00.001+10:00

We Bush camped for a night at an area called Beauchamp Falls. Arrived in okay weather, however went slowly downhill with the day. Post lunch we walked down to the falls and the showers became consistent, not really surprising considering it is rain forest. We survived into the evening, and now pretty much continuous rain. In the night I semi woke to Julie telling me our Pillows and sheets were getting wet at the head. I kind of fell back asleep and never checked until the morning.

The alarm was set to get up for my Birthday event. A trip to the Otway Fly; a tree top sky way walk way not far from where we were camped. Then back for the night and up to Colac for a look at the Salt Water Lakes. Julie’s first comment in the morning was do you want the good news or the bad news. The Good news I had a birthday present, the bad news we have a serious leak through a window. Mattress, pillows and sheets were all really wet. We could cope with the wet but not with all the water inside as well.

We did a hurried pack and hitched up heading for the Otway fly. This was fantastic even with the dampener of the leak. The weather had cleared up made for a pleasant visit. Go to http://kiwisandkookies.blogspot.com for Julies review of the time we had there.

From here it was a run up to Colac via the Otway Vineyards and cheese and wine session. We spent the next two days drying out. Finding a leak is another story, we had water pooling on the inside at the base of the canvas pop top section, and water dribbling out of the driver’s side window. Outside the canvas is siliconed into place; the front looked like it was done by the apprentice with a serious hangover. The window was in a similar state, unbelievable, the previous owners must have been only out in dry weather. Mind you have to, to go north up Cape York any way.

One large cartridge of silicone later, the front and all windows were done. I did not want to trust the others so did then too. A hose test showed we were not getting any water under the canvas. We never checked the window until today. We went for the lakes drive and came back after some good rain to discover water getting in through the window frame again. Off for more silicone, this time I tried another spot at the top and after a water test we seem to have solved the problem.

Hopefully we stay dry, still I still have some spare silicone. We head off tomorrow back to the Great Ocean Road and Portland. One night planned in Lower Glenelg National Park possibly more depending on the weather. Otherwise we will head north to drier regions.

Good news for Australia, bad news for Ham Radio

2008-09-02T11:21:00.002+10:00

Been on the road now for six days and boy has it been a learning curve. Mind you for anyone else in a similar position to Julie and I that’s not really surprising. Even having grown up with camping, Camper Trailer and tent based moving your life into a 12 foot by 6 foot space is a bit different to a summer holiday.

The good news for Australia, well this little piece of Victoria has been the rain. We left Melbourne on Friday 15 August and had hardly started and the rain poured down. I really mean poured down, drive slow with wipers at double speed type rain. We had this weather with us until reaching Geelong. Then it was out on the Great Ocean Road following the coast to Torquay and Lorne. Rain was off and on throughout and it wasn’t really the warmest weather around. At this point we turned off the Great Ocean road and headed up through the Otway National Park. Otway and it’s ranges contains a beautiful temperate rain forest. Read into that cold and wet, good choice for the start of a trip? Well possibly, we knew no better at the time.

We stopped at a little town called Forrest about one and a half hours drive in. The Caravan felt like a lead weight and the Landcruiser seemed to be a slug. Not having towed for a while we assumed this was normal as all the brakes were off and we were now loaded up compared to empty when picking up the van a few weeks ago. Later I discovered the tyre pressures were down on the van for the load and the Cruiser was out a little for the load of fuel and water (not that we seemed to need the water with the rain.

The Bad news for Ham radio was the weather, they needed it in the Otway’s, not enough for five years. Bad for operating portable particularly when up high and you add low temperatures as well. That was fine by me, we were kind of still working out where stuff should go and moving things around, when not cruising around the forest and walking in to dozens of spectacular waterfalls.

I never got the handheld out and going around Melbourne so not even a call on one of those yet. The Ft-8900 is fitted minus a connection to power and when it’s fine long enough I’ll run the coax through the firewall as well. Oh and I’ve got to find a home for the remote head and external speaker. A few days of fine weather and not moving on will let that get done. I have finally got a length of doweling for tuning the magnetic loop so can get going on 20m to 10m with only a little bit of work. I left the old dowel rod in NZ as I figured it would be easier in the quarantine process.I am not sure what to do about at this stage is what to do about a launcher for the throwing line. Gum trees when they are available are so tall and have nice branches. To get a end fed half wave up nearly vertical would be a cinch. Even getting the top 10 or 15 metres of antenna in an L or inverted V would be a massive advantage of DX versus a dipole or inverted V and 10 metres height. With Sling shots looking to be considered illegal pretty much everywhere in VK with massive fines an alternative needs to be looked at. Might go for a heavier cord and a bag with lead shot or similar and improve my technique with that. With the right weight and line I should be able to get up about 20 to 30 metres, well here’s hoping any way.

Travel Plans

2008-08-11T21:58:00.002+10:00

Julie and I have not specified the day of departure yet though it will be this week. plans at this stage are to head west along the great ocean road. Have a look around the Ottway's and associated rain forest. Then before getting into South Australia, zig zag north up though Vitoria and the National Parks to around Mildura and then pick up work over the balance of Spring and Summer.

That's the plan for travel, in there will be a range of Radio skeds which will be announced and advised. Including dragging myself out in the early hours to see if I can catch up with Rob, Tony and Colin in ZL. It's not dreadfully early only 5:30 AM, I'll issue some ear plugs to Julie first though.

The Slingshot is confiscated

2008-08-11T21:48:00.003+10:00

It happened and I guess not really any surprise. Customs came they saw and they took away never to be seen again one slingshot with arm brace. Ooh well, it only cost something like $16 anyway so not a great loss. What a process though for something so cheap.

We get all our effects delivered tomorrow in the morning which means we can get the caravan packed, work out the missing bits and we may even hit the road on Friday. Not to mention I get the rest of my radio gear as well. I am so hanging out to do something with Ham radio, throw a wire over a tree and make some contacts. Not long now.

Mind you we'll have to be a bit more careful with power. I was doing some work on the caravan after dark, though the 12v system would have been fine. Dang! Not a drop of juice, the battery was flat as a pancake. Turns out the switch for the water pump was knocked on and in keeping up water pressure flattened the system. Good thing there is a charger fitted, now we just need to hook up to mains power.

The trials and tribulations of getting used to things. hopefully we've not pushed it too flat and we can get it to recover, other wise it will be another 100 amp hour battery.

Our day time company in West Footscray

2008-08-06T22:15:00.003+10:00

Woody the cat and Chief the german shepherd

The Drama of a slingshot

2008-08-06T22:02:00.003+10:00

When packing up my radio gear to come over, I packed the wire for the end fed half wave aerials, line with weight and a sling shot. I use the sling shot to get the line and weight over those tall gum tree branches for the 160, 80, 40 and 30m aerials to be pulled up.

Only hassle is after we get here and our gear is in customs bond storage pending clearance we discover they (sling shots) are illegal in Vitoria. Well we have been told that at least. We have it on good record from Roy in Customs training that a slingshot with arm brace is illegal. Drat! thats exactly what we have.

Anyway all that aside we chased up our gear to be told that pictures had been sent to customs and now they want to inspect the slingshot. Which by the way was pulled aside, however the rest of our gear will not be released. So we are still stuck here. All set up and waiting to pack the caravan.

On the other side the winch and roof rack are all fitted. we have the second fridge, cleaned out the drinking water tank in the Landcruiser. I have a couple of little things to do as soon as tolls arrive. We may get the gear on friday, however are now looking at next week.

A weekend of walking

2008-08-03T22:08:00.003+10:00

What a week end of walking. We got up early on Saturday morning, well 8:00 am is early when you got in at 1:00 am after a night out. Fortunately the night out was an easy but fun one with the WANSARC club and members.

Well we had kind of been organised before heading out Friday evening so we snuck out without waking the sleeping football supporters left in the house and headed west for the Brisbane Ranges. We went in via Bachus March a very nice town about 45 minutes out of Melbourne. The town as we came in was surrounded by fields of all different coloured lettuces. One could say Bachus March is a salad bowl for Melbourne.

The Brisbane ranges was a great place to walk, how neat to be in bush with bird song. So much nicer than the often deathly quiet of New Zealand bush. You certainly could tell the place was recovering from a bush fire. Notices in the picnic area advised the fire was in January 2006. The growth is so new and low it felt in part likes bush back home with dense undergrowth.

We completed a well laid out 8km circuit, with loads of signs with information along the track. The Park is sadly affected by Cinnamon Fungus which has come in from Asia. As a result at 4 different points in the park we were disinfecting our boots.

Today was a walk in the sun along the Maribyrnong river and in the end an English picnic. That is it turned we and windy so we sat in the car. What a pleasant couple of days, and it was so good to get out of the city for a bit.

My first Oz Ham Radio club meeting

2008-08-03T20:45:00.004+10:00

With some effort I convinced Julie I really needed a navigator to help get to a amateur radio club meeting. In terms of timing and relative proximity to where we are staying in West Footscray I had picked the Western and Northern Suburbs Amateur Radio club (WANSARC). In hope of finding out what was on and confirming their address as two addresses exist for them I sent an email off. However no reply and on the day Julie and I decided to take a punt that the WIA site was wrong which it was. It turned out that ISP spam filters had blocked my email so my query went unknown and unseen by Mark VK3PI.

To date our trips across town generally went without hitch or even argument. However this was the first time across Melbourne in the dark, well nearly the first time was coming home to know territory. Fortunately getting to and from the freeway was familiar from the caravan trips and other cross town explorations. However the far end was the unknown. Suffice to say aside from a few abrupt left hand turns things went well and we made it.

We both wandered into the club rooms and were immediately picked out as visitors before getting in the front door. Hardly surprising really the accent was a give away really and the ZL call sign. What a friendly bunch of guys, Julie was the only YL there. Visiting clubs particularly in our case with the time in our travels to do so is a great way to meet fellow radio amateurs.

This is the first club meeting I've been to that had coffee up front. What a great way to break the ice for the evening. Julie and I were two of about five visitors that night. Two others were new to the hobby and at least one there for the first time. One of the things I did not realise until after was the high proportion of Foundation licence calls actively involved in the club. With that level of interest the die hards need to give up and realise what this development is doing for the hobby. Long is my hope that the Foundation license is developed for ZL as well.

All clubs do business and we both dug in for a long run. Not that we didn't want business, it's just that some clubs I've run in to that was the whole evening and not really that exciting. However it was brief informative and showed the activity these guys are up to. A couple of really great projects happening that really are aimed at getting the members involved in radio. The evenings entertainment was provided by Dallas VK3### with an interesting discussion on interference heard from his QTH and the tracking he had done to determine these sources, including sadly the trendy plasma screen television. It was interesting enough that Julie even commented on how she enjoyed it.

The highlight for both of is the post meeting, meeting, at a pizza restaurant a short drive away. What a night of hilarity, fun and information. While Julie will not be able to think of Russel Crowe without remembering Johno and all his jokes amongst others. I will never be able to look at a Kangaroo in the same way again after the tales by Trevor. Or for that matter scorpions, snakes, spiders and wombats. Thankfully there was no mention of Koala Bears or killer Parrots. :-)

Don't worry Trevor I remembered your not a "Frank" after you left when I said good night to Frank. Frank, I think your going to need to quote in writing the 10m calling frequency again. At 12:15am after a jolly evening out is not always the best time to impart important information, certainly not without me getting it written down. What a night, what a fantastic club. If your in town you've got to call in and meet up with these Hams.

WANSARC meeting and location details can be found through there web site www.wansarc.org.au and the meeting is on the first Friday of the month. I loo forward to catching up with you all again on air or in my next visit to Melbourne

Good foo and Organics in Melbourne

2008-07-31T18:27:00.002+10:00

While not radio or neccesarily exploring Australia. Julie and I have an interest in finding organic foods and other healthy items like detergents and cosmetics etc.

We Found Macro Organics to be a great organiscs supermarket located in Richmond Melbourne
Value Health is also very good and we get some great help from the team here. The Value Health we visit is in High Pooint.
Ripe is also very good, friendly and a good rang of items, Ripe is over in Albert Park Melbourne.
Queen Victoria Markets has a good organics section as well.

We haven't gone to anyone else and our main supplier has been value health. That's assuming you do not include vegetables. For those the other stores/places must be visited.

Yet we still cannot get Black Japanese Rice let alone and organic version. i am beginning to wonder if it has a different name.

Radio disappointment

2008-07-31T17:46:00.002+10:00

After thinking with great hope that I had handheld radios in my luggage I was disappointed to discover the container was not the required recepticle for them. Turns out it's another one and it's packed in a box sitting in customs at the moment. Well, I'll just have to wait for all our gear to come out from customs all hopefully early next week. Though this Friday I am going to visit a club a bit north fo here in West Footscray. I am looking forward tomeeting a few local hams and get to grips on functioning repeaters, and develop a group of contacts. I miss my morning sessions with Rob, Tony and Colin in the mornings on 80m.

In the last few days I've not missed playing radio anyway. We went to an AFL (Ausi Rules Football) game. I think I could become a convert to this sport, certainly as a viewer. It's looks like a real killer on the body and has short player life. Particularly when compared to Rugby Union or League. For the record I never expected three hours to go by so fast.

We are getting closer every day to getting on the road to explore. With our gear out of a container and only the sling shot needing an inspection (I use it to put up the End Fed Half Wave aerial wires) this lot is not far away. We bumped into fiends we met two years ago when in Queensland, and Roy who is now training with customs said the arm brace is probably illegal. Pity, I hope that we can just remove the brace otherwise I am going to be looking at another option for putting wire over tall limbs from the ground. Either that or shopping for one that complies over here.

Finally the winch and other things for the Landcruiser are in store and we are booked in for Tuesday to get these all fitted. Other than me running the wiring for charging the caravan batterry while driving and dealing with filling and tap hoses for the Landcruisers drinking water tank, there is nothing left to do other than pack up when goods arrive.

It's slowly coming together, and not a moment too soon. Melbourne is a nice place but we are both getting ready to explore further afiled. Plans at this stage are to head west out of Melbourne allong the "Great Ocean Road" to somewhere around the South Australia Border then head north up through Victoria to Echuca. Along the way do some WWOOFing (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) as a way to see the country side close up meet people and really get around an area. This is all before we stop for the soummer somewhere to pick up some work and get ready to go Tropo next year.

Wild life in town

2008-07-24T17:37:00.002+10:00

Party Party Party!

Well not really, but we went for a walk along Marybirnong river not far from where we are staying. We went in from Copper Rd and walked south for about 5km before turning around and heading back to the car.

The trail follows the river both north and south and is many kilometers in length however going south gets away from housing and city feel. It really feels like your out of the city, low and no road noise and heaps of bird life. Three or four types of finches, three types of parrot, white cocatoos, a range of autralian pigeons or were they doves. We can't tell the bird book is still clearing customs.

So cool to be able to be in a city, relatively inner suburb and able to escape that enclosed city feel.

That doesn't solve the Amateur radio lack of activity. In fact I'm kicking myself as I could have been portable sooner with the 2m and 70cm hand helds. Being very organised I carried them in my luggage however had not unpacked my bag enough until today to find them again. Oops! well time to dig them out and put them on a charger to top up it's at least 8 weeks if not more that the NiMH cells had any use or float charge on them.

Also quite handily I took note of my surroundings a bit more when walking up the road and what do you know, I saw a nice tri band three element beam rotating to a new heading. I think it's time to knock on the door and say hello and start a network of VK contacts. A task for tomorrow I think, and with August very close I might even get to a club meeting before we head out of Melbourne. Mind you the intention now is to stay around Victoria for spring and summer and there are clubs out of Melbourne as well, I just need the WIA site to find where and when. By the time the caravan and landcruiser is fully equiped it's going to be too close to the wet in North Queensland and Northern Territory. Added to that it's going to be getting hot in the centre as well.

That's not going to stop radio and gives us a good chance to poke around this very pretty state. We even have a work offer up in St James with the couple the caravan came from.

We have the caravan

2008-07-21T21:03:00.000+10:00

We headed up to St James again last Thursday to collect our New (old) caravan. We had a slight delay in having to come back down to Melbourne to move money around to pay for it and get and electric brake controller fitted.

Had a nice pleasant trip up and took around three hours at the pace we set, a little slow by some local standards however nice and easy driving. Certainly plenty of traffic around on the Hume highway between the western ring route and Benalla.

It's a great van to tow on road. We also got the extra bonus of full gas bottles and full water tanks. We were ready to go for a first night in it. The plan again included stopping overnight at Violet Town which is about 29 Km south of Benalla just off the Hume. We got back into Benalla just in time to put through the change in registration and get into a Hardware to collect a 15 amp extension lead so we could have power. by this stage the temperature was dropping and we splashed out on a small ceramic heater as well.

The caravan is only a 12 footer for the living space however this is certainly appear to be quite adequate from a one night perspective. We made up the bed in double format and it was bigger than the duvee/doona was. Yippee plenty of room for Julie to starfish with a bit left for me.

Now we get into some more shopping to fill the gaps in what was shipped and what we think we need. For the caravan it's not much, just a grey water tank and new drain hose which fell apart, a second spare wheel, aircon for the tropical part of the tripping, and linnen now we know the bed size.

The second spare is a bit of a nuisance we need two for the Landcruiser and two for the caravan. In an ideal world you would interchange between them. howeever the Landcruiser is 5 stud and the caravan is 6. Added to this the Caravan just won't fit the cruisers rubber , there's not enough room. Well with a punture repair kit and two spare wheels each we'll be right for the remote travel.

Off shopping tomorrow, we found three places on this side of town and all in the same suburb. After this it's a matter of booking the cruiser in for it's bits and the caravan for the tank and aircon and we'll be ready to pack it.

Taliking of packing the ship arrives on wednesday so by the time parts are ordered and fitted we might be all ready to role.

The first Ham Radio thing in a while

2008-07-21T20:54:00.000+10:00

I'm not sure if you can call it an activity in Ham radio. However the VK call has arrived in the mail. I had thought I was going to get a VK3, instead it's a VK4. I suspect it's a legacy of my visit 2 years ago when I was VK4UEO. Which was a play on my New Zealand Call of ZL1UEO.

This time I asked for a call sign out of a list if posible and got VK4KWI. In my opinion a nice play on the New Zealand nick name of Kiwi and of course the native bird in NZ.

Now we just need the rest of our possesions to arrive and we can move on to the portable in VK part of the whole story.

learning about electric brakes

2008-07-15T13:06:00.000+10:00

We were going to collect a caravan tomorrow however that's now delayed a day. Today it was a discovery of electric brakes. No doubt they've been around a long time, unfortunately I knew nothing of them aand they are not prevalent in New Zealand. My total experience with trailer brakes is limited to over run hydraulic brakes.

Why is this important? Well you probably guessed it the caravan we're buying is fitted with them and the Landcruiser has no method of activating them. I'm off tomorrow to get a controller fitted into the Landcruiser, then Thursday to head up to St James for the caravan.

So many new things to learn. The best one so far is we do not need to sit any tests for our drivers licences. In Vitoria we hand over our New Zealand one and get a Victorian one. So simple so easy and of course has a fee.

Getting a caravan and getting 4WD gear

2008-07-15T10:37:00.000+10:00

Things slowly progress at this stage of the travels. There is so much time taken in getting organised and setting up and hit the road. With the Landcruiser out of the way it's down to doing some extra kitting out for remote travel. As a result we spent most of Friday travelling around Melbourne by going the long way round.

First up was a visit to Opposite Lock, only to discover they had moved leaving only the other store way across town. So heading that way we found a way onto the western ring route and got around to ARB. Lots fo stuff on the shelf however we may not have been that great in defing what we were looking for however the assistance we got was rather frosty and not very helpful over all. In our opinion not a great experience.

After some thought and re-visiting our list it was off to TJM, who are closer into the city. Night and day compared to ARB, really freindly guys and a load of help from James. Took plenty of time showed us through a range of options for the listed items and all with quite competitive prices. Well we will be going back there to get fitted out no question about that at all.

On Saturday we then headed up to St James, apparently where Coles opened his first store in Australia. The shop is not there anymore however the building still is. The reason for the Trip was to view a small off road caravan to provide the longer term accomodation. We had found on the web listing of second hand items. Click on the title to visit the Track Trailer site. It's all java so select products then custom then commercial and finally the Oztech option to see the van.

A very nice caravan using a very good design of the assymetrical suspension system. To learn more peruse the site under the Tvan and military products. However in short you can't get any better for off road, which is just what we need. Pictures to follow when we get the caravan and can take them.

We made and had accepted an offer on the caravan and we head back up to St James tomorrow to collect it. Now we just wait for the ship to arrive and then our goods to clear customs. Then we can do something more than pop around Melbourne, as nice as it is it is a city and we came to see the big red country. Another six weeks and we can get away and the rest of my Ham radio gear will catch up, including all the batteries.

Speaking of Ham radio my application is in with the ACMA to get my VK3 call. hopefully only another week for that to be processed.

Collecting the Mighty Landcruiser

2008-07-10T09:24:00.000+10:00

We've cleared the inspection and had a few little things sorted out and we are off to collect our Landcruiser. It is the one pictured at the side for now untill I pop another picture up on this Blog. Expploration is about to begin, unfortunately we will be waiting until the 23 July for our shipped items to arrive in port and we'll have another three weeks wait to get them through customs.

That's okay for now we'll borrow a few bits and pieces to get us through for getting away. Unfortunately for amatuer radio I still have all the HF aerials in transit. I'm going to avoid buying any wire for now for HF, however I can start fitting the FT8900 into the cruiser, pity the aerial for that is also being shipped as well.

The weathers turned colder here and there is forcasts for snow in the High country, Iguess the day trip thing may be in order for a short while. Well untill we get a caravan which we are off to do this weekend.

Getting geared up and sorted in Melbourne

2008-07-04T11:19:00.000+10:00

Well we made it all out of ZL safely last Sunday. Few what a cramped flight, I'm not sure about these A320's with the configuration Air NZ had however we made it safe and sound.

We are progressing with getting organised now and have just found a very nice Toyota Landcruiser to get around in. It's a beaut! fantastic condition and nearly fully seupt the way I want. Now it's all a matter of the pre-purchase inspection and picking it up early next week.

While we're hanging out on that I'm going to get a VK3 call sorted out, and I need to do something about powering the ft-817 while I wait for the SLA batteries to arrive. At this stage we're not even sure if our cartons have left New Zealand yet or not. That emails all coming up next.

Portable in VK well I'm getting there slowly and it is fun playing tourist

We're all getting linked

2008-06-22T19:59:00.000+10:00

I am All linked up with Picasa for photgraphs. the Album apearing beside this blog is from our 2006 trip in Queensland. Also I am in Face book as well and importing the blogs to there as well.

Would you like to be my friend, sign up to facebook and ask to be my friend using my email address. Keep in the loop more actively.

Wow the wonders of the internet, im nearly all hooked up.

All Radio and other gear now packed

2008-06-22T19:02:00.000+10:00

We've done it all packed up and ready to head away. The FT-817 had to be packed up and battery is now donated to the Te Puke radio club for the regular field work they do. Sadly Saturday mornig was my last HF day in ZL, and I need to get more NICAD's for the ft817 as all the little SLA batteries are gone.

Life is now in a bag rather leterally. However the anticipation is growing. The EFHWA 80m wire will come down tomorrow between all the masses of rain forecast. Typical isn't it, it is fine for two and a half months and then when your tied to packing things up outdoors it buckets with rain. No complaints I'll just do it and leave enough time to dry out before heading for Auckland.

My Farther in law starts his last chemo cycle on Tuesday which we are around for. So far all looks like it's going well. He is so much better than when we first came down, and we are glad we can go and know hes is better than before.

Preparation - Packing the check in bags

2008-06-21T15:47:00.000+10:00

Unbeleivable after much thinking and repacking, I left Julie still looking at her gear and headed out to my last visit to the Te Puke club. Nice time with a small group of the team there.

When I got back I was gleefully advised via a post on facebook that I was the heaviest bag at 18.5kg, she managed to come in at 15kg.

Good news really, I don't have to lose anything and I might put the soundcard interface into my check on now.

Preparation – what to pack for portable radio operations in VK

2008-06-21T15:38:00.000+10:00

The biggest dilemma when planning for an extended trip is what to take, how much of it, will it fit and will I use it? Making it harder is packing the rest of our stuff into storage for five years ans no access. Well I could get it out again, however it’s the rest of the house contents and it’s going to be in South Auckland New Zealand not Australia. This really is the only opportunity to get it right and if it’s not right work around it.

Over the last year I have been pairing down radio gear anyway, and moving towards multiple deployment equipment, initially meaning many bands and later on portability. Earlier I wrote an article on my journey to the end fed half wave antenna. Why the half wave? I am initially banking on nice tall gum trees to pull the wire up and over. Wire takes very little space particularly in the gauges I’m using which are around AWG 18 and 16 even at 160m. The couplers are small, as can be seen at Picasa and relatively light. For limited space and no trees I have a portable magnetic loop that relies on a coaxial cable loop for limited space. When I catch up with it I will take photographs and give it, its own space in another article. All of which is home built, though given time I am very tempted by the 6 Band portable super antenna 3 element yagi.

Two radios are travelling with me. The key one is a Yaesu ft-817 supported by a ft-8900 for a mobile set. Those of you that are Ham’s are probably wondering now, why not a HF mobile radio? Simply we will need a commercial HF rig for outback travel and to obtain licenses to operate on commercial nets, it’s all about type approval. My target is to get a relatively modern commercial HF rig where they are user programmable and add some key Amateur radio frequencies as well as Royal Flying Doctors and VKS737. The ft-817 will support my tramping and other light weight operations and with the support of a Palomar Linear Amp will be quite adequate for other operating. I’ve even used the ft-817 and linear combo matched to the Maldol hb-6 for mobile operation. However for the Australian outback that aerial is not an option, it’s too fragile for the environment.

Other radios include 2 x 2m and 1 x 70cm handhelds, and finally a UHF CB radio as it will save me buying one for talking to road trains and other non-Ham travellers on the road. A comet SB-6 tri-band 6/2/70 mobile whip will be used with the ft-8900. Finally after much humming and hahhing I decided to take the old laptop as well. It already had all the software I use for programming and had my logging software, modelling and digital mode software. A toolkit could not be missed and that includes many useful things like the MFJ259B antenna analyser. Now I had more tools for my hobby than the other toolkit for fixing/servicing the car with. Lastly is the head set, I have a Heil BM-10 with the HC-4 element to take with me. I love the speakers but not the mic, but that’s for another time. Hopefully the W2ENY headset makes it before we go otherwise it will follow by post.

Everything was packed and delivered for shipping a week ago aside from the ft-817 and ft-8900 and one coupler for and EFHWA, that really cemented the beginning feeling of adventure. On the back of this I announced to the HFpack forum I was off for five years of portable operations and travel. Out of this and a prompt reply by Bonnie KQ6XA about digital modes particularly ALE and I realised no interface for the rig to PC, what do I do? Where did I put mine, was it in storage or do I buy? Scouring the lists equipment stored, no luck, try shipped items, again no luck. Fortunately Julie remembered that I had a few things to go into storage before flying and there it was about to be packed away for 5 years. Saved by the bell, otherwise it might nice new signalink or something else and an annoyed budget manager.

So where did this get me to, well here is a gear list mostly complete:
1 x Yaesu ft-817
1 x Yaesu ft-8900
2 x headsets with boom mics
1 x Uniden UHF CB Mobile radio and aerial
2 x 2 Metre Hand Held
1 x 70 Centimetre Hand Held
Wire cut in half waves for 160/80/40/30/20/15/17/15/10
Comet SB-6 tri-band aerial
Aluminium frame toolkit with soldering irons, MFJ259B, multi-metre and hand tools.
Magnetic loop aerial
Laptop
Sound card interface
2 small SLA’s 1 x 2.9 AHR and 1 x 1.3 AHR for tramping
Solar panel and controller

If it’s missing I’ll update the list again later, it’s amazing the amount of things collected for a hobby. Usually I go away with very little, however the length of this journey makes that less satisfying as a hobby. So gear we take, although the tool box is the only big heavy piece.

That was the radio hobby gear and in its self took three iterations to get to this and I am picking that there will be things I wish I packed/left behind. However mail order does get to you and the internet does get around even out of the way places in Australia. If all goes to plan to attend then Ham fests will be a fantastic opportunity to rat out those missing items as well.

For the balance of the personal gear we had one round of packing when we sold up and came to Papamoa. We have since raided the storage unit for only one item before the second round of checking and culling for shipping, not too bad really. Since we had sold the house there was plenty of kitchen ware, camping gear, packs and other paraphernalia to choose and send. Still we kept everything including my radio gear to 10 pieces and just over 1 cubic metre. Next up is the gear travelling with us on the plane. Julie’s ahs had one go now and is at weight limits. My turn this week end, I suspect that I’ll get some of her ward robe.

5 Days and counting

2008-06-20T17:12:00.000+10:00

We've only a few more days in our sojourn in the Bay of Plenty. Tomorrow marks my last visit to the Te Puke Amatuer Radio club and will be my last club meeting in NZ. A pity my time has been so short here, I have enjoyed my visits and great people.

For those of you that are Travelling into ZL then I highly recommend poping in to the club rooms which are open every Saturday from 1:00 PM for a few hours. Pop in say "Hi" and have a cup of tea or coffee. The clubrooms are located on the Main highway on the western side of Te Puke at the caravan park at the edge of the 70km/hour zone

Hopefully I can keep the End fed half wave aerial up for 80m for a few more days. Well until monday I hope.

My journey to the End Fed Half Wave Antenna

2008-06-18T16:11:00.000+10:00

As I prepare to start for a five year portable operation as an adjunct to a working holiday travelling around Australia, I reflect upon where I’ve been and where I’m going with aerials for portable operations in the HF Bands.

My journey in portable HF operation started with the humble dipole. However I found the dipole is my greatest friend and for tramping a right pain in the neck. The painful part in my particular portable operations arena of tramping is the weight of any decent length of feed line, and getting three points in the air in the dark. If you go to http://www.geocities.com/zl1ueo/builderslinedipole.html you can see what I packed with the ft-817 and SLA. This set up is however tuner free and takes a few minutes to set the lengths for resonance, although a real pain in the dark when it’s wet and you’re at a crowded hut. All the radio activity during setup does result in lots of interest when you tune in to Mountain radio for the next day’s forecast.

My leap towards another solution was driven by comments from Murray Greenman Zl1BPU. His suggestion was to utilise an End Fed Zepp as this need only one support somewhere around the middle. The Zepp antenna relies upon a quarter wave transformation section of 300 or 450 Ohm Ladder Line with the aerial attached to the live side and the ground side is an open circuit. A search on Google or other search engines will supply a raft of technical information. Modelling on the Zepp generally available supports that the aerial has balanced currents, however closer attention to the models shows that the quarter wave matching section is just not quite enough. Refer to End-fed vertical j-pole and horizontal zepp I-max 2000 vertical by W8ji for the full explanation on this position.

In saying all the above the end fed Zepp is a nice aerial, however I found a little limited. You really need a 4:1 step up balun, for me tuner was necessary as I chose a less than quarter wave length of 300 Ohm TV ribbon. I made no attempt to tune the length beyond that calculated for a half wave and velocity factor. Added to this, and I never thought about how far all this wire goes at 80m until in the field. The one trip I field deployed Zepp daily over a 7 day canoe trip I became very creative zigzagging 50 odd metres of wire over and through many trees. The other big downfall of the system for tramping is the weight increase of ½kg created by a tuner. Not in my mind a smart move in any way at all.
Extending my research into Zepp’s I eventually ran into End Fed Half Wave Antenna’s, commonly abbreviated to EFWHA. The only hassle in my early reading was how to weed out good and bad information, when you’re green to a topic determining which is correct when there are conflicting sites is a chore. The most complete and easy to read site I ever found is by Steve AA5TB at The End Fed Half Wavelength Antenna - AA5TB and more technical at end fed 1/2 wave matching system end feed by W8JI.

The couplers Steve puts together are QRP mostly; however small light and often multi band. Note this is the coupler not the wire attached to the coupler that is multiband. You just carry another wire for another band or know how far to wind in the end in to go up in frequency and adjust the cap on the coupler. Best of all these couplers are light and the counterpoise is only 0.05 of a wavelength for managing common mode currents. Steve very clearly describes why the impedance is not infinite as many say. Key to the impact on impedance is how the antenna is deployed; my experience has found the impedance of inverted V and L antennas is certainly less than infinite. The variance is created by ground conditions and centre height.

Steve AA5TB provides an excellent article on how to make EFHWA actually work and can be found here at How to Make An End-Fed Halfwave Antenna Work - AA5TB. So I got a whole bunch of 1 watt resistors hooked them up in parallel to get 3800 Ohm and 10w capable load and used this as a dummy load on the coupler with a MFJ259B and FT-817. Presetting the variable cap and marking the cap setting on the coupler gave me effective home settings for each band. Then taking a length of wire cut to frequency and adjusted for velocity factor of 0.95 plus a couple of metres to allow for trimming set in up in a V or L or true vertical.
Here, I’ve been ahead of myself on the EFHWA journey however a position taken always needs explanation. My experiment above gave results very similar to those as described by Steve AA5TB. However the trials and tribulations of arriving at an antenna coupler are always fraught when you have no idea what to do. However the below circuit is quite self explanatory for those that know.

In explanation, the impedance match is created by a parallel inductor and capacitor. One end of the cap and inductor attach to the antenna and the other end to ground (0.05 wavelength counter poise). The second inductor is in actuality a primary winding on a step up transformer, one to the centre conductor and the other to the shield of your coax.

Well the circuit looks simple enough but what to do now, my operations are going to vary from QRP to QRO well 50W to 100W and many bands, that threw Steve AA5TB’s parts list out the window, he was using a Amidon T056-2 toroid which is great for QRP but not so good for the higher outputs I want when travelling Australia. By electing not to directly copy Steve’s project where to now? I had some T104 and T086 toroids for another project that never happened. However how many windings on the primary and the secondary for 80m? Good question at the start I had no clue either so I emailed Steve AA5TB for help on where to just start. He very kindly spent an evening and ran through a whole sample calculation for me and fired it back by email. Now I had winding information for the primary and secondary sections of the transformer.

I also discovered air spaced variable caps were pretty rare in ZL or just physically way too big for a small coupler in a back pack. Things are always a compromise when you want small, power and low weight. Thank you for EBay the home for those hard to find parts.

Winding toroids was a novel experience for me even after being a Ham for 6 years. The first attempts left me with cramp in the hands after winding on 77 turns on a t104 and keep them tight. Back to the web, the trick I discovered is, gently clamp the toroid in a vice and free up another hand. Wonderful no cramp and a transformer! After much mucking around in laying out parts I arrived at this layout in a small plastic box (refer to Photograph). However 77 turns on the secondary was great for 160m and the closest I got to 80m was 2.6 MHz with the resistive load. The only option is pull out the transformer and reduce the turns and try again. In effect I was attempting to have the 150pf cap at 160m approximately ¾ meshed and at 80m ¼ meshed to allow for set up variability adjustments. Eventually I got to a point suitable for 80m and lost 160m, this was fixed by adding an additional 250pf in parallel that could be switched in as required for band swapping. Then only hassle I had in getting things into the box was space to get my soldering iron in without melting the box. As can be seen in photograph I certainly caught one edge.

Fantastic I now had a functioning coupler and it worked with my resistive load and analyser. The opportunity to use it did not arise for some time and without even field trials I forged ahead and did a second unit to cover 40/30/20/17/15. It was only possible to add 40m after adding 125pf switched in parallel to the variable cap, 10 won’t happen without reducing the inductance which takes out 40m. As a Ham I wanted every band possible, yet my travel plans for a 5 year portable/travel/working holiday in Australia dictates limited equipment and I only have one set of ears. On that basis I opted to drop 10m as I already have three good DX bands.

Approximately 4 months later once we hit spring weather down under we got out for a camping trip around Thames in the Coromandel Ranges, I hauled out the analyser and all worked well. While I had the lid off I discovered an assembly phauxpas where the counterpoise was attached to the BNC ground. Out came the snips and there ended any further exercise. Always check twice before cutting, I cut the wrong wire and had no soldering iron with me. Back to the mobile whip for the balance of the weekend.

Next trip out was around Lake Tarawera near the city of Rotorua. Armed with slingshot this time hauling a wire over a tree was a breeze took only a couple of goes and went where I wanted it. This time the antenna was deployed in an Inverted L with the centre at approximately 10m. Fantastic coverage all over ZL I received some very good reports as I once again put a Lake and National Park up on the ZL awards net.

Recently as we progress towards Australia, we relocated for a short period of time to Tauranga. While here decided to utilise only one HF band as the house was sold and everything was in storage therefore the EFHWA to keep up with friends each morning on 80m was deployed. Due to the shape of the section the shape is a V more so in the horizontal plain from going down the section then across the back. This configuration puts the capacitor setting much lower than would be expected in effect at the bottom of what I defined for 80m.

However it works and I have had the odd contact with VK2, VK3 and VK4 in addition to Daily contacts in ZL. The centre height is only at 5m and is definitely a NVIS deployment. On the back of this success I went out and cut for all the other bands of choice. However I think I’ll reduce the confusion and put thumb knots at the correct points on the 40m wire for 30m and the 20m wire for 17m and 15m. Just wind it up in a tight coil at the end and away you go.

The End Fed Half Wave Antenna will form the core antenna system for my portable operations and Ham life in the next five years. The supporting system for restricted space will be a magnetic loop which deserves its own section.

73 DE Trevor ZL1UO (Formerly ZL1UEO & VK4UEO)

Geocities website is being updated

2008-06-18T12:47:00.000+10:00

I'm in the process of updating my web site. I managed to delete the front page when I was getting rid of the Yahho 360 blog. Opps there went the front page, no idea why, too bad a new front is up however I am putting a couple for other pages together.

Hanging out to get started

2008-06-18T12:00:00.000+10:00

We're hanging out to get started on the probably biggest adventure of our lives. An estimated 5 year trip/working holiday around Australia. Being a keen Amateur Radio Operator I'm keen to make this a five year journey of Radio Portable operations.

The gear has mostly all left, 10 cartons/toolkits left last week, just what we carry with us left here now. We are spending this week in Papamoa New Zealand with my YL's family. Well more accurately we've been here nearly 2 1/2 months and this is the last week. We spend about 5 days in Auckland with my family before flying out for Melbourne on 29 June. In some ways this week just drags, no radio in the car any more I feel naked driving, it's like going out without your phone or watch. It's packed and shipped ahead already. The FT-817 is nice to have still, I'm carrying it with me on the plane however I've only got the 80m coupler here, the Tuner has gone with the FT8900 and the toolkits. Even the VHF/UHF things have come down and been shipped. I still have 80m and can keep up with friends. however that ends soon once the battery gets passed on to a new home.

That said the posrtable ops to come will be fun. I've already threatened getting up with the light (apparently 5:00 am in Queensland) and getting on an HF band or two before breakfast. julie seems happy with that it's a great time for light and doing photography. With support like that to get out an play I' not stopping.

I've started up my pages again at geocities however I think mostly I'll post longer articles there with pictures like the the one I'm working on called "my journey to the EFHWA". Here will be more daily post of radio activity related to our journey around Australia.