The VK/ZL Trans Tasman contest at the Manly Warringah Radio Society club room.

Well it happened.. we as a club entered local VK ZL contest on Saturday the 20 July 2013.  We all met at the club in the afternoon to set up.  Week earlier we set up the inverted L antenna for 160 m (the antenna which Miro OK1NG brought from OK land to be used at Lord Howe island).  It was only thrown over some trees, but it worked.  Ben VK2BEN measured the antenna with his new antenna gadget and it resonated on 1.97, so the antenna tuner(s) had no problem with it.

The operators were:

Greg VK2XE taking care of the SSB on 160 m.

Matt VK2RQ was operating the 80 m CW station using the club radio and dipole antenna.  I also helped for about couple of hours to give Matt some breathing time.

I was the CW operator on 160 m assisted by Rob VK2MZ (who had to go home early and reluctantly)

 Greg and I shared the 160 m antenna.

Considering that this is one of the boring contests... the fact that we had a team made it good fun.

The statistics:

2013 VK/trans-Tasman Contest

                                Summary

        Callsign:       VK2MB   (Multi)

     
        Operators:
                              VK2XE
                               VK2RQ
                               VK2MZ
                               VK2PN

        Category:       Both Bands - All Mode Multi Op

                Hour:      1        2         3          4          5        6
                Points:   84     108     103     107      83       3
                Bonus:    60      92      94        64      64        0
                Total:   144     200     197     171     147      3
                                                                                      (Min)

        Total Score:       859

        Log Created By:  VK3AVV VK Contest Log (Ver 3.4a)



 We do not expect to win but surely hope to get "honorable" placing.

Thanks everybody who helped... it made the contest soooooo easy.

cheers
73
P

IARU HF Championship

This last weekend was the IARU HF Championship contest.  I found myself with some free time (Heidi was in Melbourne therefore no Heidi QRM).

I was looking forward to some excitement on the HF bands and joined the CW section.  All was fine and the bands were kind to me and others except the ten meters band, which was very quiet.

Picture below is showing 10 kHz portion of 20 m band.  Plenty of strong signals there.

The same bans little later

After about 10 hours of operation Mr. Murphy interfered again.  Something happened to the antenna/coax system and the SWR become high.  Had lot of RF in the shack and that affected the USB ports and my Winkeyer.  Had to stop in the middle of great fun.

 

The results:

       Band      QSOs      Pts      ITU     HQ

             7        48       218       10       2

            14      231    1111       15      9

            21      128     560        15     15

           28         15      73           4       0

       Total     422    1962        44     26

            Score : 137,340 

If only I could operate another 10 hours.. I'd get acceptable score... Ah.. well ... next time.

BTW some stations were giving the CQ zone numbers...   I wonder if it will affect the scoring???

Playing with the USB TV dongle

Yesterday I found in the letterbox the USB TV dongle (Realtek 2832U chip), which I've ordered some time ago at a cost of couple of coffees.

It took me more than half a day to get it going... Hard work for old bloke who is not very computer smart.

OK I got it going and now I can receive FM radio...

All compliments to the creator(s) of the HDSDR program  it is very very good.  I've played with it before using my KX3 as a SDR radio and with soft rock receiver before that.

Now the question is:  Will I be able to make it work as HF receiver??