My four year old son Toby is Volcano obsessed at the moment. We had talked about some old volcanic rocks you could see not far from melbourne, and he had a picture of them in a book we had gotten him on volcanoes, so, we promised him a trip to the “Organ Pipes National Park”…
One observation of this Sota caper is. Many of the operators are named Andrew. Is it just a case of age/naming popularity of the 1960’s and 1970’s? Or some other weird universe / moon / crystal / alignment that has drawn so many Andrews to climb to the top of hills and call out as…
Randomly searching around eBay as you do, i discovered a place in Melbourne selling Cheap 8m long squid poles. They advertise them as pickup only, and a search of the seller name found me the store, a fishing shop in Dandenong. On eBay, its 2 for $26.50 with pickup, curious about the quality of the…
A flaw in the Kranker Knob upgrade for my FT817 was discovered soon after the knob was installed. The yaesu soft carry case for the FT817 neatly protects the radio, however the knob extension bar didn’t fit!, thankfully my wifey has a home/internet based sewing business making kids hats and other items, so i enlisted her…
Amateur Radio Operators are always looking for challenges. When the opportunity to launch a new sport arose, many operators were quick to participate. One amateur was recently quoted as saying “Simple point-to-point communications just didn’t do it for me any more. Sink-holes On-The-Air is an exciting new-low in Amateur Radio tradition that pushes the barriers…
My big child Nathan has developed a recent trait of unexpected and rather rapid onset motion sickness in the car when we travel on twisty roads. With that in mind, we set off to join the Morrabbin and District radio club members at Mt Dandenong for a mini SOTA combined activation and promotional event. The…
SOTA CW BASICS As part of the learning process of getting CW going, was the question of “HOW?” to hold a qso, the below information was posted on the sota group, the below is aimed at sota, and how to have a quick sota cw contact, but is also generic for those learning morse. It…
So. What do people think the best bang for buck 817 upgrade is?? With the dollar heading north again (if you believe the financial review 🙂 it might be time to order some bits from OS again. My current thinking is a Collins Mechanical filter of some Type/Style/Manufacturer. On my Sota activations. The most common…
My big child Nathan turned six this weekend, as a bit of a family tradition, we try and go camping for both kids birthdays. And for the last couple of years for the big child’s birthday we have visited Tidal River at Wilson’s Prom. Its a caravan park in the middle of Wilson’s prom, with…
Opportunistic.. Sometimes thats what you have to be with this sota caper, especially with a young family and limited time to goat. I had a pretty urgent overnight work trip to Warrnambool handed to me, and a quick look at sota goat showed me that I would be near at least 2 summits on my…