A couple of years ago one of the Manly Warringah Radio Club members acquired some mystical unicorn DXwire from Germany. This created a heated debate that lasted for months on the merits of this expensive unicorn blood rainbow wire vs cheap and nasty copper from discount electrical suppliers R us. Well, i have just acquired some…
Everyone kept saying “knob, knob, knob” about my ft817, i didn’t know what they meant, so I googled “817 knob” and discovered the Kranker Knob from the W4RT shop. This store has all kinds of ways for me to spend my money on the FT817! I ordered a knob, just on $30 with postage and exchange…
At the November coffee shop meeting for the EMDRC radio club, Marshall, VK3MRG and myself presented on sota, and how to activate sota easily in metro Melbourne The night was aimed at people interested in being an activator but unsure where to start, where the summits were and how simple an activation can be. Marshall…
I discovered a critical flaw in the FT817 almost the first time I used it (a flaw for me anyway) the box is great, but has no built in ability to raise the display/control at a nice angle easily, it works a treat vertically, resting on the heat sink extension on the bottom of the…
Yesterday afternoon, I visited peter VK3YE and a group of like minded hams at a arp afternoon at a park near the beach in Chelsea south of Melbourne. My kids came along with the promise of a cool playground/park for them to explore, and it was a very cool park with a lighthouse and pirate…
My morse code skills suck. REALLY REALLY Suck!!. I passed my morse exams in the mid – late 1990’s and then only just. I did enough to qualify for the exam. And have never actually had a morse QSO on ham radio. I do use morse today. I use it to decode beacons and ID…
Today was a public holiday in Melbourne for a horse race that stops a nation, the Melbourne Cup. I couldn’t care less about glue pots, so the family headed out for a picnic lunch and a drive into the local hills. It was a lovely day in Melbourne, mid 20’s and sunny blue skies. We headed…
We spent the day out in the city as a family today. This morning I dropped off the rest of the family at the museum while I headed over to the maker faire called eurisko Melbourne. I was away and didn’t attend last years event (ran at Swinburne uni) but heard great things about it.…
My work took me down near Lorne yesterday, a long day actually, so I choose to use my lunch break for a very quick activation on Mt Cowley. This summit over looks bass straight behind the great ocean road, and is a nice drive into the hills behind Lorne and up past Erskine Falls. (where…
Having day release (thanks wifey) to attend the Ballarat hamfest saw me spend some time activating two more local mountains. Both Mt Warrenheip VK3/VC-019 and Mt Bunninyong VK3/VC-018 are ~10km form Ballarat and are the remains of old volcanoes. This was my second summit for the day, having worked Mt Bunninyong earlier in the afternoon. After my previous hill…