Murray River National Park

Besides SOTA, I have also become interested in the VK5 National & Conservation Parks Award promoted and run by the Adelaide Hills Amateur Radio Society.

I had heard Paul, VK5PAS, out and about activating some of the conservation Parks near his home in the Adelaide hills, indeed, even on his way back from a SOTA summit! The boy is keen!

After a bit of reseach, it seems that there are quite a few National and Conservation Parks near my home QTH. As it turns out, I actually have a lovely view over the Kataraptko section of the Murray River National Park from my front door!

Armed with this knowledge, I packed up the X-Trail with my portable gear and headed out late Sunday morning, with the intention of going into Kataraptko to put it on the air…However, I got about 1 km in on the access road and after facing the opposite direction to where I should be going I decided that perhaps going in here might not be such a good idea after all…heavy rain the previous Thursday and Friday had made it pretty hard going on the mainly clay based “road”. Time for Plan B!

Plan “B” was to head to the Lyrup Flats section of the Murray River National Park, just north of the Lyrup Ferry, a few km from Berri.

Welcome sign…

The access road in here seems better maintained and was no problem for the vehicle and pretty soon I was on the air, making contacts from Black Box campground. I set up the trusty the End Fed Half Wave and the FT817ND…

The Squidpole lashed up to a tree…

The ‘817, and the EFHW match box…

I worked a good number of stations, including VK5PAS Paul, VK3AFW Ron, VK5BJE John, VK5FMID Brian, VK3XBC Duncan, VK3KAB/P Kevin, VK5HCF Col, VK7NWT Scott, VK2UH Andrew, VK3JM Fred, VK3AMB Bernard, VK2ZRD Rod, VK3ZPF/P Peter, VK5KC David, VK3HRA Allen, VK7FEET Warren, VK3ANL Nick, VK5NRG Roy, VK5FAKV Shaun, VK3KCD/M Peter, VK3BJA Brenton, VK3KIS Andrew (on his 2watt QRP rig he built himself from Drew Diamond circuits), VK5DX Gary and VK3PI/P  Mark, for the last contact before I had to pack up for the afternoon. I was copying most stations at 59 or better, conditions seemed quite good.

The 5000mA LiPo battery I used worked well, not even breaking a sweat for the entire 2+ hours I was on the air. I’m very impressed with it’s performance so far. I have a switch mode voltage regulator coming from ebay to drop the 15+ Volts fully charged to 13.8v, more on that when it arrives. All in all a successful activation. The next park I’ll be doing is the Cooltong Conservation Park. (actually just across the Sturt Highway from Lyrup)

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Sunday’s chasing…

“There is nothing quite so much fun, as messing about with Radio”

After a couple of months of not chasing much SOTA with life getting in the way, I was able to fire up the HF rig from around 8:30 am on Sunday morning and have a good listen around. I was able to pretty much keep the rig on all day and listen out for the goat bleating alert from the most excellent SOTAgoat app to let me know of what was happening around VK!

This is what I ended up with for the day, between chores, shopping, and some plumbing repairs and the construction of an End Fed Half Wave for 40M

18/May/2013 23:42 VK1DI/P VK1/AC-038 Mt Tuggeranong 7MHz SSB
18/May/2013 23:46 VK3MRG/P VK3/VC-007 Mt Macedon 7MHz SSB
18/May/2013 23:47 VK3KAN/P VK3/VS-049 Crowsnest Lookout 7MHz SSB
19/May/2013 00:05 VK3YY/P VK3/VE-011 Mt Stirling 7MHz SSB
19/May/2013 00:05 VK3KAB/P VK3/VE-011 Mt Stirling 7MHz SSB
19/May/2013 00:12 VK3KAN/P VK3/VS-049 Crowsnest Lookout 7MHz SSB
19/May/2013 00:50 VK5PAS/P VK5/SE-009 VK5/SE-009 7MHz SSB
19/May/2013 01:18 VK5CZ/P VK5/SE-009 VK5/SE-009 7MHz SSB
19/May/2013 04:30 VK5PAS/P VK5/SE-002 Mt Cone 7MHz SSB
19/May/2013 06:22 VK3MRG/P VK3/VC-034 Pretty Sally 7MHz SSB
19/May/2013 06:27 VK3YY/P VK3/VE-204 The Paps 7MHz SSB
19/May/2013 06:51 VK3HRA/P VK3/VC-002 Mt Donna Buang 7MHz SSB

Highlight for me was the final contact of the day with Alan VK3HRA/P on the new antenna.

Testing out the EFHW with Alan, VK3HRA/P who was on Mt Donna Buang…

The end Fed Half Wave (EFHW) for SOTA portable operation…

The End Fed Half Wave antenna (EFHW)for SOTA portable operation…from bits and pieces in the Junkbox…

Whilst leisurely chasing activators this morning, I also took the opportunity to rummage through my Junkbox to see if I had all the bits and pieces to make an end fed half wave antenna for the 40M band. My main antenna for 40m at the home station is a Butternut HF2V, and is a good performer for SOTA chasing work, but I intend to activate a few summits in the near future, and although I’m well equipped for VHF, I need a good portable antenna for my planned activations.

I did a bit of research on the EFHW during the previous week, looking at what was written on the Internet about the antenna and what kits, if any, were available and at what cost. I found a few, but decided that the best way forward was to knock one up with the stuff I had on hand…

There’s not much to them, and the whole thing took me about 2 hours to assemble.

The VK5LA EFHW Tuner

Firstly, The circuit – There seemed to be a fair variation on the theme in terms of components used but ultimately, it’s just a tuned circuit set to resonate at the frequency of interest. Matching – some used link coupling of the tuned circuit, some with a tap up a few turns from the earthy end of the inductor. I went with this…

Hand drawn Circuit

Quite a few of the circuits used the Yellow toroid but I didn’t have one so I used a T50(Red) one that I had on hand. 24 Turns was about average for the schematics I gleaned and the tap 3 turns in from the earthy end seemed to be standard. The capacitor was one I had on hand that came from the board of a 70’s am transistor radio that was long ago junked.

Wiring diagram

I had a small black plastic Jiffy box on hand so I mounted everything in it and soldered it up as per the above diagram. The red banana plug socket on the side was added just in case if I need it for later. The black banana plug socket is for a counterpoise wire if desired. I found that I didn’t need one when testing, I think because I’m using a tap on the inductor L1. Dead simple!

A peek inside…

I then cut a 21.6 m length of light weight hook-up wire for the 40M band and attached a banana plug to one end and a lug to the other. I attached the lug end to the tip of my 9 meter high Squid Pole that I had set up in the front yard, and the other end to the Tuner and FT817 via a short BNC to PL259 lead set up on a table.

Table top portable…in the front yard!

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t really expecting it to work, I plugged it in and turned the FT817 to the 40m band and selected LSB…the dial was down at the bottom of the band and to my surprise I heard a few stations as I tuned up to around 7.1 MHz. Well, “here goes nothing” I thought as I began to turn the variable cap on the tuner, all of a sudden the noise sharply increased and a smile emerged on my face! I knew then it was working and a brief “VK5LA testing” on a clear frequency allowed me to adjust the SWR to nothing on the Rig with the Variable capacitor at around 1/2 mesh…pretty well where it should be…

The complete EFHW 40M antenna packs down to a small package…

Now the acid test! did it work? could it make contact? It seems that it was certainly hearing ok, with a lively 40m band jumping out at me…I was about to find out as heard the bleat of my SOTAgoat alert on my iPad, letting me know that Alan, VK3HRA/P on VK3/VC-002 Mt Donna Buang was calling CQ on 7.103 MHz. I tuned to his frequency, and he was a good signal, very readable at 56…To my delight, Alan came back with a 58 for me for my first EFHW contact.

I’m certainly impressed by the EFHW antenna, and I’m looking forward to giving it a run out on a summit in the very near future…in the mean time, I’ll try different configurations like an inverted L and V, and perhaps as a vertical, to see how it goes. I might even adapt it by making the wire “linkable” for 10/15/20/40 like the Link Dipole that others swear by.

Experimenting is the essence of Ham Radio!!!

Andy – VK5LA