Finishing off Eusdale Nature Reserve – VKFF-1929

I’ve been a little quiet over the last month or two. Works been really busy, life’s been busy so I’ve had a re-visit to this park on the cards for a while, it just hasn’t happened until today. Since last activating this park I have made a couple more mods to the radio (FT-818ND), most notably I’ve ripped the speech compressor I was using out of the mic and fitted a BX-184 vocal keyer/speech compressor, and I’ve fitted my internal 4000mAh LiPo battery solution.

My ute’s been out of action for a couple of weeks now (it blew a radiator in pretty spectacular fashion) so it was off to the park in the van. The roads is a bit sketchy but I managed to make it up. The recent rain and wind is very evident, trees down and the road even more washed out than it was previously. Pulling up to the park showed exactly why you don’t park or setup under gum trees. They’re called widowmakers for a reason – when they drop branches it happens unexpected and quickly, these ones have obviously dropped recently but nobody has been around to clean them up.

A quick walk into the sign and setup and I was on air. I was going to take 7.144 but Deryck VK4FDJL just beat me to the punch so I jumped in and got a quick Park2Park with VKFF-1534. I grabbed a couple of small stools to use this time, one for the radio and one for me as last time I got a dead leg sitting on the ground, and while I’m sure it would have been very funny for anyone who might have been around – it wasn’t so fun for me.

I only needed around 20 contacts for this park, so I recorded a CQ message with the BX-184 mic keyer and tested it out. I have to say WOW! This thing packs a serious punch and also makes calling CQ really, really easy, although it is somewhat eerie seeing the radio key, knowing that it’s calling with your voice, but you hear nothing. If you do activations, seriously, I cannot recommend this mod enough. I had a bunch of mods on my list for my FT-818 when I ordered it, one of those being the BHI DSP – honestly, if you have to choose the Keyer or the DSP for park activations – take the keyer every time. The DSP is nice, but i’ve not used it in a park as yet. I’ll be using the keyer in EVERY park from now on.

After a couple of calls with some mixed signal reports I decided to check the SWR and found that my SWR was a little high and the power output was a little down. I re-positioned the antenna so the tip of it was resting against a dead branch instead of the loading coil resting against a live one, put a call out, the SWR had dropped and the power output meter went to full and I had a pileup.

A bunch of calls later and I got my 44, with contacts from VK4FDJL, VK2VW, VK2HFI, VK6WF, VK2WB, VK3IO, VK2EXA, VK5PAS, VK2MET, VK3SQ, VK4HNS, VK5CZ, VK3PF, VK2JES, VK4EMP, VK4FGCW/P2, VK4KD, VK3ANL, VK4MUD and even a sneaky (after a call up on a local repeater) simplex FM QSO to VK2XLJ in Orange on 2m (not bad for 75km simplex from a FT2D HT)

So in total I now have 46 QSOs from this park, 8 Park2Park contact across 3 visits. Big thanks to everyone who came back to me!

The new battery worked really well and after an hour the voltmeter on the radio was at 11.6 volts, which has the batteries sitting at around their nominal voltage, not even close to the cut-off.

Roll on the next 44.

73 de VK2MES