Today I went out to do another VKFF activation, as was the case last time, lessons were learned (re-learned?) and added a list of things to check/do before the next one.
Packing the gear into the car this morning I threw an Alert up last night using the ParknPeaks iOS app version 3 beta (Shoutout to Sue for including me after I messaged her!) and encountered a known bug with this version of the beta. Fixing the Alert on the app I had planned to be on air for the rollover and well … I made it … just … by one minute.
Heading off I put Eusdale Nature Reserve into Google Maps and after reading the NPWS management plan I knew access to the park was only via one single entry point, as the rest is surrounded by private property. A quick glance of the map and it “looked about right” … heh, yes, well. I got closer and closer to the park and Google kept trying to take me down peoples driveways – not happening, so I pulled over and checked the NPWS document to find that google had taken me to the wrong place, and that I actually wanted to take a dirt road off the highway about 1km before where I actually turned off. Doubling back I found the road, followed it all the way and was met with this:
It’s hard to show in the photo, but those ruts were around half a metre deep. I drive a VZ Crewman (commodore) which although a reasonably capable vehicle – is a V8 rear wheel drive with not a lot of ground clearance. Crawling up the track to avoid the ruts and questioning whether or not I’m going to have to reverse out of this if I can’t turn around I eventually got to a clearing just before the entrance to the park and pulled up with great releif of there being an area to turn around.
Walking into the park it was cold and I was eager to get onto air, google’s bump-steer cost me around 20 minutes and it was now 9:45 – 15 minutes before rollover. I threw the antenna up and leaned it against the park entrance sign and poked the top into a tree, keyed up the radio and it went into full scale Tx with no modulation – my bloody RF feedback was back.
The speech compressor board I’m using is a fantastic little unit, it’s just not built to do the job I’m asking of it. After doing some more research once I got home I found a few 100uH inductors on the power and audio lines *should* solve the RF feedback problem, to be fair, at it’s peak it does have 60db of gain (Yes that’s correct, taken from the chips data sheet) so even the smallest bit of RF is going to cause trouble, but, I digress.
I had expected this might be a problem so I brought a screwdriver with me this time and quickly pulled the microphone apart and once again ripped the compressor out and finally made it on air at 09:59 and managed a park to park as my first contact with VK2BYF in VKFF-0406. Once I was on air a relatively steady stream of contacts came in and I was able to work in total 26 contacts, which is good enough to qualify me for the VKFF activation and a good way to the WWFF activation. In total I also managed 7 Park2Park contacts, being VKFF-0406 (Twice) VKFF-1297, VKFF-1966, VKFF-0011, VKFF-1411 and VKFF-0088.
After about an hour and a half of being on air I decided to pack up and head home, back out through the ruts and home. Thanks to everyone who worked me. I actually found a problem with my antenna after I got home that might have explained the excess RF feedback on 40 and that would have most definitely affected my ability to get out. In short the antenna I was using was my first prototype of my loaded end fed vertical and after I got home I found I was getting RF feedback in my office after I put it back up here. Closer inspection of the antenna found that there was a break in the antenna wire just before the 40m loading coil, after fixing that my RF feedback in the shack is gone and I’ve now made a new antenna for my portable operations – which has no joins to break – it’s a single piece of wire through both of the loading coils from end to end.
Im probably going to go back at the end of the week to finish off the activation and I’ll probably take my iPad with me for something different and try and work some PSK-31 – if the chasers are up for it!
73 de VK2MES
