John Moyle Field Day 2022 - postmortem

 I went to QF46pu with the intention of  working VHF and above, however after the first hour  of calling and finding nothing and hearing nothing,  (except for  VK2LE/p on 146.500, but they could not hear me). Dave VK2JDS was tuning around 40metres and found lots of stations calling CQ Contest,  so I started working the contest on 40metres, it was great fun, lots of strong signals, easy to work them. There were some serious stations out there, but also many casual contesters who liked a bit of a chat, which I was very obliging with. 

I was not  doing the contest seriously, just give out some numbers.  There seemed like there were many club groups and family groups, one op had his daughters doing the CQ calls while he made the contacts, so I was surprised by the number of young operators, both genders present, some of which had picked up the contest bug and operating very professionally and proficiently, which was great to hear. 

Over the 24 hour period I racked up 50 contacts, in between other projects,  while realistically just having a bit of fun in the contest.  I was operating under my other callsign VK2ABP,  running the Icom 756 Pro2 into a 80metre horizontal wire loop, strung out among the trees. 

Now that I had fun on a HF contest, I think I need to have a go at the RD Contest in August. I think I leave the VHF and above for the WIA VHF-UHF Field Day Contests.

radio shack (shed) working bee 19th/20th June 2020

 finally got to visit the DX farm, since covid locked  everything down.

We were able to get some work done on the remote DX shack.

Added another operating desk and shelving, as it was a bit squashed at one end of the shed  trying to run several radios and laptop and paperwork and very difficult if multiple operators, so we cleared the shed and added the extra desktop at the other end of the shed.  We also hung up some old rugs and pieces of carpet for sound proofing and echo reduction, so the background noise and echoes are greatly reduced now.  The desks and shelves all have a gap at the back to allow cables to drop or rise behind the  desk or shelf. It just needs another bulk head added to run coax cables in at this end of shed.

I also surveyed a couple spots at the site for running WSPR beacons and iGates etc for the times when not operating DX or contesting.

VK2ABP callsign

 In September, I organised an additional callsign,  I picked up VK2ABP, which was Bob Paton's callsign  prior to him becoming SK in 2012.  it is now  registered  at address for QF46pu, (locality Gowan) for which Bob often operated field portable from, for many HF Contests on the mountain top. 

As I also frequent the same site for contests I thought it only fitting to get another callsign for when I am operating from there and the obvious choice was to get Bob's old callsign and operate it in his memory as he was absolutely fanatical about contesting and DXing.  Bob would often spend the entire nights on the mountain top working the HF Contests.    Bob also operated at Davis Base in Antartica as VK0BP (1nov2008 to7mar2009) and his first callsign was VK2FBOB.

Looking up the history of the callsign VK2ABP, it was first licensed to the Broken Hill ARC prior to and post World War 2, then later to a RG Dunford of Coonabarabran in 1950's.