23cm activity from VK3 this morning 26th January, 2026

 The VK3's having a cracker of a morning on 23cm SSB

6metre Transequatorial DX 50.313 FT8 as of 1st October, 2025

 some good 6metre Transequatorial DX today on 50.313 FT8 as per vkspotter.com

23 on 23 Activity for 23rd August, 2025

Here in Sydney tonight, VK2HC,VK2ZIP,VK2ZIW,VK2BPG,VK2KQ,VK2TDN 

QSL card from Eddie VK1VP

 I was going through some old QSL cards and  found one that I that I considered important, from a very memorable person, this from Eddie VK1VP,  one of the people you could always guarantee to be around to give you a reply to a CQ, or some numbers in a contest. For this particular contact, it was when I was portable for probably the Ross Hull Contest at Kanangra Boyd National Park, here in western Blue Mountains from Sydney. Eddie was a great person and much appreciated.

WIA VHF UHF Winter Field Day Contest 2025

 WIA VHF UHF Winter Field Day Contest 2025, 

here is a snapshot from the Contest Radar site on 21st June, 2025

Contest Radar

WIA VHF/UHF Field Day Contest - Winter 2025

 two weeks away to the  2025 WIA VHF UHF Winter Field Day Contest  over weekend 21st-22nd June, 2025

The Wireless Institute of Australia

VK3RXX 2403.530MHz Beacon back on air

 VK3RXX 2403.530MHz Beacon back on air after some work done on it.

tropo ducting along VK2 coastline 25th November, 2024

 checked at 7am,  plenty distant 2m and 70cm rptrs this morning, it faded out at 11am (24:00utc)

VK2RFS 146.750,  20/9  , VK1RGI 146.950, 147.100 ???? weak,  could be south coast and VK2RDX 146.650 20/9, 

and other people working DX,

tropo ducting along VK2 coastline and inland today 24th November, 2024

 William Hepburns's Tropo website showing  good tropo on the coast and out to sea, 
VKSpotter.com  showing lots of good activity, 2m WSPR   and I see the VK4's doing some 24GHz DX.

VK3 MAD (Microwave Activity Day) 2nd November, 2024

 

VK3 MAD (Microwave Activity Day) 2nd November, 2024

VK3's having some fun for the MAD, plus some VK4 activity.

as per extract from vkspotter.com

FK8SIX 6metre Beacon is back on air (50.080 MHz) from New Caledonia

 news from our amateur radio friends in New Caledonia (ARANC club FK8KA)

that the FK8SIX  6metre Beacon is back on air (50.080 MHz) as of October 2024, after a long outage of several years.

You can read about it on their blog 

FK8KA: Beacon FK8SIX

latest multimode transceivers for VHF and above

I can never remember the latest model numbers as they are similiar and easily confused

ICOM IC-905   144, 430, 1200, 2400, 5600 MHz +10 GHz   All Mode Transceiver approx $4k8

ICOM IC-705   HF, 50, 144, 430 MHz    All Mode Transceiver    approx $2k

ICOM IC-9700   144, 430, 1200 MHz   All Mode Transceiver   approx $2k5      -  replacement to IC-910

YAESU FT-991A    HF, 50, 144, 430 MHz  All Mode Transceiver    approx $2k1

2024 Easter Sunday MAD session.

  2024 Easter Sunday MAD session (Microwave Activity Day).

Nick VK3BA portable about 15kms west of Geelong at QF21CU41 for todays Easter Sunday MAD session.

MAD - Microwave Activity Day - Easter Sunday March 31st - VK3BA/P at QF21CU41 Barrabool Hills (youtube.com)

WSJT-X 2.7.0-rc4 Candidate Release

 Dear WSJT-X Users,

We are pleased to announce that Release Candidate WSJT-X 2.7.0-rc4 is
ready for download and use by beta testers.

WSJT-X 2.7.0 Release Candidate 4 includes new features (especially for
companion program QMAP) as well as bug fixes.  A full list of
enhancements can be found in the Release Notes:

https://wsjt.sourceforge.io/wsjtx-doc/Release_Notes_2.7.0-rc4.txt

See also Section 1.1 of the WSJT-X User Guide for this candidate release:

https://wsjt.sourceforge.io/wsjtx-doc/wsjtx-main-2.7.0-rc4.html#NEW_FEATURES

Release Candidates are intended for beta testers.  If you download and
use WSJT-X 2.7.0-rc4, please remember to provide feedback to us on the
new features in version 2.7, and on anything that does not seem to work
properly for you.

Direct links to installation packages for Windows, Linux, and macOS can
be found on the WSJT-X page https://wsjt.sourceforge.io/wsjtx.html
Scroll down to the heading "Candidate release:  WSJT-X 2.7.0-rc4".

For those who like to compile from source, a complete source-code
tarball is available at the WSJT-X page. Public access to the git
repository for the WSJT project is also available on the "Git" tab here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/wsjt/
It may take a short time for the code to be updated on SourceForge.


WSJT-X is licensed under the terms of Version 3 of the GNU General
Public License (GPL).  Development of this software is a cooperative
project to which many amateur radio operators have contributed.  If you
use our code, please have the courtesy to let us know about it.  If you
find bugs or make improvements to the code, please report them to us in
a timely fashion.

The authors and Copyright holders of WSJT-X request that derivative
works should not publish programs based on features in WSJT-X before
those features are made available in a General Availability (GA) release
of WSJT-X.  We will cease making public Release Candidate (RC)
pre-releases for testing and user early access purposes if this request
is ignored.

Feedback should be sent to this email list or one of the of the others
mentioned here in the User Guide:

https://wsjt.sourceforge.io/wsjtx-doc/wsjtx-main-2.7.0-rc4.html#SUPPORT

We hope you will enjoy using WSJT-X 2.7.0-rc4, and that you will help us
to create a new General Availability (GA) release soon.

    -- 73 from Joe, K1JT; Steve, K9AN; Nico, IV3NWV; Uwe, DG2YCB;
         Brian, N9ADG; and John, G4KLA

VK3 Microwave Group Activity Day - 17th November, 2023

 Here is a snippet from the VK3 Microwave Chat group from their field day operations yesterday.

These guys are getting out on mountain tops and activating the microwave bands.

Stations worked by VK3KRD and the Group.

10.368.1 Gig and 5760.1 Gig.

VK3IE VK3TWO VK3HY VK3ACR.

2.4 Gig  beacon VK3IE.

144.1 SSB VK3ZO Vk3 ACR.

439 Fm, VK3ZO VK3BCU VK3DYD VH3CH VK3PI VK3TWO VK3IE VK3ACR

vk3-microwave@groups.io

DX Spots for VK0DS as of 11th Dec 2023

 DX Spots for VK0DS as of 11th Dec 2023 from dxheat.com DX cluster

and from :
DXSCAPE
DXSCAPE Database search result at 0413Z:

---

Callsign=VK0DS Band=ALL Reporter=WW Number=20 Search_before=2023-12-11


Callsigns     YY/MM/DD UTC     FREQ   Remarks                         Reporter
=================================================================================
VK0DS         23/12/10 0610Z  14183.0 no copy                         JM2HBO-9  
VK0DS         23/12/10 0601Z  14183.0 ANZA DX NET                     3D2BT     
VK0DS         23/12/10 0321Z  14074.0 TNX - FANTASTIC QSO ! 73        CT1FMX    
VK0DS         23/12/10 0239Z  14075.8 FT8 Tks DX 73! -10dB            PP5FMM    
VK0DS         23/12/09 1120Z 144140.0 JN86/EME/MC81 tnx dave          S51ZO     
VK0DS         23/12/08 1349Z 210754.0 FT-8 +02                        VK3ATL    
VK0DS         23/12/03 0942Z  21074.0 FT8                             JE5HTN-9  
VK0DS         23/12/03 0922Z  21074.0 FT8                             JA1TPY-#  
VK0DS         23/12/02 2313Z  28180.0                                 K5ABD     
VK0DS         23/12/02 1341Z  14000.0 QRV 23.nov.-dec.24,DAVIS-BASE,  DL8JS     
VK0DS         23/12/02 1324Z  14074.0 FT8 Davis Station in Antarctic  JH7RTQ-#  
VK0DS         23/12/01 2325Z  14240.0                                 K5ABD     
VK0DS         23/12/01 0135Z  14074.0 guess where from !!             VK7XX     
VK0DS         23/11/30 2314Z  14200.0                                 K5ABD     
VK0DS         23/11/19 0950Z  14074.0 FT8 +450                        JH7RTQ-#  
VK0DS         23/11/18 1200Z  14074.0 Antarctica                      JM1HJG-#  
   VK0DS         23/10/31 1355Z  14074.0 Call correction                 JH7RTQ-#    

VK0DS         23/10/24 1011Z  21074.0 FT8 　Antarctica          JR1CBC-#  

VK0DS         23/10/24 0702Z  14076.1 FT8                             PY2APK    
VK0DS         23/10/24 0659Z  14074.5 FT8                             PY2APK  

Dave VK0DS / VK2JDS arriving at Davis Station (Antartica) on Saturday, 11th November, 2023

 Some Antartic photos from Dave VK0DS / VK2JDS arriving at Davis Station on Saturday, 11th Nov 2023 after cutting through much ice. Dave will operate on 2m EME, 23cm EME and HF as time permits between work duties over the next 14 or so months.

WIA VHF UHF Field Day Contests for remainder of 2023

 

Upcoming Contest Date & Time

  Spring 2023 - 0100 UTC Saturday 25 November through 0059 UTC Sunday 26 November (0400 / 0359 in VK6).

  Summer 2024 - 0100 UTC Saturday 13 January through 0059 UTC Sunday 14 January (0400 / 0359 in VK6).

23 on 23 Microwave Activity Day - 23rd September, 2023

 good showing today and tonight for 23 on 23,   silly me got my day wrong, thougtht 23rd was Sunday, but it was today.

extract courteousy of VKSPOTTER.COM

VK Microwave groups

 some VK Microwave SHF groups :

VK3-Microwave@groups.io

https://groups.io/g/VK2-Microwave-Users-Group/topics