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.
Spent last week at Jenolan Cabins (QF46xe90) near Mount Trickett and Porcupine Hill in western Blue Mountains, whilst relaxing, I worked 23cm stations on FM and USB, using ic910 and a 23cm Bi-quad antenna.
Noting working these 23cm repeaters:
VK2RWC Chatswood 1273.200MHz was 60/9 at 110km east
VK2RWI Dural 1273.500 was s9 at 99.1km east
VK2RAG Somersby 1273.400 was s7 at 131km nth east
VK2RMP Maddens Plains 1296.850MHz simplex parrot repeater was s3 at 100.5km sth east
Contacts:
Gary VK2KYP portable at Somersby via 1296.100 USB and FM, 10w signal 10/9, and also qrp both ways at with a few mW
worked Ivan VK2FUR, Ron VK2GO, Mick VK2CMP & Alex VK2KQ via Chatswood Repeater
and also called in on the ARNSW Broadcast on Sunday night on Dural 23cm repeater.
If looking for a good RF location to operate from, or operate nearby, then book a holiday at Jenolan Cabins
WIA VHF UHF Winter Field Day Contest 2025,
here is a snapshot from the Contest Radar site on 21st June, 2025
Geoff VK2WA pointed me to a blog posting from Andrew VK3FS
for filtering the VDSL signal hitting 40metre band for NBN FTTN connections.
A 40m VDSL filter to stop Internet drops. Works with TP-link Archer modem
I having the same plus more, not so much noise eminatiing from the VDSL mode, but my RF crashing my VDSL,
but first, the trick I did to crush the RFI radiating from my VDSL connection and my VDSL modem, I just add some clip-on ferrites cores on the VDSL cable as it popper out of the wall heading to the VDSL modem, I just added the camp over ferrites one at a time, each time checking the internet download and upload speeds, I was getting 55Mbps download, for a 50Mbps NBN service, I hit a point where the dowblaod and upload speeds dropped, then removed that last ferrite, returning to a 555Mbps download and 19Mbps upload> now I could not detect any RFI from my VDSL FTTN service.
Next problem, crashing the modem, if ran on any HF band, I only needed 5watts to reset the modem, from any HF band, so I started adding ferrites on the cables coming from the modem internally, winding multiple turns on large size clampon ferrites yielded good results, now I can safely run 50w on Tx on any HF band. To improve on that, if I isolate the internal copper pair wiring within the house I can then run the 100watts.
End of 2024, full FTTP arrive in our street, just a matter of switching over to FTTP service to see what happens then.
two weeks away to the 2025 WIA VHF UHF Winter Field Day Contest over weekend 21st-22nd June, 2025
The Wireless Institute of Australia
SERG Convention 8th June, 2025,
South East Radio Group looks to be at Mt. Gambier
shame I am working, otherwise it would be good reason to drive down south.
I suddenly spotted some new callsigns appeared on P25 TG10700 today,
that is good, some new people playing with P25.
I listening on 40metres, 7.100 a group chatting away, heard Indy VK2XB call into the group, he mobile in the big rig out near Goolgowi and Merriwagga, out western NSW, on way to farm near Hillston
Surrey Amateur Radio Club Newsletter.
if you like reading radio club newsletters then here is another,
The Communicator Digital Edition: The Communicator May-June 2025
and they also have archived copies on their website.
Surrey is south east of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada, that's near the U.S. border on western side of Canada.
I was looking up something on QRZ.COM, amongst the ads on the main page, I spotted a photo, I thought I recognise that person, it was Bdale Garbee, (man of a thousand tiedie T-sheets) it was ad for a interview on Youtube. The same man who created Bdale's Messy Mailer, I would hate to think how many years I used the BM mailer program in NOS.
Bdale was involved in TAPR AX25 and later Linux, (in particular Debian) amongst many other projects.
Inside ARDC: Bdale KB0G on Funding the Future of Ham Radio | QRZ Forums
