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FREQUENCIES VHF, UHF, SHF NEWSLETTER
NZ This newsletter is compiled by Kevin Murphy ZL1UJG to promote
operational and construction activity on the VHF, UHF and SHF Amateur
Radio allocations in New Zealand (and overseas).
Newsletter Articles may be sent via email to rfman@xtra.co.nz

Post to K Murphy, 8 Tamar Place, Hamilton, 3200, New Zealand. Ph 07
8470041
ISSUE 27, APRIL 2007 Earlier newsletters @ www.qsl.net/zl1ujg
CONTENTS Pages 1-11 3 Issues of VHF Scene,
A big thanks to Simon ZL1SWW for producing the March/April 2007 VHF Scene
column.
What happened to me the last few months
As a result of possibly having Diabeties Insipidus (Water Diabeties)
Nephrogenic version, and peeing
virtually continually (my record was about 6.5 litres in 24 hours) I was
programmed to undergo hospital
tests during early May.
I didnt feel too well and was peeing about every 20 minutes during the
night. The next morning an urgent
ultrasound was done and it was seen that my prostate was quite enlarged
and my bladder was not too far
from bursting I suspect.
Within a short time I had a catheter fitted, which I had for about 5
weeks, plus some infections which
resulted in me not feeling very well. However my flow quantity returned to
normal as stresses on the
kidneys were also removed
About 2 months ago, almost to the day, I had my prostate resectioned (
with a TURP procedure if you wish
to research further). After a 2 week enforced break, I returned to work.
My general health is virtually
back to normal.
Please credit NZART/Break In/VHF Scene if using VHF Scene material in
another Publications, otherwise
credit FUNewsletter.Thank you
VHF Scene March/April Simon Watt-Wyness ZL1SWW
The VHF bands have been quite active over the immediate past and there is
a lot going on at present with
various current and upcoming activities. The National System Award was
running over the March Period,
celebrating 20 years of the National System. VHF convention is looming
ahead as well, which promises to
have some interesting topics covered.
The format may look a little different this month due to a change of
editor, and I hope I can keep it up to
the high standard that Kevin has maintained to date. This is a short term
stand in and all should be back to
normal soon!
Contests.
The results are out for the VHF DX weekend. Thanks to Doug ZL2TAR for his
efforts in getting these
together to meet the cut off date for the column.
First prize goes to ZL1AA followed by Steve ZM1TPH and Ian ZL1AOX
respectively.
A more concise breakdown is as follows:-
ZL1AA RF73IR 9899 ZM1TPH RF73HM 8081 ZL1AOX RF72MV 5456
ZL2ALW RF72HB 752 ZL2BLI RF70SQ 556 ZL2WA RE78kt 354
ZL1MRF RF72OF 37 CHECK LOG ZL2TGQ
Page 2
More in depth per band results will appear soon on the NZART website.
Upcoming Contest Dates.
The next contest is the Low Band Contest, 50 MHz to 440 MHz, on Saturday
the 14th and Sunday the 15th
of April 2007. The operating times are: Saturday 1700 to 2300 NZT and
Sunday 0700 to 1300 NZT. This is
the weekend FOLLOWING VHF Convention, being held in Wellington at Easter.
The following contest is the Hibernation Contest, 50 MHz and up, on
Saturday the 9th and Sunday the 10th
of June 2007. This is the weekend FOLLOWING NZART Conference, being held
in Palmerston North at
Queen’s Birthday weekend. The operating times are: Saturday 1700 to 2300
NZT and Sunday 0700 to 1300
NZT.
The rules are available at:
www.nzart.org.nz/nzart/update/contests/vhfcontestrules.html
Simon ZL1SWW reports on the activities from his site.
On Feb 3rd and 4th, the VHF DX weekend was on. I’d decided to put my local
club call ZL1AA (Br02) on the
air for a change.
Everybody usually turns to the yahoo group VHF contest reflector as a
meeting place to discuss who is
doing what and going where. All was a bit quiet on the reflector leading
up to the contest date but soon a
few people popped up, saying they will be active. Some contestants make a
big effort and have a long 3-4
hour drive so commitment to being active helps in the decision process as
to go the distance or not.
Typically this DX weekend has had fewer contestants than the ever popular
Field day where many go “all
outö for a good time. On arriving up the hill, it was pleasantly
surprising the number of people who came up
to give out points as well as the other contestants. It is really great to
see more of the southern stations
coming up and getting involved. I am sure everybody gets a kick out of
long haul DX.
Highlights were getting into Wellington area to work the likes of ZL1TYF,
ZL2DX & ZL2WA on 2m. Thanks
to all the ZL2s coming up. Band conditions were up and down a bit and a
bit hit and miss if you could work
these stations, generally they were kind to us with at least one contact
had by many teams.
Weather was kind to us as well with generally fine conditions felt
throughout the north island apart from
some rainy spells that stopped Dave ZL1AKW getting up to a high spot to
test his new 10GHz gear. None
the less, had some consistently good 1296 contacts over a 210km path.
As usual 10GHz performed well with 5.7GHz following close behind. Even
though the band conditions were
not stunning, we have found that 10GHz seems to still have the edge on 5.7
overall. Both Steve ZL1TPH and
myself have found that over the usual 310+KM path that we often work on
10GHz seems to win under
marginal conditions. All in all, a good time was had by all.
It is good to see the increasing interest in the microwave bands with Ross
ZL3DC, for instance, getting
some stuff together on 2.4 & 5.7GHz with the kind help from others. Slowly
the number of DXR-700 units
are increasingly been used on 5.7GHz, with a few mods, they become a very
cost effective performer.
Zl1TPH, ZL1BK, ZL2IP, ZL2TAL, ZL1SWW and others are using these with great
success on SSB be it with
crystal control or PLL driven by micro.
Anyone who is interested in seeing what these look like, have a look at
the www.qsl.net/zl1sww website and
look under constructional projects for info on transverter details.
Page 3

Ross Zl3DC reports on his perspective.
After getting home from Hamilton late
Friday, I decided to not go to far away on
Saturday, so packed up my antennas and
radio's and set up on 12v at the back of
the shed in the front paddock, I have to
say thanks to all the stations I spoke to ,
I made some new contacts and required
some old, ZL2DX whom I had heard off
and a special thanks to ZL2BLI for having
1296, I was jumping all over the place
when I finally got through to ZL1BQ ,
Great to hear you over a mostly land path,
although you were always just appearing
over the noise along with ZL1AA at times.
That’s it from here, Ross ZL3DC
DX
Murray ZL3MH reports on his recent activities.
The fifth two meter opening to VK happened on 17/1/2007 at 11.00am NZDST
to VK7AC . I heard VK7MO
at 11.30 am NZDST. My Gear is 12 element Yagi feed with LDF 450 coax at 10
meters 100watt MRF245 HB
amp, FTV250 with mod's, FT101zd MK3
We would be much like VK6 very isolated but we have 8000ft of Southern
Alps in the way so Sporadic E is
the only way. There have been 5 openings to VK this year so far. Their may
be still time for one more.
Remember all these contacts are over 2000 kms. Murray’s recent contacts
include:- VK2DVZ, VK2EI,
VK2ZT, VK2KU, VK2FZ, VK2APG, VK2FAD VK1BG, VK2AMD, VK2TP, VK4WS, VK4JMC,
VK7JMC and many
others.
It's 20 yrs since VK4 has been worked in Christchurch. Last time it was
1986 to Rockhampton in North
Queensland. This is a record year like 1995, 1986
Bob ZL3TY reports on goings on in his area.
Not a great lot to report this month. Had a 2m opening to VK, Sydney area,
on 19/20 January but signals
were weak.
During late January and early February I had daily meteor scatter skeds
with Rex VK7MO. Apart from the
FSK441 MS contacts, on several mornings we were able to get through using
JT65. Also had FSK441 QSOs
with VK1WJ and VK3VHF.
This summer season has been rather poor for tropo openings to VK from
here.
We are still running 2m meteor scatter skeds on Saturday and Sunday
mornings using FSK441from 8am to
9am on 144.23MHz. Regular participants are ZL1BT, ZL3CU, ZL3TY, ZL4LV. On
Saturday mornings 7am -
8am we beam west and try with VK7MO on 144.33MHz. New stations are welcome
to participate, activity is
co-ordinated on the VK- ZL logger.
Page 4
Microwave and Constructional Projects.
The “stand in scribeö had to go to Whakatane for some RF work there and
decided to make the trip more
pleasant and do some ham stops as well as a bit of geocaching. One stop
was to Dave ZL1AKW, who has just
recently completed a DB6NT 10GHz Transverter.
He has had it running for some time but previous attempts at a QSO over
210KM path to both Steve
ZL1TPH and ZL1SWW were not successful due to several variables we have to
contend with microwave
contacts, namely “Are we on the same frequency?ö and “Are we both pointing
the right way?ö
The first one to check is a nearby operational test for frequency. Seems
we may have been 26- 30 KHz
apart and we may just have missed each other when we tried previously over
a 210km path.
Now we know where we are, we may have a chance at a good 10Gig QSO. We
needed to do this test as no
one else has 10Gigs in Dave’s area so makes it hard for testing a new
transverter. Many things were talked
about and a fun time had by all. Good to see comparable RX sensitivity
between two different units.
On the ZLVHF contest group website, Steve, ZL1TPH, sheds some of his vast
experience on 24GHz,
putting up very interesting details on various 24GHz PA units with their
pros and cons and some of which
are able to be used as RX preamps as well. He goes into the port isolation
of the waveguide relays as well as
the use of “lossyö 10Gig relays at the input of the transverters to get
over the inherent high gains around
the system. All this is to be seen on the yahoogroups ZLVHF contest
members site. Lots of interesting
V/U/SHF related activities are posted here.
Simon ZL1SWW, has been playing around with yet another incarnation of the
DXR-700-768 converter
units, using one MC68HC908-QY4, this is an adaptation from the recently
built 10 Gig variant of the
DXR700-710 where one micro was used to control two YIG PLL oscillators.
Phase noise was good for the
10Gig unit and it was decided to try and use the same PCB and micro to
drive the 5.7 GHz units as well.
Thanks go also to Keith ZL1BQE, the “PLL Coding Gun!ö for assistance in
this project.
Some minor code changes and numbering was needed to drive the PLL on the
5.7GHz unit. The 5.7 GHz unit
uses an LMX2326 PLL and the 10GHz uses an ADF4118, both of which share the
same serially programmed
word format.
A 2MHz offset is used for the
PLL that is in standby mode so
that there is no beating of the
PLLs due to “Bleedingö of RF
from the TX side to the RX
side and vice versa.
Now we have one board that
will control both units and
allows for more simple
construction, without having to
drill holes in the chassis for LO
links to both sides. These units
are a really cost effective way
to get on 5.7GHz and it just
takes a little patience and
knowing someone with a bit of
test gear to help out.
-
VHF Activity from around Wellington.
The Wellington VHF Group held its annual fox hunt at the February meeting,
with 5 2m foxes hidden around
the Tawa area, near the meeting location.
Page 5
The teams had a hard job due to the relatively high power foxes in the
valley, but three were found. More
practice required, but we are getting ready for the VHF Convention fox
hunt. Thanks to Jim ZL1TYF for
creating the fox controllers, and the foxes that sat around for the two
hours!
The meeting continued at the local Denny’s, where all matters VHF were
discussed, including the repeaters
licensing issue and the removal of the NZART ALO, which greatly concerned
the Group members.
The Convention planning is preceding full steam, so please make sure you
make your bookings for Easter and
come and join us. More information is available on the
www.vhf.org.nz/convention along with updates on the
www.nzart.org.nz/nzart site as well.
Belmont work is continuing, and the site is showing its age and taking
more effort to look after.
The new National System node at Taupo is moving fast now, and the VHF
Group has committed considerable
funds to this site, and a local coverage repeater should be going by the
time this is published, and the
linking and controllers going in before winter. Thanks to the Taupo team
for the support to make this
happen.
ZL2WA was on air for the VHF DX weekend, from a site near the Belmont
repeater, giving out a few points
and showing the spirit of contesting. Nice to see a few more stations on
SSB in the Wellington area, and
proving Belmont is a good site.
Propagation
April/May Prediction by Bob ZL3NE/1
From mid March and April our temperatures drop as we say good bye to
propagation and by the first week
in May the end of all tropo which could be used on 2 meters. Weather wise
we have come to the quiet calm
period with little action from fronts and highs as they are too far south
to provide weather which will
produce any propagation.
On 6 meters, April can still offer the occasional openings from lightning
storms mainly in fronts moving
south, down the North Tasman. Tropo is very scarce as our temperatures are
too cold. May is the start of
the winter weather pattern and we can start looking for cold fronts again,
particularly in the South West
Tasman Sea, also watch for long warm fronts in the centre of the Tasman
coming from the north. Six meter
signals can get E’s propagation across both of these forms of fronts. I
will show all these modes of
propagation daily as they appear in my prediction maps. Keep a copy of the
above sector from each issue of
“Break Inö, as they will give you details of every mode of propagation for
each month of the year and where
to find it!
Last summer we had several long fronts which fed warm moist air from as
far a field as Malaysia, over
central Northern Territories and down to the south east coast of Victoria
and into a low to the East of
Tasmania. These storms were laced with lightning from north of Alice
Springs right down to the low in the
Tasman Sea and they brought about the large number of E’s openings on 2
meters, for northern VK4’s to
VK3 and VK5’s and for our ZL3’s and ZL4’s to VK1, 2, 3 & 7s’. These
openings were predicted on my daily
prediction maps. The North Island missed out on these openings as cold
fronts seldom come this far north
in December or January. The missing propagation, including on 70 cm and
1296 MHz was due to the lack of
highs of 1025+ mb over the Tasman Sea and the North Island. Only these
modes, or possibly temperature
inversion ducts can produce propagation at these frequencies. From Feb
2007 QST. “Bob Gyde, ZL3NE has
revived and documented the theory, that propagation including E’s is
related to certain types of
tropospheric weather patterns, and surprisingly, it is the only method
which has been able to make
reasonably accurate predictionsö. Besides being the only site doing it!
http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~split21204/ and select ZL3NE.
Page 6
Bob also mentions:- Dick ZL2AQR passed away on Monday evening (26th
February). He was a very long time
6 meter man and others and myself had a round table get together every
Sunday night for the last 25
years and even before that, so he will be missed.
May/June VHF Scene
A big thanks to Simon ZL1SWW for producing the previous VHF Scene Column.
As some readers already
know, I have developed an unusual medical condition. This is still under
investigation as I write the column.
I was unable to make the 2007 VHF Convention (for medical reasons), but by
all accounts it was excellent,
and hope to see a report in Break In.
The image below shows a group from the convention, visiting the Belmont
Repeater Site.
Contests reports
Low Band Contest
The top 5 stations were ZL1TPH, ZL2IP, ZL2MA, ZL2WA and ZL1SWW. 19
Stations took part. Best DX
worked was the ZL1TYF/ZL1SWW contact mentioned above.
The full results can be viewed on the NZART web site at:
www.nzart.org.nz/nzart/update/contests/vhf_uhf_low_band_2007_results.pdf
The ZL2WA team operated from the Belmont repeater site for the VHF Low
Band contest, on 2m and
70cm. Being right next to the tower was not as much as a problem as we
thought, with very little problems
noticed with the contest station or the repeater. The team did not (as
threatened) power down the PA's at
Belmont, or use the antennas, but did use the mains power to make hot
drinks and run the lights and radios.
In future we will make more use of the site, as the usual lower contest
site near Belmont does not have the
good aspect to the north and west that the repeater site does.
The team was Gavin ZL2TVM and John ZL2HD. A 24 GHz record attempt to
ZL1TPH and ZL2IP on Egmont
was tried but not successful.
Jim ZL1TYF and Joanna ZL2TJB report that they operated their portable
station in Titahi Bay in the
Porirua area just north of Wellington, and during the contest were able to
work Simon ZL1SWW, at his
Page 7
home QTH in Auckland on 144.2 MHz SSB.(471 km path) The signals were weak
and faded lower as they
waited for other traffic to clear, but they were very pleased with the
contact.
They were using a Kenwood TS-2000 running off a heavy-duty 4WD battery,
and running 50W on 70cm, and
100W on 2m at peak, but down to 5w when possible to conserve the battery.
The 2m and 70cm contacts to Steve ZL1TPH and Ted ZL2IP, on Egmont (208 km)
were relatively easy due
to the high elevation at the northern end of the path. Signals were heard
over the path on 70cm while using
a rubber duckie type antenna, and replacement with a Yagi later gave a
huge improvement
Seems we missed getting our log submitted in time, but our points of 170
on 2m and 126 on 70cm, for a
total of 296 would have placed us 2nd overall. Oh well, too bad! (or words
to that effect - scribe)
Contest Calendar
The next contest is the Hibernation Contest, on Saturday the 9th and
Sunday the 10th of June 2007. This
is the weekend FOLLOWING NZART Conference, being held in Palmerston North
at Queen’s Birthday
weekend. The operating times are: Saturday 1700 to 2300 NZT and Sunday
0700 to 1300 NZT.
The following contest is the Brass Monkey Contest, on Saturday the 4th and
Sunday the 5th of August
2007. The operating times are: Saturday 1700 to 2300 NZT and Sunday 0700
to 1300 NZT.
The contest after that is the Microwave Contest, all bands 614 MHz and up,
on Saturday the 6th and
Sunday the 7th of October 2007. The operating times are: Saturday 1700 to
2300 NZT and Sunday 0700
to 1300 NZT.
The rules are available at:
<www.nzart.org.nz/nzart/update/contests/vhfcontestrules0606.html>
All contest logs should be sent, to arrive within two weeks, to
Contest Manager, Wellington VHF Group, P.O. Box 12-259, Thorndon,
Wellington
National System Award 2007
Celebrating 20 years of the National System
This Award ran for the month of March on the National System, and
certainly blew out a number of
cobwebs from a few radios, and a sometimes quiet National System, prior to
March.
I have received about 40 applications for the Award, and the points range
for a few contacts over the
required 50 points, up to a few in the range 130 to 145 points! These
high-scores will be subjected to
careful checking, but as it was not a contest, there is not a first place,
or highest score as such.
Logs will be checked, and certificates printed and sent during May/June,
subject to other time demands.
Watch your mail box if you submitted your log.
A detailed breakdown of points, total branches, areas of coverage will be
worked on, and may appear in the
next Break-In if there is much of merit to say.
Thanks goes to all those who took part, including stations that were happy
to hand out points to those
seeking, even if they did not take part themselves. And of course the many
Repeater Trustees over the 20
years that have made the National System possible.
Jim Towler ZL1TYF.
CTCSS input sought
The VHF Convention in Wellington brought up the issue of CTCSS tones on
repeaters, both as access to,
and from the repeater, to protect the receivers from noise in the mobile's
front end.
The Wellington VHF Group offered to collect and colate ideas on this
subject. If you have any comments
or suggestions, please send them to ZL2WA@clear.net.nz, with CTCSS in the
subject.
The ideas opened at the forum were :- have different tones for repeaters
on the same frequencies, or to
have a standard tone across ZL.
That input tones be the same as the output tones, or never to have input
tones. Two level squelching with
tones is also a possibility.
At this stage the Group is looking to produce a paper of options and
issues with CTCSS on repeaters, to be
circulated for comment.
Page 8
Microwave
Grant ZL1WTT reports on the big project he is working on at the moment.
This is a 2 M/bit data link on 10
GHz. The plan is to provide a Hi-speed data connection to the Klondyke
site. At the VHF convention I
picked up a box of WR-75 waveguide with circulators and 11 GHz filter
bits. I am now in the process of
making up WR-75 transitions to fit duplexer filters made out these bits of
waveguide.
The next step is send back the 10 GHz converters to the Wellington VHF
group, to be modified for a 70
MHz IF frequency range and also be set up with a 200 MHz RX / TX split.
The long-term plan is be able to run IP over Ham radio with a good
workable data speed. To do that we first
need a High speed backbone, this is where I am at now. The next step will
be look at a 23 cm D-Star data
repeater.
Simon ZL1SWW reports having some feedback from others about the controller
for the DXR units. He has
now added more images and schematics. The same controller PCB drives both
5 & 10 GHz units with 1 micro
and does all sequencing and a PLL 2MHz offset to stop PLLs beating as it
is a problem if they are allowed to
run at the same frequency. One can just load different code in by ISP to
control one or other unit. The
VCO/ PLL has pretty good phase noise characteristics as well. Simons
website is at www.qsl.net/zl1sww
Simon has helped Scott ZL1KB with 5.76 GHz transverter.
Simon is interested in getting on 3.399 GHz and is looking for any
equipment, such as the DEMI PCB’s that
were around many years ago.
The scribe has acquired a 23cm 70 watt PA, from Alan Devlin VK3XPD. Alan
has retuned these from excommercial
frequencies.
Propagation for June & July (Bob ZL3NE.)
In winter look on 6 meters for some DX, but where! Here we are looking for
cold fronts in the South West
corner of the Tasman Sea and I have always found that a prerequisite for
propagation to take place is that
the front is able to bring snow to low levels in the South Island. Look
for the temperature inversion duct in
the Northwest wind while it is over the Tasman Sea. ZL3/4’s should beam to
VK2/3 along the duct, while
ZL1’s beam across the front. It is very rare for highs to produce
propagation in winter even with the air
pressure at 1040mb it is still difficult but watch very strong highs.
Propagation Discussion
There are several types of fronts but not all produce propagation, here is
a description of several which
when joined together, produce the very long front from the tropics to the
south of New Zealand.
The weakest sector is drawn as a thin black or broken line on weather
maps, and these are located near the
tropical areas. They have plenty of moisture but very little temperature
change, so they seldom produce
propagation. As the front drifts south it develops into what is known as a
trough, these are drawn with a
thick black line, and they can be as active as a cold front with heavy
rain and thunderstorms. Typically you
can find them from central Queensland down to Southern Victoria and out
over the Tasman Sea. The next
sector of the frontal action is the well known cold front! This is fed
with warm moist air from the trough
moving south, and very cold air from a depression moving North East. Where
these two meet we have
lightning and all the nasty weather we know of.
These fronts bring E’s propagation and here are the clues to finding it!
In mid December to early January, listen to the weather on the TV etc for,
“lightning activity over the
Western Tasman Seaö. In March, April and September listen for, “snow to
600 meters in Canterbury Otago
and Southlandö. In May, June, July and August listen for, “snow to 300
meters or to very low levels in the
same areaö. Once you hear these weather comments make use of the North
West wind over the Tasman Sea
and look for VK contacts. My paper on predicting F2 and TEP has been
released and is available along with
my daily predictions at http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~split21204/
Bob Gyde ZL3NE
VHF Forum Summary
Held at VHF Convention 2007 Hosted by the Wellington VHF Group Inc. on 8
April 2007 Forum Facilitator:
Vaughan, ZL1TGC
Page 9
Contest Rules and Dates- There are still some websites with the old rules
on them, please check on the
NZART website for the new rules, and see the dates and times there. The
Wellington VHF Group site also
has the correct rules.
Log Keeping Software- Contesters are interested to hear what other
contesters are using, so it would
great if anyone using good software could give a quick write up for
Break-In
Contesting Locations- Since there are only a limited number of good
contesting sites, we should form a list
of them with accurate locations, so people can calculate the bearings and
distances in advance for aligning
dishes and calculating paths. Please send your favorite VHF sites to
ZL2WA@clear.net.nz to be collated and
put on the web site.
VHF Records- There was a discussion on what is a record, and the
Wellington VHF Group will invite the VHF
Records officer of NZART to come to a meeting and help us to understand
this. It may be (like with the
VHF Contests) that we need to ask for submissions to get all the issues on
the table for discussion.
History and Milestones- There is a project to record the history of the
Wellington VHF Group, but we need
to collect a wider history of VHF activity. An entry on Wikipeadia seems
to be the easiest way to grab info,
so each Group or Branch could start and entry. An update on progress will
be in the next Q-Bit.
CTCSS standards in ZL- The Wellington VHF Group is asking for submissions
on the use of CTCSS on
repeaters. Any ideas please send to ZL2WA@clear.net.nz, with CTCSS in the
subject.
Repeaters will be the death of ham radio- Repeaters usage has changed over
the last decade, and continue
to change with IRLP and new extensions to the national system. Also the
load on Branches and trustees can
be a problem. It was suggested that repeater owning branches combine
purchasing power and share skills.
Wellington VHF Group to contact all trustees with an offer to help with
bulk purchasing.
Packet Forwarding On the National System- The hours of forwarding have
been reduced, now 2am-6am, and
this is still a valuable service, although used only by a small number of
users. Possibly we should look at
getting more use from the system as it could be vital in a large scale
disaster when the Internet or
telephone systems are unavailable.
D-Star on the National System- A quick discussion on a digital national
system was covered, and the fact
that new end to end digital systems are available such as D-STAR. The
meeting would be keen to hear of
ideas on how to move this ahead. The general feeling was that as a new
mode, we should support it locally
and then look at joining up repeaters.
Next VHF Convention- The VHF Convention in 2009 is being held in the
Waikato
(from John ZL2HD)
General
The Auckland VHF Group Branch 66 has got new updated webpages at
www.qsl.net/zl1bq
Simon ZL1SWW has been modifying an old Tait T200 66-88 MHz radio to 6m. It
uses a dual modulus PLL
and a single conversion RX. He has got -114dBm (0.45 uV) for 12 dB Sinad
after much rework of the tuned
circuits. On Tx he has achieved 8 watts out – not much but the SD1019 is a
28v device and gives 30W at
28v so bargaining on less than half at half supply.
Note that Downeast Microwave, (DEMI) in the USA are in the process of
moving down to Florida. Further
information will appear on their website www.downeastmicrowave.com
The UK Microwave Group has archived versions of their earlier Scatterpoint
newsletters on their website
at www.microwavers.org/
The Queensland VHFer is a great newsletter. Contact graham.selwood@deta.qld
.gov.au
for a sample copy.
Kent WA5VJB has some useful PCB antennas on his website www.wa5vjb.com
July August VHF Scene
Activity Reports Meteor Scatter
Although these contacts are not on the VHF bands Brian ZL4AD and Steve
ZL1TPH have been using WSJT
FSK441. A report from Steve ZL1TPH.
Over June I have been doing tests with Brian ZL4AD in Waimate with Meteor
Scatter on the 28.400 MHz
USB using FSK441 with WSJT. So far were have one contact completed and the
path distance is about
Page 10
930km or so. Brian operates a 2 element beam at 40 feet and a 100 watts
and at my station, only a dipole
and 50 watts.
Within each half hour session so far, I see typically 5 to 10 burns from
him and Brian recieves many from
my self which is most interesting. So Brian has asked is there anyone else
up in our area whom would like to
join in this activity session?
First 6m EME contacts between ZL and 9H & SV
A report from Rod, ZL3NW. Over a period of time I have run many 6m EME
skeds using JT65A with Philip
9H1PA and while I could


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