Dave ZL1DL and Harry ZL1BK caught practicing rope knots? Maybe knot. They were just whipping up (knot funny) a quick ferrite based choke for John ZL1OJ to try on his recently installed “random wire” antenna. After that, Dave produced an “unlikely to impress” multi-band HF vertical. With a tapped coil for band selection at the base topped by a telescopic whip for a maximum height of around 1.5m, advertising it as 80m through 6m would require a very large cheek to accommodate the salesman’s tongue. The antenna was mounted on a convenient base ( Harry’s car ), and then commenced to confuse all and sundry with a strange response. While it would tune up on 80, it appeared to randomly jump some MHz. After suspecting a faulty connection internally, it was finally decided that it would tune correctly when someone was in contact the base, and would jump in frequency when left in isolation. Surprisingly, Dave had another identical antenna to try. The second one, appeared to do what it should – it did resonate at expected frequencies.
Rosscoe ZL1AAF and Luke ZL1LMB turned up in Rosscoe’s camper on the way back from a trip up North. The camper looks just the ticket for a field day base!
Martyn ZL3CK has taken delivery of a Kiwi SDR for the SPAM group. Until a suitable home is found to host such, we may install it at MP. Martyn spent the afternoon tidying up the repeater room, where we would locate the SDR. Graham ZL1TOF continued work on the West operating console, with the install of the emergency lighting wiring.
Did you use a drone to get the photo in the tea room??😁