The new vertical antenna is finally up and in its place. The Hustler 6-BTV (6 band trap vertical) sits proudly on top of the house. While I thought it would be a major hassle, it was actually quite easy to erect the antenna all by myself.
The antenna is not using any wire radials, but the large metal roof is acting as a ground plane. 15m is pretty noisy, but other bands seem to be fine.
By the way, considering that everything in Australia costs 2-5 times more than in the rest of the world, and the cheapest price for this antenna in VK I found was AU $ 599 (US $630) plus postage, I have ordered mine via DX Engineering in the USA . It came in three days from Ohio and it costs AU $280 (US $294) including express delivery.
Mike Photos
While on holidays in Europe I was QRV from Germany and Bosnia in May and June 2009 and in July 2011.
- DL/VK4DX - QRV from Munich from 21-25 May 2009.
- E7/VK4DX – QRV from Bosnia from 26 May – 16 June 2009 and 11-27 July 2011.
QSL via VK bureau or direct to my home address.
Mike DXing
While I was barely active on 6m over the past few years, I’ve got more interested in being QRV on six as the sun activity has shown some nice openings to JA and KH6. The only antenna I could use on 6m was the multi-band vertical (MA5V), but that was as bad as it gets. Even though the 6m module was not installed, the SWR is about 2:1 on 50.100 and while I could hear 2 or 3 JA stations, I could never work them.
Last Sunday I have installed a 5 element 6m yagi antenna (A50-5S), approximately 8m high with an instant reward – 5 JAs in log that evening. I also had another new country on 6m the next day – FK. Okay, when you have worked total of about 5 countries on one band, it’s fairly normal that every other contact is a new-one, hi!
The only thing I didn’t like about the whole experience was the armstrong rotator, but I guess I’ll get that addressed fairly soon.
Mike DXing
07/03/2009 – Cleveland Point, near Brisbane.
Cleveland Point is located approximately 20km south-east from Brisbane and it’s almost completely surrounded with the salt water. I parked my car approximately 10m from the water line, near the lighthouse.
The conditions on 17m were exceptionally good. I worked about 200 stations in a few hours, mostly JAs, but I logged about two dozens of europeans as well.
I used my new 10 inch Eee PC netbook for logging. This little thing is brilliant, the battery lasts well over 6 hours with Wi-Fi and bluetooth off and it was heaps easier logging directly into the PC then using paper log and then re-entering all the contacts manually.
I worked several mobile stations from Japan, most notably Nori, JA7OXR/M whom I worked on both CW and SSB. Mobile-to-mobile fun.
Mike Mobile VK4DX/m
25/02/2009 – Mount Gravatt, Brisbane
The conditions were pretty good on 17m, worked quite a few JAs and several Europeans, mostly on CW. The highlight was the report 58 from DL station on SSB.
Mike Portable VK4DX/p
