John Moyle Memorial Field Day 2009 Report

What does the VK3ER/P Field day team have in common with the Scottish Pop Group Wet Wet Wet?

You guessed it, nothing, but it sure was wet wet wet. (Unless you can claim that love was all around us!)

A number of our intrepid members ventured to Mt Cowley, about 10 km west of Lorne and 130 km south west of Melbourne for the 2009 JMMFD on the weekend, 13th - 15th of March.

Mt Cowley is at a height of 680 metres and is the highest point in the Otway Ranges and is just east of Victoria’s wettest location at Weeaproinah.

In the week leading up to the event, we had some concerns about the ongoing issue of wild fires in the Otway Ranges, as there has not been a large burn since 1983 and the fuel levels are at dangerous levels, so much so, that the CFA brigades have been ordered to only protect assets like Telstra towers etc. in the event of a fire outbreak.

We need not have worried though, with about 50mm falling in the 36 hour period!

Max VK3WT, Peter VK3QI, Jack VK3WWW, Mike VK3AVV, Peter VK3MV, John VK3PZ, Susan VK3FSSB, Dave VK3DLR, Jim VK3AMN and two F call visitors from the Sherbrooke Community School Radio Club, Callum VK3FSDP and Cameron VK3FZAT all traveled to the field day site on Friday 13th arriving around 5 p.m.in time to begin setting up the operating positions for the contest starting midday Saturday. By sunset they had the operating and sleeping positions in place and settled down to getting all the equipment installed ready for connecting to the antennas that would be erected first thing Saturday morning.

Not long after, it began to rain, rain and rain, and continued to do so for the next 36 hours, making the installation and dismantling of the antennas and operating positions quite a challenge. The wind blew of course and in several other field day sites around Victoria, the A.C.T and N.S.W. other operators struggled to maintain their operating positions under miserable conditions throughout the weekend.

Fortunately, Mt Cowley, which has a large Telstra Communication tower on-site, has 100 foot trees cleared for a radius of about 150 metres, and those trees gave us some protection from the wind.

Activity was certainly down a little in the S/E states, due to both inclement weather and to the after effects of the bushfires in VK3, with some of the usual mountain tops either having been burnt out (Mt Tassie) or still being used for staging posts for ongoing fire monitoring and fighting.

We operated on 80mx, 40mx, 20mx, 6mx, 2mx, 70cm and 23cm.

On HF, the operators found the going much tougher than last year, due to the high level static crashes, but did have a larger number of qsos on 20mx this year. The clash with the BERU contest on CW was unfortunate, but will change next year. as the JMFD moves back to the third weekend in March, as it should have been this year.

Callum and Cameron enjoyed their first contest qsos and quickly learnt how to give out contest numbers and use the computer logging program that we were using, courtesy of Mike VK3AVV one of our members.

Tallies on HF were 43 qsos on 80, 161 qsos on 40 and 34 qsos on 20, roughly 30% down on last year.

The continuous rain did have some adverse effects on VHF and UHF. We suspect that some coaxial connectors were affected by water to some extent. Certainly the extreme moisture on the 100 foot trees that partly shelter Mt Cowley, were showing absorption effects on 70cm and 23 cm, where the Melbourne beacons were much weaker than normal.

Fortunately our large operating dome tent once again proved itself to be fully waterproof and wind proof. It has survived a number of IOTA DXpeditions and field days now and was well worth the investment. It has a full fly covering, which ensures no moisture build up, even when tables and equipment are touching the inner tent surface.

Tallies on VHF/UHF were 6mx 72, 2mx 120, 70 cm 100 and 23 cm 50, all roughly 20% down on last year.

With the lower point scores on VHF/UHF this year, our average points per qso has dropped to about 12 per qso, down from about 20 per qso last year.

A big thanks should be made to all who participated in the contest, both from portable and home stations. Any contribution to the qsos tallies is appreciated by everyone involved.

Our 3 Honda EU20i generators performed faultlessly as they always do - best bang for the bucks of any equipment we have ever used!

Technical Issues / Achievements for the 2009 JMFD

(1) Using Mike VK3AVV's logging program with 4 laptops networked (HF, 6, 2 and 70) so that any operator can see exactly what frequencies the other ops are on at any given time. Having Mike as part of the team helps of course!

(2) A realisation that really soaking rain can test out coaxial connector and switch box seals

(3) Despite using a sequencer on the 23 cm setup, we can still manage to blow up MGF1302 LNAs and have to replace them in driving rain and wind whilst standing on top of a canvas trailer. More work needs to be done on low capacity protection diodes.

(4) The successful use of a high pass filter between rig and amplifier on 6 mx to reduce interference on HF. Many operators are not aware that most solid state HF rigs only have a Low pass filter on their output, so that when transmitting on 50 Mhz, wideband noise (at about 80dB down) is transmitted on all frequencies below 50mhz and up to the LP cutoff frequency, which is usually around 70 Mhz.

In normal setups this is not a problem, but when the HF setup is only a few metres away, it causes interference on 80, 40 and 20mx on the weaker signals. You can't stop the noise at the HF end, it must be stopped at the 6 mx end.

Before the contest Max VK3WT and Peter VK3QI designed and built a 5 pole Butterworth High Pass filter with a cutoff at around 35 Mhz. Performance was better than -50dB below 21 Mhz (with a spur around 18Mhz at -28dB) and a SWR of less than 1.2:1 at 50 Mhz . It performed perfectly, with our HF operators unaware of the 6 mx transmissions.

Will we win again this year and take off the inaugural club President’s cup?

We are sure of a good score against the other VK1 and 3 stations, but maybe a club station from VK2, VK4 or VK5 might have worked up a higher score. That we will find out in a few months time.

Overall, despite the inclement weather, our team enjoyed another great JMFD.

There is definitely something refreshing about being able to breath fresh mountain air, albeit at 100% humidity!

Cheers

Peter VK3QI (for the VK3ER/P team.)

Results and report for the JMFD 2009 are up on the WIA site <Link>.

We made first place plus won the inaugural Club President's Cup .

Jack VK3WWW	Peter VK3QI
Max VK3WT	Mike VK3AVV
Dave VK3DLR	Jim VK3AMN & Callum VK3FSDP
A little wet!!	Misty Morn.
Getting ready	Peter VK3QI and The Dish
Peter VK3MV & Peter VK3QI	Who forgot his chair?
Dave VK3DLR	CW!!

Thanks to all those who came up and gave out numbers to stations in the contest and I must also thank those who took the time to come away for the weekend and operate VK3ER/P

Photos provided by VK3PZ.