When: Sunday, July 28, starting 10:00am
Liaison: VK4RBN Mt Glorious FM repeater, 147.000 (-600 kHz offset, no CTCSS)
Microwave Activity Day (MAD) - The only dedicated microwave activity events in South East Queensland
Calling all microwave enthusiasts, this activity day is not to be missed.
Mark your calendar now.
With 16 operators participating in the February 2013 Microwave Activity Day, these events are growing in popularity.
- No rules
- No scoring
- Pure microwave experimentation fun
Some stations are even are up as high as 24 GHz!
What gear?
Enthusiasts are running IC-910's, IC-9100's and TS-2000's on 1296, and there are a few (very nice!) IC-970's out there as well.
These rigs are a great way to ease into the higher bands.
On 2.4 GHz and above, most gear is "home-brew", and there are a number of excellent transverter kits/modules available to suit all budgets.
I don't have many bands
Nobody cares how many bands you have, or how much power you can run.
Many participants have one, maybe two bands only, and low power "bare-foot" transverters - but they're getting tremendous satisfaction working impressive distances with this home-brew microwave gear.
How well does your gear perform?
The $64 question.
These regular events allow you to try out your gear, benchmark it, and in the ham spirit, tweak & optimise with an overall aim to maximise the performance of your gear, and therefore the distances you can achieve.
Interested, but don't have any microwave gear?
No problem!
Contact a microwaver who will be operating at a hill top near you.
They will be delighted in showing off their home-brew gear, and how much of a buzz it can be.
In case you've missed these, some recent MAD videos for you to watch. (Click on the thumbnail to go to each YouTube video)
Microwaves - it's beyond me. Too hard
Rubbish!
Some of this microwave gear can be off putting, can't it.
But you will soon discover it isn't that difficult. For instance; "hardline" and SMA connectors can be easier to work with than RG-58 and a PL259!
S/E Queensland has a great bunch of microwave enthusiasts, who can provide help and advice.
"Test and Tune up days" offer the ability to check out your gear, and "pick the brains" of experienced microwavers.
To assist co-ordination, please post below, indicating what bands you may be active on, and your proposed location.
Advising where you intend to be will help avoid multiple stations turning up on the same hill unexpectedly.
D 'oh!
It will also help anyone interested to contact you, and see what we get up to.
It is also very helpful if you could spend a few moments to create/update your VK Logger /P profile, with location details (especially lat/lon), so others may obtain distance and bearing information.VK Logger's Mapping facility (Sign in, see main menu at bottom) allows you to easily determine latitude and longitude anywhere.
Distance and bearing calculations on VK Logger use the "Vincenty formula" (same as the WIA use) for distance calculations.
Please post your intentions below:
) and will be on 1.2, 2.4 and 10GHz (tnx again Doug VK4OE
))))) and the other event is just a once-a-year thing. My next microwaving effort will have to wait until the Spring VHF/UHF Field Day. (And at least by then, I should be able to find all of the FD bits in the shed....)