[OZAPRS] HF to VHF Confused

[Tony Hunt]

David,

Ive set up the PK232 on 7036 LSB as you said but have not decoded anything
as yet. Its running 50w into a Off centre fed dipole 1 wavetlength long
favoring your QTH pretty well. I am running Digi_Ned under windows which
will Gate pretty well anything back out to VHF here in Adelaide and thus
into the Igate at Andrews place. I could gate onto the Net direct but theres
little point with the way Digi_Ned is set up..
Digi_ned beacons every half hour here but there is a fixed beacon dead on 15
minutes past the hour (thats 45 mins past the hour in the eastern states)
which may help you identify something even if it does not decode. I just
resynced the PC clock with the Internet so that should hold good for a
while.

I have not decoded anything as yet on 40m .  A few mins ago I was agressivly
beaconing (VK5AH-4) but nobody seemed to gate it to the Net. That all could
be because I am not netted on your frequency correctly.

You said 7.036 LSB but you are using a sound card. The national APRS web
page says I should be using 7036.5 LSB so I will now QSY up slightly.
http://www.aprs.net.au/hf_overview.php
 Ive aligned the PK232 to work like a MFJ1278 with 2100 and 2300 Hz tones. I
will shut off the 2m beacon for VK4AH-4 and stop it getting Gated to the IS
via 2m also.

As Andrew said we messed about with 40m APRS a while back and every so often
it seems to raise its head again and someone has another look at it. To me
it was not as good as 30m ( as many have noted) but if we have stations
willing to support it then lets play a while and measure it again. Its
certainly popular in ZL as opposed to 30m. I remember trying 80m from here
to VK7 which was a dead loss. I got a decode every couple of days. This is
the whole issue when you start going down in frequency like this. Its
inheritly noisy.

What I tended to find was that 30m didnt kick in till after a 500km distance
from the Gateway and then proved pretty relaiable to about 1800km and even
3000+km at times. 40m on the other hand seemed to get its act together from
about 50km out to about 800km and then lost the plot although at times it
could certainly make the 2000km mark the S/N ratio was struggling to make a
reliable decode.

Lets see if you here anything from VK5 anyway. Will leave it running a
while. Its certainly busy with a few different sigs on there tonight PSK31
RTTY but no AX25 as yet.

Tony Hunt VK5AH


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