The MacAlba

The concrete for the tower base has well and truly “gone off” or cured by now.

I put the GPS on it and it reads 1015 m (3330 ft) a.s.l. Later it said 1018 m (3340 feet), but I won’t quibble over such a small variation. Once the tower’s up, the topmost antenna will be at 1040 m (3400 feet). That sounds good to me!

Call me slow – but I’ve only recently noticed on RigPix (posted in February), that there’s a new ICOM rig on the way. The IC-7000 looks set to replace the IC-706MkIIG which has been a solid performer for several years now.

It was apparently announced at Dayton recently. Some information from AB4OJ’s website can be found here.

Update: After what seems an eternity, the new IC-7000 seems to have made it to Icom America’s web site.

I’ve not a heard a chirp on the 2m, 6m or 10m bands for weeks. I monitor beacons on a regular basis, and leave the receivers running on the 2m and 6m SSB calling frequencies.

The merging of the low winter and low solar cycle periods leave little activity.

I have to qualify the above statements by adding that I don’t live in front the receivers so I will miss things now and again but in general there’s not a lot happening.

I need to get my 2m meteor scatter setup up and running again. There’s usually always some level of activity in the mornings. I can’t work further south than Rex, VK7MO, in Tasmania. After that there’s nothing but ocean before hitting Antartica. Working into New Zealand would be a challenge – from this QTH it’s right on the accepted range for “normal” MS working at around 2200 km (1400 miles). With a little “assist” from a duct, though, it could be possible.

VK2RSY near Sydney has resumed transmission on 6m. The beacon, on 50.289 Mhz, is running 12 watts to a dipole which fires north/south.

I listened, off and on, for beacons on 6m and 10m today. I can categorically state that, with one exception, both bands were pretty dead! The exception was that I could hear the familiar old chirpy beacon from Adelaide, VK5WI, for several hours on 10m (28.260 Mhz).

I also left the receiver running on the 6m and 2m SSB calling channels whilstever I was in the shack today. Nothing heard. Not even a meteor ping.

I hadn’t listened on 6m for some months. I don’t have any antenna other than my HF vertical which tunes on 6m quite reasonably. I was a little surprised to find some beacons:

  FK8SIX on New Caledonia at 0254z
  VK4ABP at Longreach at 0510z
  VK4RTL at Townsville at 0516z

On SSB I heard John, VK4FNQ, in QSO with VK1VP in Canberra (I couldn’t hear the latter).

Apologies to anybody who reads this blog via an RSS reader. My feed was broken – it’s fixed now.

The concrete for the base for the new tower looks to be curing well, albeit slowly. I was told that the extended period of cold and wet weather would add a week to the time normally taken for the concrete to “go off”.

So be it. Only two weeks to go.